The time after he had finished
writing the book of 1 Corinthians, the Apostle Paul sent Timothy
to the church at Corinth as his friend and representative. And
he was very anxious to hear the report that Timothy would bring
back concerning that church. It wasn't a good report. Things
were in bad shape. told Paul of the opposition to
him that was stirring within the congregation, false teachers,
false brethren opposing the gospel of God's grace and the disruptions
that were being caused. And after that, Paul made a visit
to the church at Corinth. He speaks of it in chapter 2,
chapter 12, and chapter 13 of 2 And this visit wasn't good. It was a painful thing. Things got ugly. There was open
opposition to Paul and those who spoke horribly evil things
about him and spoke them even to his face. The other folks
in the congregation just idly sat by and said nothing to defend
Paul. that man by whom they had learned
the gospel, or the gospel of his grace that Paul preached. And so Paul sends another letter
to them after he returned to Ephesus, and sent Titus to the
church. And he was anxious, so anxious
to hear from Titus, to hear how they responded to his painful,
sharp, sharp letter, and it was a sharp one. We have no record
of it other than just the references made to it in this book of 2
Corinthians, but it was a sharp letter. He didn't hold back his
punches. They needed sharp reproof, and
he gave it. But he was so anxious to hear
the report that he went first to Troas to meet Titus and didn't
find him there, we're told in chapter 2, verse And then finally
went to Macedonia and met him at Macedonia. And he was very,
very relieved to find that there were signs of hope in the congregation
for which he feared so much. Folks by and large had repented
of the evil among them. And so he writes this epistle
of 2 Corinthians from Macedonia and sends it by Titus to the
church at Corinth. Before we look at these 13 chapters,
let's look at that which is the key verse in the book, 2 Corinthians
5, verse 21. That which is central in the
book of 2 Corinthians is the sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ
as our great We cannot understand this book until we understand
the message of 2 Corinthians 5. Indeed, we cannot understand
the book of God. until we understand the message
of substitution presented to us here. For he hath made him
to be sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the
righteousness of God in him. Oh, how I pray you haven't gotten
tired of hearing about that. he, God the Father, the holy,
just, and true God, hath by one mighty deed, at one time in the
past, made, made by his own work, by a work that only he could
do, by divine imputation, him, the Lord Jesus Christ, his darling
son who knew no sin. He is the only man who ever walked
on this earth who never knew what sin was by experience, not
his own. His heart was never cold with
malice. It was never hot with envy. He knew no sin, no unbelief,
no resentment to the will and purpose of God, no sin. And he's the only man who ever
walked on the earth who knew what sin really is. You and I
don't really have any idea. We talk about it. We taste its
bitterness. Thank God we do. But we have
no idea how God Almighty looks upon the evil that is in us by
nature and done by us in all things. He did. And then He was made to be sin. Our sins were imputed to Him.
made to be his legally, so that he and he alone became responsible
under God's holy law for our sins. But it's more than that. And I'm always so reluctant when
I start to try to talk about these things that are better
meditated on than talked about. The Son of God was made to be
an awful, horrid mass of iniquity. I am convinced Martin Luther
was exactly right when he said he was made to be the greatest
sinner ever upon the earth. For the Lord God gathered up
all our sin, all the sin of all his people, and made it to be
his. and Gethsemane, his holy soul,
quaked in anticipation of him. And he was made saint. Now, here's the result. That
we might be made. Now, that word might does not
mean that we might possibly be made. That word, might, means
that we might now be made. There was no other way we could
be made righteous but by him being made sin. And when he was
made to be sin for us, he suffered all the horrid wrath of God's
holy law and justice on our behalf, to the full satisfaction of justice. We are made the righteousness
of God in him. Hear me one more time. The only
way sinners can ever become righteous is by something done to them
and for them, not something done by them. Our Lord Jesus Christ
did not become sin, was not made to be sin, did not become responsible
for sin, was not chargeable for sin because of anything evil
in him or anything evil done by him. He was made to be sin
by a work of God Almighty transferring our sins to him, making him to
be sin. And sinners are made righteous.
not by their will, not by their works, not by their decision,
not by their religion, not even by their faith, but rather by
divine imputation by God Almighty. giving us the righteousness of
Christ, and bringing us into the enjoyment of that by his
free grace, granting us life and faith in Christ. Now, that's
the central matter. Many write about this epistle
and say this is Paul's letter of defense of himself. Well,
2 Corinthians clearly is the most personal and the most emotional
of all Paul's letters. These 13 chapters are filled
with passion. They contain more personal information
about Paul's life, his ministry, and his sufferings in the cause
of Christ than all the rest of the things he wrote combined.
But it is a great mistake to imagine that Paul wrote this
epistle merely to defend himself or to give an account of what
he had done and what he had suffered more than other folks had done
and suffered. Paul wasn't such a man as that. He had far too
much concern for the glory of God and the gospel of God, for
the kingdom of God, for the people of God, for the souls of men,
than to spend his time in self-defense. In his defense of himself and
his ministry in this book, Paul is not giving a personal defense.
Rather, that which he is defending is the gospel he proclaimed as
the messenger of God Almighty. Personal defense is always wrong. Always wrong. It's always wrong. We're quick to do it, but it's
always wrong. But times come when those who speak for God
defend the truth of God by defending themselves as the messengers
of God. And when that's the case, it
is as it is here with Paul. He's speaking for the glory of
Christ. Jesus Christ and him crucified
is Paul's theme. That's his aim all the way through
this book. As we look at these 13 chapters,
you're going to see that every motive to obedience, every inspiration
to obedience, every direction that Paul gives in this epistle,
everything he deals with, every rebuke that comes up, everything
is given in connection with Jesus Christ and him crucified. You
see, the believer's life is a life ruled and motivated, inspired
by the grace of God and the crucified Christ. And I'm guilty, I'm guilty. When
I say we, I'm not talking about other preachers, I'm talking
about me. We tend, when we see folks being
a little lax A little indifferent to fall back on the law. We tend
to want to threaten. We wouldn't dare use terms like
that. Oh, I'd never do that. Well,
if you do that, you just can't be saved. That's called falling
back on the law. I don't see how anybody who's
a believer can do that. That's falling back on the law.
Believers are not motivated by law, only religious law spokes.
Believers are not inspired by threat or by promise. Rather,
they are inspired by gratitude and love and faith because of
what God has done for us and is doing for us in Christ. So
everything in this book speaks of God's grace and mercy and
love for us in our all-glorious Savior. Let me show you. Start
in chapter 1, verse 2. Paul speaks here of grace and
peace. He speaks of grace and peace
coming to men from God our Father. And he tells us that it is from
the Lord Jesus Christ. If you get grace, you get it
through Christ the Mediator. If you get peace, you get it
through Christ the Mediator. It can't be had anywhere else.
When he speaks of the blessedness of God our Father in verses 3,
4 and 5, He says that our God is the Father of mercies, the
God of all comfort, who comforteth us in all our tribulations. What
great titles for God! Who is God? He's the Father of
mercies. Who is he? He's the God of all
comfort, and he comforts us in all our tribulations. All mercy
comes from our Heavenly Father, and all of it is ours. All comfort
comes from our Heavenly Father, and he freely bestows it upon
us all the time, so that in all of our difficulties, in all of
our trials, in all of our heartaches, he sustains and comforts us.
So a preacher, I don't feel his comfort. Hang on, you will. You
will. I don't sense his mercy. If you're
his, hang on, he may take you through deep waters and fiery
trials. And he may cause you to pass
through dark, dark, dark, lonesome valleys. But I promise you, his
reason is to show you his mercy, and to comfort and sustain and
strengthen your heart by his grace. When Paul speaks of the
blessedness of God then, he gets down to verses 8, 9, and 10,
and he tells us that this God, just as surely as he raised up
from the dead our Lord Jesus Christ, will also deliver us
from all our woes, from all our troubles, by his almighty grace. And he does all of this abundantly
through the sufferings of Christ. I recall the last time I saw
my dear friend, Brother Charlie Payne. He was in the hospital
up in Ashton, and I went to see him. I didn't realize how serious
The situation was he wasn't a whiner, he didn't want anybody making
open. I started to leave and I said,
well, we're praying for you. He said, well, I'll come out
of here. either well or almost well. I'm going to be all right. I'm
going to be all right. Our God will deliver you out
of all your woes in this world. No question about that. He seldom
does things the way we want right now. He seldom does things the
way we think they ought to be done, but deliverance is sure.
What a blessed, blessed word this is. When Paul gets down
to verse 10, chapter 1, he talks about his own experiences. He
tells us how that God had graciously delivered him from his troubles.
He tells us that there was a time when he had the sentence of death
in himself, and it was so heavy upon him that he was troubled
so much that he despaired even of life. And while he was brought
through these troubles, despairing even of life, then he learned
to trust not in himself, but unto God which raised the dead." How can I express what I want
to say here? It is my horrible, proud, constant
immediate response to everything. I can handle that. I'll take the bull by the horns
and here we go. And I take the bull by the horns
and here we go. And I get myself in a mess all
the time. And God Almighty fixes it, so
that you learn day after day after day, experience after experience
after experience, don't trust yourself. Not your wisdom, not
your strength, not your spiritual perception, not your faith, but
God who raises the dead. And in this 10th verse describing
his physical deliverances, he gives us a magnificent picture
of God's grace and salvation as we experience it in Christ.
Look at it. "...who delivered us from so great a death, and
doth deliver, in whom we trust that he will yet deliver us."
You see, salvation is not something in the past. We tend to look
at it that way, and it's a mistake. Salvation, as I've told you so
many times, takes in everything involved in bringing a sinner
from the dung heap of fallen humanity at the very gaping gates
of hell, rushing headlong to destruction, into the glorious
liberty of the sons of God. And it's a past thing. There's
a sense in which we were saved in eternity in God's purpose.
We were saved back yonder at Calvary when Christ cried, It's
finished! It was finished. We were redeemed, justified,
sanctified in Christ Jesus the Lord when he died at Calvary.
And then there came a time in the appointed time of God's mercy
and grace, a time called the time of love, when he came to
us by his Spirit. And you have to made alive, who were dead in
trespasses and in sins. So in that sense, our salvation
passed. But salvation is present. We are being saved in God's daily
providence. Oh, my Father, teach me this.
Everything he does, he does saving me. by his daily, constant, unfailing
grace, he is saving us. We are kept by the power of God
through faith. Kept by God. Someone said, those who are kept
by God are well kept and always kept. Oh, kept by the power of
God. And then there is a sense in
which our salvation is yet future. What about tomorrow? He's going to keep me then too.
In whom I trust he will also yet deliver us. God is faithful
by whom you are called. He who loved us from the beginning
loves us to the end. And in the end, he will raise
us up in the perfection of resurrection glory, in exact conformity to
Christ Jesus the Lord. Oh, what a prospect! Now is our
salvation nearer than when we believed. Then in verses 20,
21 and 22, Paul talks to us about the promises of God. He speaks
about his own veracity. folks at Charlotte had charged Paul with not being quite
honest. They said, You can't trust him. And so Paul speaks
of his veracity, but he doesn't focus our attention on his veracity.
He focuses our attention on the veracity and truthfulness and
faithfulness of God. He tells us that all the promises
of God in Christ Jesus are yea and amen. Do you see that? All
the promises of God in Christ are yea, and in Him, amen, unto
the glory of God by us. And then in verse 21 and 22,
he lists four great works of God, these four great things
that this God who cannot lie promised in Christ before the
world began. He says He established us in Christ. He built us, established
us, fixed us in Christ. He anointed us with his Spirit. They equate the Holy Spirit anointing
with somebody being able to get you to flap your tongue long
enough that you start to think you're talking in tongues that
nobody can understand, and maybe walking on the floor and rolling
your eyes back in your head, being slain in the Spirit. No,
those who are born of God, John tells us in 1 John 2, have the
unction of the Holy One. You have the anointing of God
on you, the blessing of God on you. Otherwise, you wouldn't
believe on Christ. We believe by the Spirit who
gives us faith. And then he says that we are
sealed by the Spirit, sealed in his grace. All the grace of
God is sealed to us, and we are sealed in the grace of God. And
then fourthly, he says, now this Spirit of God in him, this Spirit
bearing witness with your spirit that you are the sons of God.
Now, I hear people say, well, his spirit bears witness with
my spirit. No, no, no, no. God's spirit bears witness with
my spirit, not my spirit and yours bearing witness with one
another. God's spirit bears witness within me, giving me faith in
Christ, and this faith in Christ from the Spirit of God within
me is the earnest, the damn payment, the pledge of everlasting glory. Then in chapter 2, Paul, down
in the latter part of the chapter, verses 14, 15 and 16, speaks of the certain constant
acceptance of every faithful gospel preacher and the message
he proclaims before God. Now watch this, verse 14. Now thanks be unto God, which
always causeth us to triumph in Christ. and maketh manifest
the savour of his knowledge by us in every place. For we are
unto God, we who proclaim the gospel of God's free grace, we
who are described in chapter 5 as God's ambassadors, we are
unto God a sweet savour of Christ. God spells the message. He says,
A sweet saver of Christ, and watch this, in them that are
saved, you who have heard the gospel
of God's grace and been born again by the power of his Spirit
through the word preached. God accepts the message preached
and the messenger just as he does you, but that's not all. Some believe, and some believe
not. That doesn't mean that the preacher
is unacceptable, or the message is unacceptable to God. Oh, no.
Oh, no. Sometimes God sends his servants
to gather his wheat into his garner, and at the same time
to gather the tares and bundles for the burning. Either way,
God's work is being done by his Word. Now, watch this. To the
one we are the saver of death unto death, and to the other
the saver of life unto life. How can I express this? I'm often asked, if it gets easier,
preaching. I promise you if God will give
me grace and wisdom to do it, if it ever gets to be a light
or trivial thing for me to stand here and speak to you from this
Word, I won't do it. I won't do it. Too heavy a burden? If God speaks
by me, something's happening to either for your everlasting good
or your everlasting ruin. Now in the light of that, Paul
says, who is sufficient for these things? Not me. Not me. Now look at chapter 3, verse
4, and watch his answer to that question. Who then is sufficient
for these things? Who is sufficient to stand before me and speak
in God's stead, knowing that what they had to say is of eternal
consequence. And such trust have we through
Christ to God. God has put this in our hands
as a trust. Not that we are sufficient of
ourselves to think anything of ourselves, but our sufficiency
is of God. In the middle of chapter 3, Paul
speaks about the administration of death, the law. People talk
about living by the law. Paul calls it administration
of death. You can't live by administration of death. And he talks about
the Jews as they read Moses and the law They read them with a
veil over their face, blindfolded, blindfolded, so that they can't
see what's written in the law. They read it every day in the
synagogues, he said. They read it every day, but they can't
see. They can't see because they've
got a veil over their eyes. But that's not written for the
Jews in his day only. You see, the letter of God's
Word is killing. It's killing. The Spirit gives
life. And if all you hear is the letter
of the word, it's death. Ah, but if God's pleased to give
you his word in the power of his Spirit, it's life. And the
blindfold is taken off as soon as you believe on the Son of
God. You read the word, and you can't see. What did our Lord
tell Nicodemus? Except men be born again, He
cannot see the kingdom of God. He can't see it. No matter how
bright the light is, he can't see it. No matter how well stated
the doctrine is, he can't see it. He can't see it until he
is born again. But when he is born of God's
Spirit, the blindfold, the veil is taken away in Christ Jesus,
and now he sees. Do you remember when you couldn't
see? You remember when you tried your best to believe and you
couldn't believe? You remember what it's like to try to repent
and not be able to find any repentance? You remember what it's like to
try your best to come to God and not be able to come to Him?
You remember what it's like to try to pray and not be able to
pray? That's what it's talking about. Then all of a sudden, the Lord
God calls you to seek Christ. And now you can pray, and now
you can believe, and now you can repent, and now you've come
to Him. The blindfold is taken away in Christ. Then in verse
17 of chapter 3, he says, now, the Lord is that Spirit. He is
that Spirit. And where the Spirit of the Lord
is, there's liberty, not bondage. And we all with open face, beholding
as in a glass the glory of the Lord. What's that talking about
here? If you take and pick up a glass
bottle, a thick piece of glass, and look through it, do you reckon
you could get a real good picture of what the fellow looks like,
just looking at me through the end of a bottle? That's just
what he's talking about. We behold the glory of the Lord
through a thick glass, but oh, our vision's so blurred. We behold
the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, but we behold
his face through a glass, dark red. But we are beholding him,
changed into his image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit
of the Lord. Then in chapter 4, Paul looked
upon the minister God had given him as a heavenly treasure trusted
to his care, a treasure to which he was determined to be faithful.
And he declares that the message he preached, the message we must
preach, the glorious gospel of Christ, that by which God gives
light to chosen sinners, that by which God gives grace to sinners
in the time of his love, is to be proclaimed all. Look at verse
6. No, no, let's start at verse 3. He says, If our gospel be
hid, it's not because we hid it. I remember years ago, I think
I've told you this, an older preacher told me one time, I
hadn't been preaching very long, he said, as a matter of fact,
I was just a kid, he said, Brother Dahlin's son, you can preach
these things in such a way that folks won't know what you're
talking about. I said to him, what's the point in preaching?
What's the point in preaching? God's servants don't hide the
truth, they proclaim it. They don't preach in such a way
as to possibly be misunderstood. If our gospel be hid, it's hid
to them that are lost, in whom the God of this world, Satan,
hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light
of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should
shine unto them. For we preach not ourselves. Now let me give
you several ways to read that, and all of them are right. We
preach not for ourselves. We preach not from ourselves.
We preach not about ourselves. But Christ Jesus, the Lord. We
preach for Christ. We preach from Christ. And we
preach about Christ, the Lord. And ourselves, your servants,
for Jesus' sake. gospel preachers are men who
serve your souls. They are not servants to you. Not God's servants. No, sir.
No, sir. Find me one in this book, if
there ever was. You find me one preacher or prophet in this book
who ever was subservient to men. Oh, no, no, But serve you, serve
you, as a husband serves his children, as a husband serves
his family, servants, your servants, for Christ's sake. For God, who
commanded the light to shine out of darkness, has shined in
our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory
of God in the face of Jesus Christ. Now watch this. The rest of it
ought to get too high and mighty. But we have this treasure, this
treasure. Shelby and I have, on a few occasions,
had dear friends who loved us and trusted us ask, be all right
if we put you in our will to raise our children if something
happens to us? All right. What could be more honoring?
My soul. Man takes that which is the treasure
of his heart and says, I want to trust it to you. Listen to
me. God has put the treasure of his
heart, the gospel of his glory, in earthen vessels, broken clay pots, worthless and
insignificant. Why does he do that? Well, he
tells us why he does that. That the excellency of the power
may be of God and not of us. So if anything good comes from
it, God did it, Dr. Nassau. And then Paul speaks
about troubles. The rest of that fourth chapter
he talks about his troubles. You think you've got troubles.
Whenever I start to whine too much, Well, I felt always lying
too much, not to you, but inside. And when it starts getting the
best of me, I like to turn to 2 Corinthians 4 and 2 Corinthians
11 and read about a fellow who had trouble. His troubles were
incessant, just constant heartache and pain. persecution, slander, bitterness
from men in the church and out of the church. Everywhere he
went, trouble. And Paul says with regard to
these troubles, our light afflictions, which are but for a moment, our
featherweight momentary afflictions. Watch this. This is considerably
heavier than a feather. How much trouble do you reckon
that's going to bother me? What do you reckon that's going
to... Oh, I can't carry that. I can't do it. I like afflictions. How are you
going to carry it? At low? Just a moment. Just for a moment. How could
he say? because he lived in the constant,
immediate anticipation of heavenly glory. And he said, these things
are just going to make heaven a little better. makes it more
glorious than it otherwise would have been. Our light afflictions,
which are but for a moment, work for us a far more exceeding and
eternal way to glory. We're not looking to things that
are seen. That's not the object of our confidence and hope, but
of the things which are not seen. Everything you can see is temporal. Things that are not seen, those
are eternal. Set your heart only of heavenly
glory. For we know that when this earthly
house is just tabernacled and dissolved, we have a building
of God, and house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. Blessed is that man or woman
who learns to live constantly in the immediate prospect of
eternity. God, teach me that. It would
lighten our load, brighten our days, drive away our gloom, and
cheer our hearts to live every day in the immediate prospect
of not living another in this world. In the immediate prospect of
heavenly glory. Then he gets into chapter 5,
and after describing the judgment seat of Christ and the terror
of the Lord, he says, Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord,
we persuade men. And he starts to persuade. How does he persuade men? to
come to Christ. Tell a tear-jerking tale? Take them to see the passion
and see them beat up a man? No. You can persuade them to
be religious. You won't persuade them to believe
God. Scare them by that. Just talk about hell. Oh, hell,
fire, and damnation. No. Won't do it. The wrath of
God works not repentance. Scripture's plain about that.
No, no, it won't do it. The goodness of God leads me
into repentance. How does Paul persuade sinners
to come to Christ? When I was in school, they tried to teach
us how to persuade fellows, but they never did get it. Never
did get it. You don't persuade fellows by tricking them, lying
to them, deceiving them, practicing psychology on them. but by telling
them of redemption finished in Jesus Christ the Lord. Oh, what would you give to go
home tonight with a clean slate before God
and in your conscience with the assurance that you could never
defile it again? That's how Paul persuades men,
if any man be in Christ, he's a new creature. Old things are
passed away. God put away all your sins. Behold,
all things are become new. God made you entirely new before
him in his Son. How can you say that God takes
the sinner and makes him totally new, and never remembers his
sin, and looks not on the sinner, and everything's always new in
Christ Jesus? Because it doesn't depend on
you. Look at verse 18. All things are of God. God did
this. God was in Christ reconciling
the world to himself. Now we pray you in Christ's stead,
be you reconciled to God. Then in the 7th chapter, starting
with chapter 6 and verse 14, you have a passage that's terribly
misused, terribly misinterpreted. Folks use this to browbeat people
about, you know, you don't want to be involved in this thing
or that thing, you don't have any worldly associations, you
want to withdraw from the world so you can be really, really
good. Be smart. Choose for your companions
and your friends people who worship your God. That's just smart. To do otherwise is dull. It's
just dull. You say, well, I want to influence
them for good. You ain't going to influence them for good walking
with them. It ain't going to happen. But it is not taught
here or elsewhere in Scripture that we should live as isolationists.
What is taught here, when Paul urges us, by the Spirit of God,
to come out from among them and be separate, he's calling for
us to make a clean, total break, and to continually make a clean,
total break from all false religion, from Babylonian freewill works
religion. And God promises, you come out,
and I'll be a father to you, and you'll be my sons and And
then in chapter 7 verse 1, Paul's been talking to us as God's saint,
sanctified, holy ones. He tells us, as we have these
promises, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh
and the spirit. He's not talking about cleansing
yourself from physical filth of the flesh. not even from the
moral filth of the flesh and spirit, you're not going to do
that. It ain't going to happen. Thank God he's cleansed us, but
it's not going to happen if you cleanse yourself. He's talking
about cleansing yourself from all the perversity of religion
in this world. Perfecting holiness in the fear
of God. That is bringing to completion.
God's separating us unto himself, and our separating ourselves
unto our God. So this thing that we profess
to believe is brought to completion. As we relentlessly separate ourselves
from the filth of Babylon's religion, we continually perfect, bring
to its end and completion, that separation. Then in chapters
8 and 9, Paul talks about Savvy's here tonight and she
takes care of the books here. And she'll bear for what I'm
telling you. In 24 years, I've never asked her one time, let
me see the books to see what so-and-so's giving. Don't want
to know. Don't want to know. It's not
my business. That's your business and God's.
Don't even want to know. Now come, because in this book,
giving is described as an act of faith and worship and consecration
to God because you love him. Here, we still receive an offering. I have a lot of friends who kind
of object to that. We receive it not because of
custom and tradition, but because giving is an act of faith. an
act of worship, just like singing hymns is, and we give to our
God. But the motive, the motive is
not so we can get something out of it. People, you give and the
Lord will bless you. You don't give, he'll take it
out of your hide. Let's see how Paul inspires it. Look at 2 Corinthians
8, verse 7. Therefore, as you abound in everything,
in faith, in utterance, in knowledge, and in all diligence, and in
your love to us, see that you abound in this grace also. I
speak not by commandment, but by occasion of the forwardness
of others, to prove the sincerity of your love." The proof of my love to that
lady It's the giving of myself to her. The proof of my love
to those grandbabies is the giving of myself to them. That's it. And Paul says, you want to prove
your love to Christ? You sing, oh how I love Jesus? Let's sing.
Now watch this, verse 9. For you know the grace of our
Lord Jesus Christ. how that though he was rich,
yet for your sakes he became poor, that you through his poverty
might be made rich." I said, how should I give? Just like
that. Just like that. And he tells
us to give cheerfully, to give by purpose, to give willingly.
God loves a cheerful giver. And then he concludes his arguments
with regard to giving in chapter 9, verse 15. He says, this is
what I'm saying. As you look toward providing
for missionaries and pastors and one another, thanks be unto
God for his unspeakable gift. In chapter 10 he tells us that
our warfare is spiritual and the weapons of our warfare are
not carnal. We're not here to fight abortion
or we're not here to fight homosexuality, we're not here to fight the bars
or all those things. great, do away with them all,
wish they'd have legislation, do away with all of it. But that's
not our business. Our business is with the souls
of men and the glory of God and the truth of God. And as we preach
the gospel of God's free grace and the power of his spirit,
he pulls down the strongholds. And when men and women believe
God, it's amazing how their lives change. not the righteousness of God
in Christ, but self-righteousness, righteousness you produce by
which you have hope before God. They promote good church decency,
good religious works and religious devotion, Bible reading and Bible
memory and righteousness, so that you will lean on yourself
rather than Christ the Lord. But those men preach another
Jesus, another gospel, and another spirit. For the preaching of
the gospel, the simplicity of Christ, is Christ alone is our
Savior, our wisdom, our righteousness, our sanctification, and our redemption.
Then in chapter 12, verses 1 through 10, Paul was called up to paradise. And he had abundant revelations. He said, things I saw and heard
there, no tongue can describe. But when he got back down to
the earth again, he had a problem. He said, there was given to me,
given, given, a gift of God. Didn't look like it at the time.
Didn't feel like it at the time. It was so aggravating and painful
to him that he prayed three times, the Lord would take it away.
He said, There was given to me a thorn in the flesh, lest I
be exalted above measure by reason of the abundance of revelations
given me. And this messenger of Satan constantly beat me in
the face. Constantly smashed my face. And I cried, God, take him from
me! And the Lord said, no. No. Paul, you don't know what
you're asking for. That's not best for you. I'll tell you what I will give
you. I'll give you what you really want. And he always does. My grace And Paul said, now I see. Now
I see. History is manifestly made perfect
in weakness. So when Satan beats me down,
I'm smashed in the face and I'm compelled to know that I'm nothing
and I can do nothing when I'm weak. I look to Christ and find
all strength in him. And now I'm strong. And I can
do all things through him, who strengthens me. Whatever it is
he calls me to do. And then in chapter 13, Paul
calls for us to examine ourselves. Examine yourselves, he says in
verse 5, whether you be in the faith. Prove your own selves. Not examine one another, examine
yourself, whether you 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? Prove yourselves. How on this earth can I do that? only by bringing your faith to
the word of God. And praying as David did, search
me, O God, and know my heart. Try me, prove me, and know my
thoughts, and see if there be any wicked way in me. That is,
see if I am in the way of the wicked, and lead me. and the way of Alaska. David
cried, O God, say unto my soul, I am thy salvation. And if God Almighty will by his
word and his spirit say to me, I am thy salvation, nobody else's
opinion matters. I wonder Does he make such a
word? Does God give such a word to
poor, helpless, believing sinners? Let's see. He that believeth that Jesus
is the Christ is born of God. God just said to me, Bobby Estes,
I am thy salvation. I believe the Son of God. That means I'm born of God, and
he that hath the Son hath life. That means Christ is mine, and
life is mine, and salvation is mine.