I want to continue on in our
direction of thought, considering the great things of God. And
this, I guess, would be part three. And I want to preface with where
I left off. We looked at how great God was.
We looked into the prophecy of Isaiah and beheld His greatness
and the magnitude of the creation of the universe and of the stars. And we saw how relevant that
that was, that the Holy Spirit makes that revelation to us.
And the thing that hampers us is the frailness of our flesh
that we carry about with us at all times. our fallenness, having
come to Christ, Christ having come to us, we still bear about
through this world, in these bodies, that fallenness. That becomes our greatest burden.
We recognize that as we... It's still with us when we wake
up in the morning. It's still with us when we lay
down our heads at night. It's with us when we dream. It's
with us when we pray, it's a plague. We'll never shake it completely
until the time that we are freed from this world. The Holy Spirit has given to
us to reveal the truth, the glory, the victory,
to give us a taste, if you will, of what we will realize at all
times. We can't even comprehend that
realization. And the fact of the matter that
these things have to be revealed, that they aren't learned by our
own reasoning powers. We aren't persuaded to these
truths because we study them in school or we hear them in
church or we read them ourselves from the Bible. They're only
given to us by revelation from the Holy Spirit. You can go through
life. Men have. Let me tell you, men
have. They've written commentators
commentaries on books of the Bible and have missed the mark
of what the truth really reveals. What I want to hope to convey
to you this morning in line with this greatness is the mystical
motions of grace and It became crystal clear to me this past
week when I was going through this training, and I tell you,
it was a hard, hard thing to go through. Training started
on Monday. By Tuesday, I was wanting to
go home. Just go home. Just leave it.
Didn't know why. Why? I'm too old to go through
this stuff again. I've been through this before. And by Wednesday, I was ready
to chuck it all in. It was just so hard. And I'm
telling you, I didn't sleep at night. I was laying in bed restless. I'd get on my knees and pray,
Lord, why am I going through this? What is going on here?
And I'd get back in bed and try to get some sleep because of
the tediousness of this thing. And then I'd get up again and
have to pray some more. It was a miserable, afflictive
time. And the Lord had led me to 2 Corinthians chapter 1. something different on the board
here. What this is are the importance of the preposition. Now this
is not intended to be an English lesson, but there are certain
basics about English that I think we need to understand when we
read the scriptures and we know what the preposition is that's
being used. It's divinely put there, it's
inspired by the Holy Spirit to be worded that way, so it is
important. And I'm going to hopefully make
some sense for your benefit out of this. But this just shows
you a box. This is a circle. And where these
prepositions work, there's above the box, upon the box, in the
box, flowing out of the box, flowing into the box, flowing
through the box, away from the circle, around the circle, towards
the circle, up, Down these prepositions give us the mystical motion. It gives us the motion of life.
We use prepositions to express these same thoughts that each
one of these individual things along by the side of it. And
these are important words in their own right, these little
bitty words that hardly anybody stresses or draws our attention
to. And then I have a map here that
is going to be relevant to you as we go through this. But as
a preface, and the preface may take up the whole time as often
happens with me, I want us to look at the second Corinthians,
the first chapter. Turn to 2 Corinthians chapter
1. And as I go through this letter, now, you see, I have it within
my conscious awareness of where this document fits within the
historical framework of things. And those that gave us the written
and labeled for us the written documents of the New Testament,
primarily the Catholic Church, did not do us a great service. And it was like a period of five
or six years from the time that whoever it was that listed chapters,
books and chapters, and someone decided, well, we need to label
the verses. We need to number the verses. And as often happens, people
of the world that put their hands on the things of God, they tend
more to corrupt it than to purify it. And that's why there's so
much difficulty. In 2 Corinthians, it's very hard
to clearly exegete. I mean, the scholars beyond me,
I'm not a true exegete. I'm only a student at best. But I've read enough to know
that the critics look at 2 Corinthians and they claim more than one
person wrote it. The thought patterns don't flow
evenly. flow along a certain pace and
it's obvious that things are going along and it's all one
context and then suddenly it changes on a dime and goes to
something else that doesn't even belong there. It's not even in,
it's not even, they separate it. They're just totally separate
from the rest of the document. And then it comes back and then
it goes a totally different direction. Some wise men in archeology,
they have found out that in about 90 A.D., when they discovered
the Corinthian documents, the first manuscripts of the Corinthian
writers, that they saw, then it was picked up, and it was
a Catholic, and he decided, well, this is 1 Corinthians, and this
is 2 Corinthians. When actually, in the Corinthian
writings, there is delivered to us the evidence that there's
at least four documents that Paul wrote to the Corinthians. Not just two. And that actually,
the first document, they felt, was lost. Because 1 Corinthians
mentions it. the writings that he had given
to them. It mentions that. Well, where
is that writing? It's actually lost in the conglomeration
of the documents that they put together and labeled as 2 Corinthians,
which is what makes 2 Corinthians, as we have it, so hard, because
it's actually three documents in one. And it's all disguised
by 2 Corinthians. I'll just tell you, the very
first written document was most likely 2 Corinthians 6.14 down
through chapter 7 and verse 2. And it was probably hand-given
by Paul himself as he was leaving Corinth. He spent a year and
a half in that city preaching the gospel. And his greatest
concern was that as he left, and he was journeying toward
Ephesus, look up here, you see where Corinth is, in the Roman
Empire, and we can't get all of the world in there, but I
got enough of it. He was on his way to Ephesus,
and he was on his way to Ephesus in the beginning, and in order
to get there, he landed in Corinth. And he went to the synagogues
and he ended up getting in the middle of a big brouhaha with
the leaders of the synagogue. And he was willing to leave.
He says, I don't want to spend any time here. And you remember
the story. It's in the 18th chapter of Acts.
The Lord appeared to him and says, stay here. I have much
people in this city. I'll take care of you. I'll protect
you. And with that vision, with that
revelation, The church of Corinth was fostered. It was started. And that was the second longest
period in Paul's 30 year ministry that he spent in one place. He
was always on the move. The most time that he spent in
any one place was Ephesus. He spent twice as long over there.
It's three years. And the book of Ephesians or
the letter to the Ephesians is said to have evangelized all
of Asia. They passed that letter around.
All the churches in Asia, Galatia is up over here on this side.
It wouldn't fit on here because I'm cramped up. Corinth, though,
received more written documents from Paul. If we had it outlined
right, there would be four. There would be 1 Corinthians,
2 Corinthians, 3 Corinthians, and 4 Corinthians. Now between
this little section here where he admonishes them to not mingle
with the other churches that are out here or the other religions,
don't be corrupted You don't be unequally yoked with those
people, because that will just bring you down. And that's precisely
what happened. Within a five year span, the
church of Corinth had become so corrupt, so hypocritical. They had wandered way off the
map. They had strayed away from...
Now picture this circle as the community of Christianity. and this box as Christ. You've
got those that are in Christ, that's where the elect are, and
then you've got the others that are inside the community, but
they're not in Christ. And there are so many that they
wander away from. There's always people coming
towards it and there's always people moving away from it. These
arrows denote constant motion. Constant motion. And when you
put it in the context of grace, God's grace and His sovereign
grace over us, sovereign over the law, sovereign over our sin,
Sovereign over all the afflictions and trouble and tribulation that
go with this world because of sin. And in the world, Jesus
says, you will have tribulation. But be of good cheer, I have
overcome the world. We experience the victory of
grace as it goes through us, as it goes out of us, as it comes
unto us, as it hovers over us, as it supports us from beneath.
All of these aspects are in these prepositions, God's prepositions
of grace. So what Paul did is he gave this
document to them, says, take this, follow the guidelines of
this, be a comfort to one another. And then he leaves. Five years
of time go by, he hears from the house of Chloe. Chloe was
a member of this, her family were members of this church group.
He also gets it through a letter. writings of others, that the
church had deteriorated to a mess. There were schisms all over the
place. There were people saying, I'm a Paul. And all the church
services ended up being were little sections and groups of
people that argued with one another. And there was even a group that
says, well, I'm of Christ. And he attacks that group just
as severely as he attacks the ones that says, I'm a Paul. He
writes 1 Corinthians, which is actually 2 Corinthians. He sends
it to them. The initial response to the letter,
it makes them mad. We know of, it's not written
in the Scriptures, a journey. We get this from historical books
and writings of the same time frame that Paul made a journey
to Corinth. He went back there because he
found out, well, they're not receiving that letter very well,
well, maybe they'll receive me and I'll go there in person.
But he walks into the midst of a hornet's nest. It was already
stirred up and he got stung multiple times. That's where they accused
him of not even being an apostle. They questioned his apostleship.
They castigated him. And when he left, He left in
a huff. He was righteously indignant
against them. He had realized now how bad the
situation was. So he sits down and he writes
a third document. And that takes up chapter 10
through 13 of 2 Corinthians. There's where he says they're
deceived. Satan, who is an angel of light,
has appeared unto them, and he even has his apostles of light.
And he ends that letter by telling them, examine yourself, prove
your own selves. Know ye not your own selves,
how that Jesus Christ is in you, except you be reprobate? His
language is very harsh. You've seen visions? I'll tell
you one who's seen visions. And he speaks of himself and
the experience that he had. He's defending his own apostleship. And there's where he reveals
the sufficiency of God's grace. that in the world we're going
to have these troubles. He has a thorn in His flesh and
He prayed three times that God would remove it, but He didn't
remove it. He just taught Him that His grace is sufficient.
And He reprimands them as a father does his children. There's where
that letter. And He sends it by courier. And
the courier is Titus. And Paul didn't have email. He
didn't have telephones. any any other way of communicating
and you can imagine sitting in for months waiting for for literally
weeks and months for some kind of response to tell you and What
the reaction is so he sets out on a journey and he journeys
Through Macedonia heading toward Corinth and he meets up with
Titus He says How did they receive it? And Titus says, Brother Paul,
things are looking good. Because Paul had some misgivings
about the way he wrote that and the emotion that he put into
that. He didn't know if... He wasn't being sinful. But God
prevailed. Then he sits down and he writes
a fourth document which takes in 2 Corinthians 1, through 9,
excluding chapter 6, verse 14, through 7-2, which plug all that
together and it flows evenly. And he's a loving, caring parent
in the way that this letter is. He directs them to God and to
His grace. He commends them for the true
repentance that shows up in their life. Chapter 7 gives us the
best description of repentance that we have in the whole Bible.
It dissects it down to every inner emotion that we express. So when we're looking at 2 Corinthians
chapter 1, we have embarked upon this fourth document. Now let's
look at it. Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ,
by the will of God, our first preposition, by the will of God. It's actually this word dia,
which means through. He said, well, why didn't they
put through the will of God? The grammar of the Greek language
tells us certain things about what that preposition does in
its performance. And they're trying to communicate
that in English. That's part of the problem, the
difficulty of translation. It shows instrumental cause,
causal. So it's the will of God that
is the instrument that makes Paul an apostle, a messenger
of Jesus Christ. But the reality that's being
expressed here, that the Holy Spirit puts by writing His word
in Greek, shows that the will of God actually, the will of
His grace, and the glory of His grace and the riches of His grace,
He causes to flow through us. Causes to flow through us. Now,
maybe you can understand better when it says, work out your own
salvation in fear and trembling. Work out from the inside out.
As God's grace will flow through you, you can't help but work
out. You are going to work it out.
Because the grace is going to cause you to work it out. Hence,
we could say, by the will of God and His grace. But I want
you to get the impact and the feel of the motion, the motion
that it connotes. Paul, an apostle, a messenger
of Jesus Christ, the of of Jesus Christ. is connected with the
name. It's not really a separate prepositional
word there. It's just showing the genetic.
You don't know what that means. It shows that the word, the way
that Jesus Christ is expressed, it shows that there's something
coming from Him. He's the source of it. And Paul's
apostleship, his being a messenger, Christ sends him and he's sent
with a mission. And he can't avoid it. By the
will of God and Timothy our brother unto the church of God, that's
the elect of God, which is at Corinth. That's why he's addressed
this to them. But with all the saints which
are in all Achaia. That's the whole area, the country
that surrounds Corinth. In all Achaia. His ministry had
affected that entire section. Grace to you. Grace to you. That's an announcement. We have B. interjected in there. Grace be to you. Grace be to
you, brother Les. And when I say that, you understand
me, I'm saying I hope that grace is and I hope that grace comes
to you and may God's grace be to you. If I say grace to you,
that's making an announcement. The difference is I'm saying
grace is on you. Grace is coming toward you. It's going through you. Grace
is arriving at you. And that's what's being communicated
here, as well as it says, and peace from God our Father and
Lord Jesus Christ. So there's a different flavor
that this causes us to taste in the way that the scriptures
are to be read and understood. Then he says, blessed be the
God, even the Father, It's actually in the Greek, the word chi, which
means and. Blessed God and Father of our
Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, the God of all comfort,
that's the word for encouragement, the God of all encouragement,
who encourages us in all our tribulation, that we may be able
to encourage them which are in any trouble, Bye, dear, how can
I be of an encouragement to you? I've been through the same kind
of trouble or I've been through trouble and just the fact that
we're comrades in trouble, there is an encouragement. Through
that, through knowing that, we have, we show empathy and sympathy
at the same time. by the comfort wherewith we ourselves
are comforted, by the encouragement that we ourselves are encouraged
of God. Now, here's an interesting thing.
It says, of God. They want you to know that that's
of God. The word is under, under God. What isn't under God? What is it? He is sovereign over
all. That's a point that's being made. Paul's saying, under the sovereignty
of God and His grace and His peace, which are to you. See, this ultimately puts us
in here where there's rest. And then the description of the
trouble. For as the sufferings of Christ
abound in us." Wait a minute, the sufferings of Christ? Let's
read on. The sufferings of Christ abound
in us. This in us is not this word in,
but it is the motion of going into. It's coming into our equation
of life. Into and unto is what's communicated
by this actual word. There's motion. Again, once again,
the sufferings of Christ. You have been regenerated by
the Holy Spirit and the Word of God. You are in the family
of God. It's been experientially revealed.
You are a part of His family. And you're still in this world
and the sufferings of Christ Suddenly you are aware of you're
caught in this flow. You're in this river of trouble.
And the current, you can't get out of it. It's always coming
into you. The flow is constant. But so is the encouragement.
That's what we just got finished reading. One, two, three, four,
five times, God uses the same word for comfort. in the previous
verses 3 and 4. And the reason is, and that's
what is communicated with the word for, the sufferings of Christ
abound in us, unto us, and so our consolation also aboundeth. That says, by Christ. Here we
are again, back to this word. Through us. While this is coming
unto us, this is going through us. It's like here, if I were to
draw this line, it intersects the sufferings of Christ, the
consolation of Christ, and it superabounds in our experience. Verse 6 says, and whether we
be afflicted, Paul says, whether we be afflicted for your consolation
and salvation, which is wrought Effectually wrought. The word
effectually means wrought out. What's that mean? It's completely
worked out. It does its own work. The circumstances
of Christ's consolation going through you as the sufferings
of Christ come unto you, it completely works out. You don't have to
do anything. You don't put the pieces together. You don't come
to a decision and reason out, well, here we go. It's just revealed
to you, if the Holy Spirit's in what I'm saying, that this
is the reality. This is what's really going on.
This grace is at work. Effectually wrought out in the
enduring of the same sufferings which we also suffer. You suffer
the sufferings of Christ. So do we. You and I, we're both
suffering. We're fellow sufferers. While
we're in this world, it's just the way things are. It's unavoidable. Whether we be comforted, it is
for your consolation and salvation. Whether we be afflicted, you
see that? Before he says, whether we be afflicted, it's for your
consolation and salvation. Whether we be comforted, it's
for the same thing. It's for your consolation and
salvation. The experience of the afflictions
and the encouragement, the motions of grace, are in both. There's lessons that you're learning.
There are things that you're becoming aware of that are being
revealed to you that would not happen if the sufferings of Christ
weren't always coming unto you. It is given unto us on behalf
of Christ, Paul writes to the Philippians, not only to suffer
for His sake, but also to believe on His name. The faith that we
are granted as a grace, and faith is a grace, that too doesn't
come from some hidden resource down within you that you didn't
know was there. Oh, there I've got, now I can
muster up some faith. It's a grace. It comes from above. It comes through Christ unto
you. That puts the pieces together
in the revelatory experience that we all have of what life
is really like in this world. Verse 7, and our hope of you. Now, there's the of God up there,
which we saw was really under God. Guess what this word is? It's above. Our hope is above
us. It hovers over us. 1 Timothy tells us in the very
first verse that Jesus Christ is our hope. Colossians tells
us, puts it on the inner side. Christ in you, the hope of glory,
comes from above. That's why it's sure and it's
steadfast. And that's what is being communicated
here. Our hope of you is steadfast,
knowing that as you are partakers of the sufferings, just what
I told you, so shall ye be also of the consolation. Now one other thing I want to
tell you about this word afflicted back up in verse 6, whether we
be afflicted. This is a unique word. Jesus
used this same word in Matthew chapter 7 when he spoke of the narrow way, the narrow
way that few there are that find. The straight gate that the narrow
way alone leads to. That's the same word as the afflictions
of the believer in this world. We are being led, carried, guided,
directed, all of those things by Christ, by the Holy Spirit
to the gate. The gate that is the escape once
and for all from this world and the sin that afflicts us. And it's narrow because of our
fallenness. We're still sinners. We just
happen to be true believing sinners because of the experience that
the Holy Spirit has brought to us with the grace of Jesus Christ. And the grace and truth of Christ.
I should add that. That's very important. He's full
of grace and truth. So many want to make Him full
of grace, but they don't want to look at Him through the truth.
Then verse 8, For we would not, brethren, have you ignorant of
our trouble which came to us in Asia, that we were pressed
out of measure, above strength, insomuch that we despaired even
of life. But we had the sentence of death
in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in
God, which raises the dead. And I just read over these two
verses. Let me give you the import of these things. What Paul is
referring to there is in the 19th chapter of Acts, and it's
the encounter when he made it to Ephesus, which is in Asia, and there was the temple of Diana. It's one of the wonders of the
world of his day. The great goddess Diana and the
paganism that centered around worshiping her. And the one guy
who was a silversmith by the name of Demetrius, you know what
happened there? He made his living making little replicas of the
goddess Diana and selling them. He was getting wealthy. He was
a wealthy man. He was staying wealthy because
of his tie with that pagan goddess. And he despised the preaching
of Paul because Paul was saying that God's image, it's sinful
even to make an image of God, and God is not at all in those
images. The whole town, he got the whole town in an uproar. And they were out to get these
guys and there's a couple of fellows in Paul's troop that
were from Macedonia. They were traveling with him.
They got a hold of those men and they rushed into the theater,
the arena of the theater. They're going to do them in.
They're going to kill them. And for two hours they saw that
these men were Jews. And they tried to explain themselves
and explain what the difference is and what they're doing. Paul
says, I need to get in there. And the rest of the disciples
says, no, don't you go in there. There's nothing good going to
come of that. And for two hours straight, they buried out the
sound of the gospel by saying, great is the goddess Diana. Great is the goddess Diana of
Ephesus. Two hours. And the uproar was
so loud and raucous. They got the authorities. The
Lord sent in the authorities. He rescued the hour. He providentially oversaw everything. They came in and said, this is
unseemly. You have not lawfully assembled. You have not lawfully accused
these men. They haven't done anything as far as we can see.
And ultimately everything was calmed down and the lives of
the men were spared. But that's what Paul's referring
to, the trouble that he had in Asia. But that's not what Paul's
direction of thought is going to. That isn't what he was referring
to when he says, but we had the sentence of death in ourselves. Even though in that encounter
we despaired even of life. But you know what? We had the
sentence of death in ourselves. Our fallenness that we should
not trust in ourselves. He correlated with that. He says
that brought us to the brink of this situation. It was totally
out of our control. God had to providentially work
a miraculous deliverance for us by just calming the crowd,
dispersing the crowd, and letting us go. And that's exactly like the reality
that we all have had, that we have the sentence of death in
ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves. There's absolutely no way that
any contribution is made from the lost sinner to effectually
work his salvation. Not a decision, not a prayer,
not a part. We should trust in God, which
raiseth the dead. This coincides with what Abraham
is said to have come to when he got to be 100 years old. He
had labored all his life to try and help God fulfill His promise
to him. God was just sitting back and
waiting. He says, I'm going to wait until you get so old that
it's impossible. Then I'm going to show you. Romans 4.17 says it. He believed
God who raised the dead and calls those things which don't exist
as though they do. God who delivered us from so
great a death and doth deliver in whom we trust that he will
yet deliver us. You see, verse 10 brings right
to the foreground. Verse 10, now turn over without
losing your place there to get the full feel of this, to 2 Timothy
chapter 4, verses 16 through 18. Paul wrote
this five years later, at my first answer no man stood
with me, but all men forsook me. I pray God that it may not
be laid to their charge. Notwithstanding, the Lord stood
with me and strengthened me. And by me, through me, literally,
the preaching, the heralding forth of the gospel might be
fully known, fully fulfilled. and that all the Gentiles might
hear. And I was delivered out of the
mouth of the lion. And the Lord shall deliver me
from every evil work. The Lord will preserve me unto
his heavenly kingdom, to whom be glory forever. endeavor. That's literally unto the ages
of the ages forever. Amen. This correlates with what
he's referring to because he's actually right at the brink.
This is right before he's decapitated and escapes this world into the
glory of Christ. In verse 11, he says, you also
helping together by prayer for us. How important it is that
we pray for one another, that we don't just pray for one another's
health and well-being, but we pray for one another's spiritual
growth in God's grace and the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ
being our Lord and Savior. that for the gift bestowed upon
us by the means of many persons, thanks may be given through,
again, many on our behalf. Thankfulness comes flowing through. It's always flowing. As the grace
of Christ goes through us, there's so many things that are attached
to that. There's victory that comes unto us. And as it goes
through us and away from us, it becomes a testimony we look
back upon. But prayer also, it flows through
us if we're true children of God. And Paul says, for our rejoicing
is this, the testimony of our conscience. that in simplicity
and godly sincerity, not with fleshly wisdom, that's literally
not in fleshly wisdom. Why did they put with? To denote
a uniting with. That's what happens, see? When
you and I, it's revealed to us what Christ has done and that
He is our Savior, we see it's also revealed to us He's united
with us. That when He broke that bread,
that bread was His saying, My body is broken for you. That's
making you a part with Me. My blood was spilled for you.
That's making you a part with Me. It was Nicodemus' statement that
when he told Jesus, we know that you must be a rabbi come from
God for no man can do the things that you do except God be with
him. Ah, Jesus says, truly, truly,
I say unto you, except a man be born from above, he cannot
perceive, see the kingdom of God. He told Nicodemus that There
was experienced in him a new birth. He was a born-again believer.
He recognized God was united with Christ. And when you understand
that, you understand you're in Him. There's no being with Him
without you being in Him. There's no Him being with you
without Him being in you. the mystical motions of grace. Christ in you, you in Christ. That's why the glorying that
Paul says, our glorying in this, the testimony of our conscience, that in simplicity and godly
sincerity, not in fleshly wisdom, but in the grace of God, we had
our conversation in the world. and more abundantly to you word.
Now the simplicity and godly sincerity that shows purity. That's what these words point
to. It's the purity of his message, the purity of the way he believes,
the purity of the way that grace actually works. For we write
none other things unto you than what ye read, or acknowledge."
And that word acknowledge is epigonosko. That means simply
it's a knowledge that gets a hold of you. It's a knowledge that
gets a hold of us more than we get a hold of it. The experience
of coming to acknowledge the truth. For this is good and acceptable
in the sight of God our Savior, who will have all men to be saved
and come unto the knowledge of the truth." Same word is used
there. It's the will of God. It's good and acceptable in the
sight of God. Who will have? Whose will will perform? Salvation. What is it? It's described
as coming unto a full knowledge of the truth. Full knowledge
of grace truth. Full knowledge of Christ and
His work as the Son of God. And that's where this is all
going, by the way. Which is what is laid aside so much of the
time to stress man's part. They want to lay aside the idea
that Christ is the Son of God. And Paul is saying that he didn't
write any other thing unto you than what you read and got a
hold of you. See, that's what that word acknowledge,
that's why it's so important, saying that you acknowledge.
But it's the word that He uses. It's a knowledge that you don't
get by education, you only get by revelation. You can get all
kinds of college degrees and never get this knowledge. as
also you have acknowledged," same word, us in part, that we
are your rejoicing even as you are ours in the day. of the Lord Jesus. He's pointing
to that one day that we're looking for. That would be at the end
of the timeline when I had it up here. The end. That would
be the revelation of Jesus Christ one more time bodily into this
realm. And you know what's going to
happen to this realm? All He's got to do is show up. He doesn't
come down here and set something up in this corrupt place. He
comes toward this corrupt place and heaven and earth as we know
it flee from His presence. in flames, according to 2 Peter
3. And when that day comes, we are
each other's rejoicing. That's what Paul is saying. You're
ours and we're yours. And in this confidence, verse
15 says, I was minded to come unto you before that she might
have a second benefit. Oh, a lot's been put into this
verse. The charismatics have made such a mockery of the Scriptures
right here. This really is simple to understand.
Let's read it. that you might have a second
benefit and to pass by you, that's through you. Here we see the
motion idea of these prepositions is substantiated in these remarks
Paul makes simply about his journey. These are simple remarks about
the geography that he's going to cross over and go through
to get to these people. And it's these same words that
are used when it's talking about the workings of God through Christ
and the Holy Spirit through us. Look what he says, And in this
confidence I was minded to come to you before that you might
have a second benefit, and to pass by you into Macedonia, and
to come again out of Macedonia unto you. of you to be brought on my way
toward Judea." So he's talking about his journey in this area,
in this region of the world. And what's all going on? What's
he saying? I was minded to come unto you
before that you might have a second benefit. He'd been a second time. That's what he's talking about.
To come to you a second time. and to pass through you, through
you, come to Corinth, to Macedonia. See that? And to come again out
of Macedonia, it's the word from, away from, Macedonia, to where? Unto you. Back to Corinth. Corinth was a city that was a
hub of the empire's commerce. It was a connecting link to the
different parts of the Roman world. Nero was attempting, and
it got finished, but it wasn't under his rule, to dig up portage
so that the ships with commerce wouldn't have to sail around
this hazardous place where there was strong winds and hard to
traverse waters. to get up here to Rome and the
other empire, they would rather come through here, I've got two
lines drawn here, you can't see them because I've written over
it with Corinth, but they would come across this and avoid, they'd
take this straight right here and then they could sail on up
this way. And all of commerce, and this made Corinth a hub,
I mean it was a busy, busy, it was like the Las Vegas of the
Roman world. Every kind of vice and sin and
evil you could think of was in Corinth. That's why Paul didn't
want to stay in that town. And yet God told him, I have
much people in this city. I have some elect in here. A
lot of my elect children are in this town. You stay here.
Because through you, I'm going to present my gospel. And night
and day, from house to house and every Sabbath, he ministered
for a year and a half under the striving of the Holy
Spirit working through him. And it says, out from Macedonia
unto you, and by you to be brought on my way to Judea, Again, that
word by is this word upo, under you. Well, what's that mean?
Under you, what's under him? It's Judea. He's just simply
talking about the position of where the regions are through
there. And this second benefit is not some special work of grace. It's the second time that he's
gonna be going through there. When I therefore was thus minded,
did I use likeness? Verse 17, a word that means levity,
which means literally carnal levity. Did I use carnal levity
when I was therefore thus minded to come unto you? Are the things
that I purpose, my purpose in coming to you, do I purpose according
to the flesh? That with me there should be
yea, yea and nay, nay. There's singleness. See, that's
simplicity and godly sincerity. We could go back to that verse
there and look at that. It says it's with simplicity
and godly sincerity. There's no wavering here. There's
no way you can. There's no two ways you can take
what I'm going to say to you. I don't say yes on this part
of the gospel and over here it come out to be no. There's no
wavering on this. But as God is true, the truth... Grace is always accompanied by
truth. Truth is always accompanied by
grace. Grace cannot lie. Grace is holy. Grace is holy. It's always holy. There's no
way for grace to sin. Grace doesn't come out corrupt.
Grace is always pure. If we just remember that and
hold to that. But as God is true, our word, that's logos. Paul proclaims an ownership of
it. Why? Because He was born from
above by it. Just as you own the Word. The
Word of truth. Of His own will begat He us by
the Word of truth. That we would be a kind of...
He would be kind of a first fruits of many brethren. We're the brethren. We're of the Word. We own the
Word. For our Word toward you was not
yea and nay. It's trustworthy. It's fixed. This next verse, verse 19, is
a key verse. Look what it says. For the Son
of God, Jesus Christ, was preached among you through us. Keep your finger there. Turn
to Acts chapter 9. Right at the very start, this
is right after Paul's conversion, what was the message that spurred
him on, that stirred him up and carried him away? Look at verse
20. In straight way, that means that
immediately he preached Christ in the synagogues,
that he is the Son of God. But all that heard him were amazed. He preached Christ, that He is
the Son of God. I had a preacher tell me right
before he was going to preach in the pulpit, and the theme
of the conference was the Eternal Sonship of Christ. I said, what's
all this talk about Eternal Sonship? I was shocked. I mean, I'm about
to introduce him at a conference. We're up here on a platform.
And he hits me with this. I said, what's all this talk
about the eternal sonship of Christ? I had to repeat the question
to make sure I heard it right. If Christ is not the eternal
Son of God, then everything that's done for us through Him and by
Him in the atonement has no eternal magnitude whatsoever. Oh yeah,
but we all understand that. even if we did all understand
it. I can't hear it enough. I want to hear that. That feeds
my soul. But the fact is, people don't
realize this. Right here, for the Son of God,
Jesus Christ, was preached. This is what Isaiah experienced
when he was in the temple. And he had that vision. His vision
was in his woeful distress over the circumstances of his nation. The king Uzziah was no longer
on the throne. There was this period of time
where without a king, oh, the government's in chaos. And he
walks in and he sees the sovereign Son of Man? One like a Son of
Man seated on the throne? And there isn't anybody going
to get Him off the throne. Because all of heaven is under Him. And the glory of that sight filled
the holy place where He was at. And He recognized that. He had
a vision of the sovereignty of Christ. What He thought about
Christ was far short. And He was an Orthodox, Judean. He understood the symbolism. He had been to good Jewish school. He graduated with honors. He
had all of that going for him. He was very familiar with it.
But he didn't know that. Because that has to be revealed
to you. And then immediately he had a vision, likewise, of
his own woeful state. He says, woe is me. I'm a man
of unclean lips. I've been saying it all wrong
about Christ. I've been saying it all wrong.
And I dwell among a people of unclean lips. There's none of
us got this right. I'm headed for hell. Then he
had a vision of redemption. For the one seated on the throne
commissioned the angel to go to the altar, take a coal, and
go to that man down there and purge his lips. So there's no
more iniquity going to come out of him. And the angel came and
touched his lips, said, Behold, thy iniquity is purged. And then
he had a vision of service, because he heard the one seated on the
throne and says, Who will go for us? Whom shall we send? As he looked among all the hosts,
the myriads of angels and men, heavenly glory, And Isaiah says,
here am I, send me. And he didn't say, does it come
with a benefits package? Does it promise me a good car
to drive? Does it come with good health
insurance and such? He just said, here am I, send
me. And the commission is delivered. Go to a people that have ears
to hear, eyes to see. But hearing, they will not hear.
Seeing, they will not see. Having hearts to believe, they
won't believe. Lest I, that I might convert them and they be healed."
Well, wait a minute. Isaiah didn't say, hold on a
second, I'm going to go to a bunch of people that don't believe
in Him. No, he said, here am I, send me. Didn't matter the
cost, the glory, surpasses the hardship. It's
not even worthy to be compared. He went forth. The Son of God,
Jesus Christ, was preached. And it was not only preached
through Paul. He says, preached by us. That's
through us. Through me, he says. Silvanus,
Timotheus. And it was not yea and nay. But in Him was yea. In Christ is yea. For all the
promises of God, for whatsoever are, as many as are the promises
of God, they're all yes. And in Him, done. Amen. That's what amen means.
That's why we say our prayer. Finished. In Christ, all the
promises of God are yes and done unto the glory of God through
us. So the motions of grace, the
glory of God, the preaching, the glory of God, prayers, the encouragement in the times
of affliction as they come unto us and they will. God's grace, the motion of it. And then it says, now He which
establishes us with you, us together, us together, the family of God,
in Christ. It's not this in, it's this one. There's a motion going on. The
establishment is an action. It's always in motion. We're
always being established in this truth. That's why we keep preaching
it. You don't hear it all at one
time. Maybe you don't hear it at all. I feel sorry for you
if you don't. If you do hear it, you rejoice.
You want to hear it. You love to hear it. If you don't
hear it, eh. That's this time. We keep preaching
it. We'll preach it and preach it
till we drop. Till we can't talk no more. Because we're free from this
world. But while we're here, He it is that is performing this
establishing. And what's it say? He which establishes
us with you unto Christ, constant motion, and hath anointed us
is God, who hath also sealed us and given the earnest of the
Spirit in our hearts. The work of the triune. It's
all here. Father, Son, and Spirit. To the
glory of the Son. Now that's my preface so I'll
start my message. Remember what I've said and we'll
pick up from here. It was going to go to Matthew
11 this morning and I intend to do so. This is where Christ is at, and
with great passion, He cries out to the Father, and He thanks
the Father, and He recognizes Him as the Lord of heaven and
earth. He's the Lord of heaven and earth. The supreme in authority,
controller of heaven and earth, because He has hid these things
from the wise and prudent, and revealed them unto babes. Even
so, Father, He says, for so it seemed good in thy sight. It's
up to His prerogative. Hearing the truth. I'll tell
this to a little child as well as to an adult. It's
important you understand who is in control. Especially so to a child. You sow a seed of self-reliance and it will be their plague to
their dying day. They're constantly going to be
trying to prove the motions, the mystical motions of grace
are not true. You understand this? Mystical motions of what
you don't deserve, what is unmerited, that all comes from God with
the purpose that's pure and holy. Anything that you imagine different
from this is wicked. It's of the devil. It's not reception
of the truth. It's deception. We need to be
set free from it. And it is. It has a grip on us.
You have to be set free from it. It isn't just strictly coming
to a different conclusion. It's seeing a difference. And if you're one of God's children,
you will avoid it. Was this helpful?