Second Corinthians, chapter 13. The last chapter in Second Corinthians. Heavenly Father, be with us this
evening and open our minds and hearts to receive the wonders
of your word. And Lord Jesus, how thankful
we are that right along with you, we're children of the King. And all those things that you
possess are given to us in our measure. Lord Jesus, you're the
firstborn, and therefore have the double portion. And Lord,
we're glad to see you have it. Yea, we're glad to see you have
all things. And yet, Lord, we're blessed with all those spiritual
blessings in the heavenly places in you. Right along with you,
we're loved by the Father. As you have said, the Father
loves you. The Father Himself loves you. We're so glad, Lord,
that our Father loves us. That your Father loves us. And
that He deals with us as children. And as a father has pity on his
children, so the Lord pities them that fear Him. He knows that we're dust. And
Lord, we feel our dustiness. We feel our weakness. We pray
that You'll reveal that fatherly mercy
toward us. In Christ's name we pray. Amen. This morning, or this evening's
message, is the first two words of verse five, examine yourselves. Examine yourselves. But let's
read the first ten verses of this chapter. Paul says, this
will be my third visit to you. Every matter must be established
by the testimony of two or three witnesses. I already gave you
a warning when I was with you the second time. I now repeat
it while absent. On my return, I will not spare
those who sinned earlier, or any others, since you are demanding
proof that Christ is speaking through me. He is not weak in
dealing with you, but is powerful among you. For to be sure, he
was crucified in weakness, yet he lives by God's power. Likewise,
we are weak in him. Yet by God's power, we will live
with Him to serve you. Examine yourself to see whether
you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Do you not realize
that Christ Jesus is in you? Unless, of course, you fail the
test. And I trust that you will discover that we have not failed
the test. Now, we pray to God that you
will not do anything wrong. Not that people will see that
you have stood the test, but that you will do what is right.
even though we may seem to have failed. For we cannot do anything
against the truth, but only for the truth. We are glad whenever
we are weak, but you are strong, and our prayer is for your perfection.
This is why I write these things when I am absent, that when I
come I may not have to be harsh in my use of authority. The authority
the Lord gave me for building you up, not for tearing you down. Now, one spiritual principle. that we may lay hold of and know
that it applies in every situation is this, the ultimate issue is
never us. The ultimate issue is never us. We are never called upon to look
to ourselves, nor even at ourselves, simply for the purpose of finding
out what we are. Now, there was a time when God
directed our gaze to ourselves in the convicting power of the
Holy Spirit, but even that was not an end in and of itself.
The only purpose God has in revealing our sin to us is to turn our
eyes from ourselves to the Lord Jesus Christ. That's the end
of all things. That's the goal of everything.
That's the ultimate purpose in all things. to turn our gaze
to the Lord Jesus Christ, that we may behold His glory, be enamored
of Him, to bow at His feet and worship Him, and be filled with
the joy of His presence. That is the ultimate goal of
our salvation. And everything that we are told
to do in that process is for the purpose of bringing us to
that goal. Here is Paul's concern. Look
back here at chapter 11. Here's what prompted him to say,
examine yourselves. Paul says, I hope you will put
up with a little of my foolishness, but you are already doing that.
I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy. I promised you to one
husband, to Christ, so that I might present you as a pure virgin
to him. But I'm afraid that just as Eve
was deceived by the Spirit's cunning, Your minds may somehow
be led astray from your sincere and pure devotion to Christ.
For if someone comes to you and preaches a Jesus other than the
Jesus we preached, or if you receive a different spirit from
the one you received, or a different gospel from the one you accepted,
now look at this line. You put up with it easily enough.
But I do not think I am in the least inferior to those super
apostles. I may not be a trained speaker.
But I do have knowledge. We have made this perfectly clear
to you in every way. Now, what was Paul's desire in
his ministry? What guided it? What was the
purpose and what was the motivation? Very simply this, that he might
present them as pure and wholly devoted unto Christ. Now, it's
remarkable just how much wandering the sheep of God can do. Now,
when we set forth the ideal of what the sheep of God should
be, let us never think that that's actually what they're going to
be at all times. It's just not so. There is no
truer line in any hymn that I know of, no line truer than that one
that says, prone to wonder, Lord I feel it, prone to leave the
God I love. Whoever wrote that, and I can't,
his name escapes me at the moment, but I think he knew what it was
to be one of the sheep of God. And despite the fact that he
had returned to the shepherd, been brought back by the shepherd,
yet he recognized, I'm a sheep. And that's all I am. God found
me as one of his sheep. He brought me to himself as one
of his sheep. But I'm still a sheep. And there's one thing that sheep
do. They wander. That's why they've got to have
shepherds. You can't just leave sheep out there on their own.
You've got to put up a fence or you've got to have a shepherd,
one or the other, because they'll wander around and get themselves
in trouble. And such it is with God's people. We can be mesmerized
and fascinated by the gifts and talents of men to the point that
we'll tolerate a corrupted message about a corrupted Christ delivered
in a different spirit than that which we first received. So that
never happened to us. Don't hold your breath. It could. Do you realize that that's one
reason that God's preachers, I believe this one reason God's
preachers don't have many natural gifts. Most of God's faithful preachers,
you wouldn't follow them anywhere. Were it not for the gospel that
they preach. You know, I'm like anybody else.
You know, I wish I had some talent. You know, I wish I had something
that people, you know, if not audibly, at least inside, you
know, he's quite something there. You know, he can sing. He's good
looking, you know, and boy, he's got a way of speaking. It ain't there, is it? Don't say amen, but I mean it. It's not. You know why? So you
won't follow me. God did that to Paul. We read
of it there in the twelfth chapter, that a thorn in the flesh was
given to him, some obvious weakness, something about him that made
people think that really he can't be an apostle. Look at him. Listen
to him. In fact, he points out one of
the things that were thrown up in his face. In verse 6 he says,
I may not be a trained speaker. Having been among some of God's
choice preachers and noticing how they preach, I can pick out
one of these trained, polished, professional preachers. They've got a way of speaking.
It changes from denomination to denomination, but it's there. You can hear it in the sound.
And what it is, is they start to sound like whoever it is that's
prominent in their denomination. or whatever it is that people
speak, or think how it should be spoken, you know? And in order
that I not lead any Dutchman away from their church after
me, God sent a hillbilly up here who hasn't got sense enough to
speak with the right cadence and the right tone of voice,
doesn't even know how to speak English like English should be
spoken. I've changed a little over the
years, You can still tell I'm not from here. Paul says, I'm
not a trained speaker. I'm not one of these orators,
you know, who do this stuff and talk and you're just mesmerized. You know, when you hear about
the philosophers of Greece. In truth, now, some of them,
a few of them had a little bit of wisdom. Most of them just
had some fancy talk. They called them sophists. And
they made their living going from town to town, not saying
much, but saying it very well. And the people were impressed
with the style. And when the church began, these same kind
of men crept into the church. And they were impressive. And
they fascinated and mesmerized the people. And by the channel
of their oratory brought in another Christ and another gospel and
another spirit. And the people Like, remember
when you were a kid and they'd bring in some magician, you know,
and he'd pull a rabbit out of his hat and you'd go, wow. That's what they did.
People just, they'd hear that guy, wow. And these men did,
of course, try to take Paul's position. They wanted his authority
among the churches. They wanted his stature. But they were not ministers of
God. They were ministers of Satan. They were not ministers of righteousness.
They only masqueraded as such. We could be mesmerized. This may seem to contradict our
belief in the perseverance of the saints. Well, it's true that
Christ's sheep follow him. But like sheep following a shepherd,
they can take some rabbit trails along the way. and get sidetracked
and wander around from time to time. It just happens. That's why when we see someone
wandering, we don't write them off. You know, whether they're
wandering in terms of worldly enchantments, or if, for a bit,
they listen to someone we wouldn't agree with, we don't right away
say, well, they're lost. Boy, if they was a Christian,
they'd never do that. Well, Paul said it. This is what it says
right here in the Word. This isn't theology. This is
scripture. He said if someone brings another
Jesus than the one we preached, another gospel, a different spirit,
he said, you gladly put up with it. He didn't say you almost put
up with it. He didn't say you're tempted
to put up with it. He said you put up with it easily enough. I try to be, and this is because
of the instruction I got by the grace of God, I'm very careful
who I invite into our pulpit. And I don't invite people here
that I don't know, or people that do not come with a very
high recommendation of several others whom I know and whose
judgment I trust. Why is that? I don't want to
have to clean up a mess. That's what it is. I don't want
to subject you. You know, you get someone here, and it's because
they've got a name, and they appear in magazine articles of
sovereign grace. You think, oh, this guy's fine.
So you call him up. Could you come to a meeting for
us? Sure. And we sit down. And as a pastor, I've got to
sit there. And if this guy starts going off into left field, what
am I going to do? A couple of times, I've known
some of our preacher friends who've had to get up after the
message and just apologize. I don't want to have to do that,
so I'm real careful about who I bring in. Because I want there
to be as much as I can predict. I want to know that anything
said from this pulpit, you may receive it as the bread from
heaven, as the truth of God. Now, of course, we're not going
to trust anybody completely, are we? Christ is the only one
who can be trusted completely. But those who have proven themselves
faithful over the years are likely not going to depart from that
faithfulness. So we ask such men there. God's sheep may be
found flirting with others. You say, why do you use the word
flirting? Because of what he says up here in verse 2. Now
we're in 2 Corinthians 11 verse 2. He says, I'm jealous for you
with a godly jealousy. I promised you to one husband,
to Christ, so that I might present you as a pure virgin to him."
Now, if we're going to understand what he means there, we've got
to know a little bit about how marriages were conducted back
then, at least in the Jews. I don't know how the Gentiles
did it, but he was speaking from a Jewish viewpoint. And people
would be what we call an engagement. They called a pledge to marry.
And it didn't happen, you know, A man and a woman, you know,
the guy takes her out some night finally to a fancy restaurant
and they've been dating for a long time, you know, and finally he
gets down on one knee and opens up the ring and asks, that's
not the way it went. Those young women, they stayed
in their father's house until a suitor came by that pleased
the father. And the father made an agreement.
And I'm not saying they never asked the girl, but that wasn't
the primary issue, whether or not the girl was in favor of
this. It was an agreement between the
father and the man. And she was pledged to be married.
And while she was pledged to be married, she still stayed
at home. And she was guarded for that man. In particular,
her sexual purity was guarded. And for her to engage in sexual
relations at that point, if she did so willingly, she was subject
to stoning, as though she had forsaken her husband. See, now we make engagements,
and that's pretty much a promise, but then if it doesn't work out
before the marriage comes along, just return the ring and it's
all called off. And that's okay, but that's not
the way it was back then. A pledge to be married was just like marriage,
except you didn't live together. Now we've got it completely turned
around. They lived together without any concept of marriage. But
they had kind of a marriage without even living together. Paul says,
I'm jealous for you, because I promised you to Christ. When
I preached the gospel, and you responded to it, and it says,
oh, you were pledged to Christ. Now they say on a wedding day,
it was common that the friend of the bridegroom, what we would
call the best man, he would go to the home of the bride and
escort her to the groom's house. Now, for the most part, it was
just a just a celebration type thing, just what they did. Though
there were times, I'm sure, that it was actually an important
job to do, particularly if it was a long trip, if it was two
different cities. Because once again, not everybody
in Israel was nice, and the roads were not patrolled by the state
police. And when you went from one town to another, you were
going out through no man's land. And it was his duty to get that
woman from that house over to the man's house, uncorrupted. He was her guardian. And he says, my heart is for
Christ. Now this is the way the minister is to work. He works
with the people, but he works for the sake of Christ. He's
protecting the people, but he's protecting them for Christ's
sake. That they may remain pure. and chased, not distracted or
polluted by other lovers. And he said, that's what I'm
doing. And he said, and I'm jealous of you. Oh, I'm protective of
you, he said. I watch over you with an eagle
eye. And these men have come in Here
I am, I'm trying to get you from your house to the Lord Jesus
Christ, and we're going along and you're doing this, looking
at all the other guys. They look pretty sharp. They
got smooth talk. In some respects, what Paul was
doing is the job of a pastor. Now, I do the work of evangelist
a little bit. I'm trying to find the bride to some degree. But
truthfully, the job of a pastor is less to find the bride than
it is to guard her and protect her, to watch out that she not
be overrun, that she not be, and there are no kind words for
it, but that she not be raped, or that she not be seduced. from
her betrothed husband, the Lord Jesus Christ. And so all that Paul was doing,
and he said he talked about everything he went through and all the work
he did, and how he identified with them, and everything they
went through he was going through, and all their burdens were his
burdens. He talked about the characters.
All of this was for Christ. All of this was to get them to
Christ unpolluted. Charismatic men drew others after
them, and in so doing, draw them away from Christ. Paul loved these people, no doubt.
But his supreme motivation was his love for Christ. No doubt
he was a friend of the bride, but he was more a friend of the
groom. No doubt he had a love for those
people that motivated him to do all he could for them. And
yet, even more than that, his love for the Lord Jesus Christ
motivated him to guard these people. These super apostles
were leading them to false Christ. And Paul had to persuade them
to follow him to the true Christ. He says, follow me as I follow
Christ. These men came in, these super
apostles, and with all their flash and dash said, follow me. And Paul knew that they were
not leading the people to the true Christ. And he had to And
this is why, you know, one of the difficulties of the ministry
and why it has to operate on the principles of grace, with
less talent, with less appeal, with less charisma, so to speak,
he had to convince these people that they should follow him and
his word and his ministry because he was leading them to the Christ
to whom they've been promised. That's why we find there in chapter
12 where he talks about his thorn in the flesh. And whatever it
was, you know, it made him feel as though he was not as good
a minister as he might otherwise be, and also was evidently offensive
to others. And he says in verse 8 of chapter
12, three times, I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from
me. I can hear him, Lord, the job's hard enough. It's tough
enough with everything going my way. These people will wander. These people will be flirtatious. These people will have a roving
eye. And it's difficult enough for me to get them to follow
me to you. And here you've made me even
less appealing. And what's the Lord's answer?
He said to me, My grace is sufficient for you. For my power is made
perfect in weakness. Don't worry, Paul. They don't
need to be following your natural self anyway. They don't need
to be following you because you're head and shoulders above the
other guys. They don't need to be following you because your
speech is polished, because your manner of laying out a sermon
is impressive. They need to follow you and all
my sheep will follow you to me because my grace is sufficient
to get the job done. This ministry is a thing of grace.
I learned that more and more all along. And every time I say
this ministry, I now see that it's by grace. But ask me again
six more months, I'm going to see it even more. But in order for Paul to gain
the attention of these people, he had to do some boasting. Oh,
he hated to do it. He just used to talk like a fool.
He said, I'm about to tell you about what I can do. And he said,
isn't it ridiculous that I got to do that? I just feel so wrong
bragging on myself. He said, but you forced me to
it. You've been following these guys. I wrote to you and you
said, but why? You haven't heard so and so yet.
He said, well, now what does so and so say he can do? I'm
more. Do these fellows, he said, do
they come in boasting that they're Jews? He said, so am I. Are they
boasting you they work miracles? I do more than they do. Do they
boast to you of all that they've suffered for the cross of Christ?
I've suffered more. Why? I've been beaten five times
by the Jews, given the forty stripes minus one. Five times. Three times I've been beaten
with rods. I've been thrown to beasts. They said I spent a day
and a night in the deep. You know, I talked about going
overboard this morning. You go overboard off one of those
cruise ships, they're probably not going to find you. Well,
he went overboard. I don't think it was a cruise ship, but he went overboard. It was a shipwreck, and there
he was. Three times he was shipwrecked, and one time he spent a day and
a night out there in the ocean for the cause of Christ. Nobody
could top Paul. If you just want to compare men
faithful to the gospel of Christ, nobody could top Paul. But boy,
he hated talking about himself that way. But he did. He did it for their
sake. He said, I'll be a fool for your sake. If that's what
it takes to get your eyes off of these men for a moment so
I can talk to you, okay. Then he gets to this scripture
here that we read a few minutes ago. Examine yourselves. Examine yourselves. Why did he
say that? Well, it refers back to verse
3. Now we're in chapter 13. We're back in chapter 13. And
in verse 5, he says, examine yourselves. Why? Go back to verse
3. It says, since you are demanding
proof that Christ is speaking through me. He says, OK. You're demanding me to give proof
that I'm really an apostle and that Christ speaks through me. I'll tell you what you do. You
examine yourselves. See if you're of the faith. And the reason he gave them this
examination, he says, are you of the faith? By whose ministry
did that come to be? See, all of this is eventually
leading back to Christ. Here's Paul's argument, if I
can sum it up. He says, you won't follow me
to Christ, you want to follow one of these fancy guys, You
find it hard to follow me to Christ because you don't have
proof that Christ speaks through me. Okay, here's your proof. Do you believe the gospel? Who
is it that told you the gospel? Under whose ministry did God
open your hearts and give you the light and understanding?
You want proof God speaks through me? He spoke to you. That's his
argument. Now this passage has often been
used as a whip by some to make people start this morbid self-examination,
as though we have to stand in doubt, have to be constantly
going around standing in doubt as to whether or not we belong
to God. That's not what Paul is telling
him to do. He already knew the answer. In fact, look back here at chapter
3. Paul gave them this test, and
it was a foolproof test. He's trying to defend himself
in order that establishing his apostolic ministry with them,
they would be more inclined to follow his word. And so he wasn't
going to set up a test for them that he didn't know the outcome.
He knew they were believers. And he goes back here in 2 Corinthians
chapter 3, notice what he says to her. Are we beginning to commend
ourselves again? Do we have to come here and prove
ourselves all over to you? Or do we need, like some people,
letters of recommendation to you or from you? Now, quite often
when you go from job to job, you get a letter of recommendation. Take to the next person from
whom you want a job and say, well, here's what my last boss
had to say about me. He said, do we need letters of recommendation
for you to bring to you? He says, you
yourselves are our letter written on our hearts, known and read
by everybody. You know, somewhere, and I'm
not sure just where I have it stored right now, but somewhere
I've got an ordination certificate. And it says that I was ordained
to the gospel ministry on such and such a date at Grace Church
at Franklin on Arno Road in Franklin, Tennessee, to which several preachers
that were there on that night signed their name. Now, I keep that piece of paper
for two reasons. First of all, I'm kind of sentimental.
I mean, I got my high school diploma and my college degree,
and I just keep certificates. They aren't on the wall, but
I got them in a box somewhere. Secondly, that's a legal standing. For instance, I'm going to do
a wedding in Florida come March, and I'm allowed to do that wedding
in Florida because I got documents that say I'm an ordained minister
of the gospel. Therefore, I can solemnize a
wedding in Florida. But you, you sitting here this
evening, you are my ordination certificate. You are my document,
written not on a piece of paper, not impressed with the seal of
a notary public. You who hear the word and believe
the word and are grown by the word through the ministry that
I have here week by week, You are the testimony that God has
laid his hand on me to preach. And I need nothing else. I remember
Henry used to say this about being called to the preaching
ministry. He says, if God has called a
man to preach, he will give that man something
to say and somebody to listen to it. Somebody will listen and believe
what he says. And Paul of old said, I don't
need papers. I don't need letters of recommendation. I don't need actually hands laid
on me in front of you all. You know, Charles Spurgeon never
had an official ordination to the ministry. And his They asked him, you know,
well, don't you want to be ordained? He said, they're empty hands
on my empty head. It isn't going to make anything
any better than it already is. The ordination of a minister
of God is the people who believe the gospel through his preaching.
And so Paul says, you want proof that God speaks through me? Examine
yourselves. Just look among you. Let each
one look at himself to see whether you are in the faith. Now, this examination. It would
be no use having this examination. After all, He calls on us to
examine. He calls on us to be the judge. As we examine ourselves
in this, He doesn't say, submit yourself to the examination of
the elders. He says, examine yourself. Test yourself. Now, what does that tell me?
I mean, there's a lot of things it could tell me, but here's
one thing that pops in my mind right now, right away. He would not call on us to examine
ourselves if we were not qualified to come up with a proper verdict. Do you believe? Well, I don't
know. What do you mean you don't know? You don't know if you believe
God? Do you know where that comes from?
And I know we've all said that. Even some of the greatest I almost
hate, you know, that's just the greatest believers. What am I
talking about, the greatest believers? Do you know what I mean? The
most prominent lights of the past have talked about their
doubts and their fears and their confusion over these things.
But let's face it, when you get right down to it and think about
it, you know whether or not you believe God. You know whether
or not you believe this gospel. You know whether or not you trust
Christ. I talked, you know, that illustration
I used this morning. about those disciples being in
the boat with Christ. And that was a picture of faith,
being in the same boat with Christ. And I tell you, you know what
boat you're in. And Paul says, examine yourself.
Now, he didn't say examine yourself to see if you're better than
your neighbors, or examine yourself to see if you've got all your
I's dotted and all your T's crossed in orthodox doctrine. He didn't
say examine yourself to make sure that you're doing everything
the church told you to do. He's saying examine yourself
to see whether you be in the faith, whether you be the people
of faith, the people who come to God through faith. Are you
among those who have believed that Jesus Christ is God manifest
in the flesh? Are you among those who believe
that He lived perfectly and He died as a substitute for God's
people? Have you called upon His name
for salvation, confessing your sins? Have you publicly declared your
faith in Him? Are you in the faith? Isn't that easy? John Newton said, "'Tis a point
I long to know, and oft it gives me anxious thought. Do I love
the Lord or no? Am I His or am I not?" And we
do have those struggles. But you read the rest of that
hymn and he says, how can it be that I feel like this? Could
a child of God be that way and all this? But he comes to the
end of it and he says, but I must confess, I do love you. Do I believe or do I not? Sometimes
I feel like I don't and yet you press me on the point. Yes, I
do believe God. I do believe the Lord Jesus Christ. My hope is built on nothing less
and nothing more, mind you, than Jesus' blood and righteousness.
That's all I've got. Take away everything else. And
I've still got that and I've still got hope. Take away the
blood and righteousness of Christ. I've got nothing. Examine yourselves to see if
you be of the faith. Test yourselves. Do you not realize
that Christ Jesus is in you? Unless, of course, you fail the
test. I like that. It's essentially the same Greek
word where he says test yourself and then talks about failing
the test. The same Greek word, except on the second occasion,
they put the A in front of it, which is like in our language,
you put the UN in front of it, the UN, the not. And the word
also, it's documents. My understanding is we get our
word document from it. And he says, document yourselves.
In our age of illegal immigration, what do they call them? Undocumented
aliens. They don't have their documents.
You know, do you belong here? Well, you got the documents?
Show me your green card or whatever it is they call that now. Or
your citizenship papers or whatever. You got the documents? And he
says, don't you realize that Christ Jesus is in you? Unless,
of course, you ain't got the documents. And what's the documents? Faith. That's the document. The only document there is for
the believer. There are people, like I said,
that would say, well, I want to see the documents of your morality.
I want to see the documents of you overcoming your sins. And
I want to see the documents of you being faithful. Well, I'm
sorry I ain't got those documents, but I got this one. I believe
Christ. I'm in the faith. I'm not an undocumented alien. I'm a citizen of the kingdom
of God. And then notice he says this,
and remember this whole thing, all that he's saying here is
to wean them from their attraction to these super-apostles who are
building themselves up as such big shots. Examine yourself to
see if you'll be of the faith. Test yourselves with the implied
thing as well. How did you get that way? Who
was it preached when you became that way? It was me, wasn't it? That's what he's saying. He never
says the word, but that's the implication. Then he makes this
statement. Don't you realize that Christ
Jesus is in you? Unless, of course, you ain't
got the documents. Now, what's his point there? These big shots. are trying to tell you that you
need them, that you can't get along without
them. Christ is in you. You know, it's hard to give the
proper, or to try to tell out the proper place of faithful
ministers. How important are they? Well,
they're very important, and yet, Not at all. They are a means that God uses
to build His church up. He talks about here in verse
10, His authority given to Him to build God's people up, not
to tear them down. But when it comes right down
to it, the man himself is not necessary. Everybody in
Christ has Christ in them. And everyone with Christ in them
knows the truth and is guided and directed by Him. Again, I
don't want to treat the ministry such as I've been given to do.
I don't want to make it like it's worthless and needless.
It's the way God has set things up. But I'll just put it this
way. If I drop dead tonight, you'll
be just fine. Is that a way to put it? If I drop dead, you'll be just
fine. Christ is in you. Come to think of it, if I drop
dead tonight, I'll be just fine too. It's not me you need, it's Christ. And I am good for you only in
this capacity, to direct your thoughts and hearts to Jesus
Christ. Nothing that I can do from my
natural abilities will help you in that regard. The only thing
that will help you is this. if indeed Christ speaks to you
by me. And if Christ speaks to you by
me, Christ in you will respond to that word. And if he closes my mouth at
the end of this day, Christ will still be in you. And another
man, with the grace of Christ upon him, can occupy this pulpit. and do as good a job. Paul says don't be mesmerized
by the big shots. They're nothing. I'm nothing. He says really. Comes right down
to it. Paul's nothing. Christ is everything. Examine
yourselves. Do you believe? Well then Christ
is in you. And if Christ be in you, Pursue Him with all your
heart, and you will know who it is that's telling you truthfully
about your Beloved. You'll know when it is that the
man that's speaking is speaking the truth. And you won't be so
easily mesmerized and fascinated and distracted by these big shots. God's sheep don't wander. when
their eyes are full of the shepherd. They just don't. And sheep don't. You know, sheep, when they can
see the shepherd, as long as they're looking at him, they're fine. It's when
they get distracted. Well, I don't have a neat conclusion.
I don't have a way to wrap it all up, so I'll just quit. Examine yourselves. You're the
faith. You believe, don't you? Aren't you glad Christ is here?
Follow Him. Lord Jesus, bless your word as
only you are able to do it. Lord, we thank you for faithful
ministers. And we thank you for them because we know that it's
you that made them faithful. And when they speak the word
of grace to us, it's not them speaking, it's you. And we hear
your voice. And you within us responds to
that voice. And enlarges our heart and grows
our spirits. O Lord Jesus, make yourself known
as that good shepherd of the sheep who laid down his life
for the sheep. Lord, make yourself very visible
to us so that we won't wander. In Christ's name we pray. Amen. Okay, you are dismissed.