Immanuel Sermon Audio
2 Corinthians (47:66)
All right, grab a Bible, find Second Corinthians. We're on number 47 of 66 and we're just going through week by week looking at one book of the Bible. We've started with Genesis. We're all the way to Second Corinthians and we are really, really on the downhill slide. And one of the cool things after we pass Second Corinthians is that not every book that's left in our study, but most of the books left in our study, we're going to be able to dig a little bit deeper into them just because they're not as long. When you talk about Genesis or Psalms or Isaiah or John or Acts, you just kind of have to fly by and hit the highlights. And so we'll get to do a little bit more digging into the text over the next few months and we should finish up Revelation right when we break for the summer. So we looked at First Corinthians two weeks ago. Last week we had the Watoto Children's Choir, so that means it's been a couple of weeks since we talked about Corinth and Paul and the things going on there. And so this first section on your outline looks exactly the same and we're going to talk about that just by way of review. Because especially when you come to Second Corinthians, if you want to feel the heart of the letter and the things that Paul's trying to communicate, you really have to understand the depth of the relationship between Paul and this church. And you'll see when we get to fill in some of those blanks out, what you can see right there, Second Corinthians itself comes way at the end of this relationship as far as what we know. And so we're just going to back up and let me show you some pictures. First of all, Paul is on a missionary trip when he comes to Corinth for the first time. He leaves Athens that you see right up there and he goes down to Corinth and then he leaves Corinth and his next stop is Ephesus. And you can read about his time in Athens in Acts 17, it really didn't go that well. He had this honor of speaking at a very famous place, but most of the people who listened to him laughed at him. He didn't even have the honor of people getting mad at him or upset because of what he's preaching. They just laughed at him and sort of blew it off as this guy's crazy. He's talking about the resurrection. So in Acts 18, he goes to Corinth and we're not going to read Acts 18, but hold your spot in Second Corinthians and just flip back over there because this is pretty remarkable for Paul's first trip to a city and some of the things that happened in Corinth. Acts 18 1 says he left Athens and he went to Corinth and he found a Jew named Aquila and his wife Priscilla and they were tent-makers and Paul knew how to do that and so they sort of buddied up and they started working together there in Corinth. And verse 4 says he reasoned in the synagogue every Sabbath. So he goes to the Jewish synagogue in Corinth and he's preaching every week. He's preaching about Jesus, preaching about Jesus. Verse 5 says some of his buddies showed up. Silas and Timothy came sort of his reinforcements and he still occupied with the word, trying to prove to them that the Christ was Jesus, he was the Messiah. And then in verse 6, opposition comes up for the first time and they're reviling him. They're mocking him, they're laughing at him. And Paul basically, instead of making a big deal about it, he leaves the synagogue and verse 7 is pretty funny, he goes right next door to the home of a man named Tischius Justice, a worshipper of God, and they basically moved the church from the synagogue into this guy's house and it's right next door. So kind of a tent situation there on the block in Corinth with the synagogue on one end of the block and the church on the other. To make it worse, verse 8 says Christmas, who was the ruler of the synagogue, left the synagogue and joined the church. So Paul convinced him. Lord opened his heart to believe that Jesus was the Messiah and so he moves over. Many other people, verse 8 says, heard Paul, they believed and they were baptized. And when you get to that verse 8 where it says, "Many people heard and believed and were baptized." If you know anything about Paul, you're almost expecting to pack up and leave because that was kind of his MO, go get a group of people together, they become a church, you appoint somebody to be the pastor of that church and then he moves on and he writes some letters or he stays in touch or he sends Paul, Silas or Timothy, one of his co-workers to check on him. And instead of that, verse 9, he has a vision and God says to him, "I want you to keep talking and I want you to stay right here because I still have many people in this city who are my people. They're going to believe the good news." And so Paul stays for about 18 months, verse 11 says. Verse 12 says, "When Galileo was the proconsul of Achaia, the Jews not only bring personal attacks against him, but now they bring legal charges against Paul. And there's this sort of near riot and Galileo, like a good Roman, says, "You Jews are crazy. I don't want anything to do with your disputes about this and that and I'm not going to listen to it." And that makes them mad. And so we don't have all the details, but we know that in verse 17, this angry mob of Jews opposing Paul grabbed Sosthenes, the new ruler of the synagogue, and they beat him up in front of the tribunal. And Galileo just turns a blind eye and doesn't pay attention to it. Verse 18, "Paul stays many days longer and then he takes off with Priscilla and Aquila and he moves on to Ephesus," okay? That's the initial visit in Acts 18, 1 to 18. Now on your outline, the next thing in this relationship is a previous letter. We don't have this letter, but it's really the first letter we know that Paul wrote to the church in Corinth. And the reason we know that this letter exists is that in 1 Corinthians 5, 9, Paul talks about in my previous letter. So our 1 Corinthians refers to a previous letter, so there you go. And then we know the Corinthians wrote Paul a letter. As mentioned in 1 Corinthians 7, 1, they had all these questions. They wanted to know about this, and this, and this, and this, and they wrote Paul this letter. And then Paul responds with 1 Corinthians, we call it his pastoral letter. So there's this back and forth in volleys of letters. And in the pastoral letter, one of the things that Paul starts to talk to them about is the issue of church discipline and a man in the church, and he's sleeping with his mother in law, and everybody knows about it, and everybody's cool with it, and Paul's really upset with them, and apparently whatever he wrote in 1 Corinthians did not really bring about the desired result that he wanted to see, so he took a visit, and we know about that visit from 2 Corinthians 12, 14, and when you piece it all together, here's what we know about this second visit, this painful visit, Paul totally bombed out with the people. It did not go well. Since the time that he had left, a new group of teachers had come in, Paul calls them super apostles, and they were really well-spoken, they were polished, they were nice-looking, they had credentials and degrees and all this sort of stuff, and everybody really thought they were something, and they basically ran Paul into the ground, and so when Paul shows back up to sort of try to set some things in order that have gone wrong, it's just almost like a mutiny, like a revolt against Paul, and so we call it this painful visit. It did not go well. Then Paul writes another letter, the sorrowful letter, we don't have it. We can read about it in 2 Corinthians in several places, but we don't have that letter. That letter brought about the repentance that Paul was seeking from the people, the sorrowful letter, and then the fourth blank there is the thankful letter, which we're going to study tonight, 2 Corinthians, and then we know that he went back for at least one three-month visit to see these folks. Here's a few pictures of Corinth. I think I skipped over a few of these, but this is in the city of Corinth, this is one of the pagan temples, the ruins of one of the pagan temples down in the town, and that hill in the background is part of the city, it's called the Acro Corinth, and it's sort of like if you've ever watched a medieval movie, and they have a castle, and they're sort of this big outer wall, but then there's an inner wall, that if it really gets bad, you retreat to the inner part of the castle or the fortress, and that's what the Acro Corinth was. That was the main heart, the stronghold of the city, and so this is the city looking up to the Acro Corinth. The next picture shows some of the gates, the system of walls and gates leading up the hill, if you're climbing the Acro Corinth, so they had all these defenses there. The next picture I think is on top of the Acro Corinth, and part of the ruins that you see here is the Temple of Aphrodite, and it was an active in Paul's day, but we talked about this a couple of weeks ago, ancient historical sources tell us that at one point in time, not too long before Paul, there was at least a thousand temple prostitutes that worked up in that temple, the Temple of Aphrodite, and you can see out in the background, the harbor there is a main shipping port, there's all sorts of ships coming in and out, sailors, merchants, men who had money, who had time on their hands when they stop in Corinth, and this was their favorite stop up at the top of the hill at the Temple of Aphrodite. The next picture is the City Theater, it doesn't look like much today, but back in Paul's day it could hold 15,000 people, which is pretty remarkable for 2,000 years ago. I think there's a picture of a Roman fountain, this would have been just sort of like, almost like if you've ever been to South America, Central America, every city has like a square in the middle, and there's a church and government buildings and all it sort of laid out the same, this would be kind of like a hallmark of a Roman city, that they have this Roman fountain in the middle of town somewhere, and then the last picture is just a road, shows you what it may have looked like to walk down the street there in Corinth. So here's why I show you these pictures, and here's especially why on this outline I show you, he visited and he wrote a letter and letter and all this different stuff. This was not like Paul stops in with these people, he preaches the gospel, he leaves, and then he doesn't think twice about him. This is Paul spins, what we know of his missionary journeys, his longest stop, 18 months with these people, and he's preaching daily, he's teaching, he's investing in these people, he cares about these people, he's working side by side with Priscilla and Aquila and other people in the church, and they're writing letters back, they're communicating, they're keeping in touch, he's going back for visits and some of the visits don't go so well, like a bad family reunion or something, and then he goes back in the book of Acts and it's a good visit. All of this drama I'm telling you, because when you get to 2 Corinthians, all the way down here at the bottom of what we know of their relationship, there's a lot of water that's gone under the bridge between Paul and the believers in Corinth, and when he writes this letter to them, it's by far his most transparent letter, his most autobiographical letter if you want to say that, and we're going to talk about that in a minute. He talks more about himself more openly than in any of the other letters that he writes, and he writes with emotion for these people and for their church that sometimes you just don't see in some of his other letters, and so this is a lot of Bible scholars will say it's his most personal, it's his most intense, it's his most heartfelt letter of all that he wrote. So the purpose is pretty plain, I didn't put this on your outline, but I'll put it up on the screen, he's just trying to prepare them for his third visit, and you can write down those references if you want to see them, but he writes 2 Corinthians to get the people ready for his third visit to see them. First visit, Acts 18, he goes, he starts the church, he stays a year and a half. Second visit, the painful visit, he goes to rebuke them and they basically turn on Paul and it doesn't go well. Third visit, they've been reconciled through letters, but he's getting ready to go and to see him face to face again. The outline of the book is really, really simple. Verse 7 chapters are to express gratitude, to basically say thank you to those of you who are being loyal to me, and you're not following the quote unquote super apostles in this betrayal of me and my ministry, so he's saying thank you. Second section is he's encouraging generosity, and we're going to look pretty close at chapters 8 and 9 and talk about stewardship, but on this mission trip he's collecting and offering for people in Jerusalem, and he has a lot to say to these people about what he expects of them in participating in this offering. And then lastly, he does kind of end up rebuking the rebellion. Those who were there who went with the super apostles who maybe still have questions about Paul and his ministry, he's kind of putting them in their place at the end. So let's talk autobiographical stuff. Things that we learn about Paul in this letter that we don't necessarily read in any of the other letters that he wrote. I don't know what your picture of Paul is. We talk about Paul and we say he's this great missionary, he's bold, he's intelligent, he wrote all these books, and sometimes just the middle picture you get of him doesn't line up with what you actually read in 2 Corinthians. And so here's the first thing we learn about Paul in 2 Corinthians. He was not a dynamic person. He would not do well pastoring one of today's mega churches. They would say you don't have the presence to stand on the stage. You don't have the people skills to manage the staff. You don't have the temperament to deal with the people. He was just not really a dynamic personality. And take your Bible, we're just going to look at some verses where Paul talks about himself and his relationship with these people. Look at 2 Corinthians 10 starting in verse 1, "I Paul myself entreat you by the meekness and gentleness of Christ. I who am humble when face to face with you, but bold when I am away, I beg of you that when I am present, I may not have to show boldness with such confidence as I count on showing against some who suspect us of walking according to the flesh." And then you can jump down to verse 10, and he sort of explains what he means. These super apostles, they say, "His letters are weighty and strong, but his bodily presence is weak and his speeches of no account." In other words, the super apostles show up in Corinth and they say, "Look, there's no doubt that God can write a mean letter." I mean, he can really write a letter. He is a great author, but to listen to him speak, it just puts me to sleep. He's boring, he's dull, I can't follow him, I can't keep up with what he's trying to talk about. He doesn't inspire you, he doesn't excite you, he's just, he's disappointing to see him. His writing is great, weighty and strong, but his presence is weak in his speeches of no account. Look over in the next chapter, chapter 11, verse 6, he says, "Even if I am unskilled in speaking, I am not so in knowledge, indeed in every way we have made this plain to you in all things." And so basically he says, "Look, I know I'm not the greatest speaker. I'm aware of that. Do you equate that character trait with Paul, the great missionary?" He says, "I'm not the greatest speaker. How many people in church think, 'Well, I can't, I could never be a missionary, I could never teach a Sunday school class, I could never lead a small group Bible study, I'm a terrible speaker. I'm no good at that. God could never use me to do that, that's not my spiritual gift." Paul basically says here, "I know that I'm not a great speaker, and yet how do we remember him? He's a missionary of all time, the greatest church planner of all time." So he's not a dynamic personality. Secondly, he experienced tremendous suffering. Chapter 1, verse 8, "We do not want you to be ignorant brothers of the affliction we experienced in Asia, for we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death, but that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead." So the next time somebody's talking to you about a difficult situation and they say, "Well, you know, at least we know God's not going to give you more than you can handle. You just take your Bible out, this is what you do, you take it out, you open the second Corinthians 1-8, and you put your finger in it and you close it like this, and then you backhand them across the face with your ... BAM! Then you turn it and you open and you say, "Have you lost your mind?" Paul says right here, "God gave them something that was far beyond what they could handle. They were utterly burdened beyond their strength to the point that they despaired of life itself." You say, "Well, you made it through it," right? He says, "Yeah, but look, this is the whole point, not to rely on ourselves, not to say, 'I know I can make it through. God won't give me more than I can handle.'" He says, "No God gave us way more than we can handle, and the point of it was to make us not lean on ourselves but to lean on Him." So he's talking about his suffering. Think of chapter 4, verse 8. We are afflicted in every way but not crushed, perplexed but not driven to despair, persecuted but not forsaken, struck down but not destroyed, always carrying in the body the death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. In my just personal Bible reading today, I'm reading a plan where it takes you through the whole Bible in a year and I'm reading in Acts and is one of the many times, we'll read about them in a minute. It was one of the many times where Paul just gets the tar kicked out of him physically. They just beat the snot out of him and you just read that and you think, "That's amazing to think about." And he says here, "We're carrying around in our body the death of Jesus." This sort of stuff happens to us all the time. Chapter 7, verse 5. When we came into Macedonia, our bodies had no rest. We were afflicted at every turn fighting without in fear within. That's an important verse because it not only says that we had physical suffering in our bodies but we also had spiritual suffering dealing with fear. Paul is admitting that. You think Paul, this great, courageous, bold, fearless guy, he says, "We were terrified. We're facing so much persecution that, yes, we're battling fear." He's admitting this. Back at chapter 11, starting in verse 16, let's jump down for the sake of time. Go to verse 22. You can go back and read starting in verse 16 if you want to to pick up the whole idea but he says, "Are they Hebrew, so am I, are they Israelite, so am I, are they offspring of Abraham, so am I, are they servants of Christ? I'm a better one. Talking like a mad man with far greater labors, far more imprisonments, countless beatings often near death. Five times I received the hands at the hands of the Jews, the 40 lashes, less one, three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned." That's a cool story because as soon as he got up from being stoned, he went back into the same town where the people were who stoned him. But they stoned him. Three times I was shipwrecked, a night and a day adrift at sea on frequent journeys in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers, in toil and hardship through many a sleepless night in hunger and thirst, often without food in cold and exposure. And apart from other things, there's the daily pressure on me of my anxiety for all the churches. Meaning, on top of all the physical things that I'm dealing with, I've got to worry about you guys. And whether or not you're going to accept me when I come, whether or not there's a mutiny when I show up, whether or not you're going to repent, whether I encourage you to repent, whether you're going to not repent, so he's suffering. Look at chapter 4, verse 17, jot this one down because this one gives you a little bit of hope. All those things he just described, we read all the way through them, then look what he says in 2 Corinthians 4, 17. This light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison as we look not to the things that are seen, but to the things that are unseen, for the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. So that's the perspective that got him through this suffering. Here's the next thing that Paul admits in this letter, you don't learn it anywhere else, he suffered with no relief, and specifically I'm talking about chapter 12. And he talks about this vision of seeing God, and he's given so that he doesn't boast in that or be arrogant about it, he's given a thorn in the flesh, and there's debate about what that is, whatever it was, he didn't like it, and it's equated with a messenger of Satan. Verse 7, it was given to harass him and to keep him from being conceited, and you see in that two different things at work. Would God send something to Paul to harass him? No, that's the messenger of Satan. God allows this messenger of Satan to harass Paul. Then from the other side, he says, I had this affliction, this messenger of Satan, this experienced this thorn, to keep me from being conceited. Would a demon harass Paul so that he would be humble and not conceited? No, that's not his intent in it, but that's God's intent in it. Verse 8, three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me, but he said my grace is sufficient for you, my power is made perfect in weakness. The answer was no, you're going to suffer. Lastly, number four, Paul was in a spiritual battle, and I think this is a pretty good lesson for us. When we send big teams to Kenya, and when we encourage you to go out and to share the good news with the people in your life, understand, we're not just asking you to go out there and argue with people, right? We don't send teams to Kenya to win debates. We don't send people around the world. We don't give to missions offering so that we can send people out and win arguments. That's not the point. You think Paul, this great missionary, he went around and it says and acts, we just read it. He was trying to convince them that Jesus was the Christ, the Messiah. He was arguing with them. And on the human level, yes, there's a discussion, there's a debate, there's an argument maybe, but Paul sort of peels the cover back in 2 Corinthians and he says this is a spiritual battle. Look at chapter 4. Verse 3, he says, even if our gospel is veiled, it's veiled only to those who are perishing. In their case, the little G God of this world, and you can draw a line around that little G God and draw it up to chapter 2 verse 11 where it talks about we do not want to be outwitted by Satan, that's who he's talking about. In their case, the case of those whose eyes are veiled, the God of this world has blinded the minds of unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ who is the image of God. You think about that? Paul says, I'm going out preaching a message trying to convince people that Jesus is the Christ and I'm preaching to people whose eyes have been blinded by the God of this world. Paul's saying, I can't convince them, I can't change them, I can't win that argument. It's his hope, verse 5. What we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ is Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake, for God who said, let light shine out of darkness has shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. In other words, Paul's hope is not that he's going to go win an argument. Paul's hope is that he's going to go share the good news of Jesus. And when he does that verbally, the God who created light out of darkness, everything out of nothing is going to create spiritual life in the heart of those who are spiritually dead. God's the one who's going to bring the light to him. So he's in this spiritual battle, chapter 10, verse 3 and 4. Though we walk in the flesh, we're not waging war according to the flesh. The weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God and take every thought captive to obey Christ, being ready to punish every disobedience when your obedience is complete. He's talking about this war that he's in, this conflict that he's in. Look at chapter 11, verse 3. I'm afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ, meaning it's not just that you forgot the stuff I told you, it's not just that you didn't take good notes in the Bible study, it's that Satan, just like he tempted and tricked Eve in the garden, is now tempting and tricking you, it's a spiritual conflict. Down in verse 13, he's talking about these super apostles. He says, "Such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen disguising themselves as apostles of Christ, and no wonder for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. So it's no surprise if his servants also disguise themselves as servants of righteousness. Their end will correspond to their deeds." In that verse, he's saying, "Look, these guys who are leading the mutiny against me, they're not just greedy and out for money in a big paycheck and a pet on the back. They're actually doing the bidding of Satan." You imagine somebody saying that today, people would be so offended. How dare you say that that person says they love Jesus, and you say they're following Satan, they're serving Satan, and that's exactly what Paul says. They're false apostles, and they're servants of Satan masquerading as servants of light. So he saw his ministry as a spiritual battle, just a few things in this book that you don't really get as good of a glimpse into those realities in any of his other letters as you do in 2 Corinthians. Stewardship. Let's talk about stewardship, and we're going to look at chapter 8 and 9, so you can just turn there and sit there, 8 and 9, and we're going to go through this pretty quick. You can go read these chapters, they're not complicated. Catherine, why don't you put the first two or three up there? One more. There you go. It's not only for the rich, giving should be sacrificial and generous, and giving should be done with joy. There's the first three. If you've ever looked through a list of spiritual gifts, you know that one of them is giving, and I've had a lot of people talk to me about what do you think my spiritual gift is, and they've studied and they've looked, and I have never had anybody come back to me and say, I think my spiritual gift is giving. Never had anybody say that. Doesn't mean that maybe you've not reached that conclusion, but I've had people say, well, I think mine is service, well, I think mine is health, so I think mine is teaching, I think mine is this, and I think maybe part of the reason we don't think that's us is we think, well, I don't have enough money for that to be my spiritual gift, but in what we're about to read, Paul says, the amount of money in your bank account has nothing to do with whether or not you should be giving and be a good steward. It should be sacrificial, it should be generous, and it should be done with joy. So look at chapter eight, starting in verse one, we want you to know brothers about the grace of God that has been given among the churches of Macedonia for in a severe test of affliction, their abundance of joy, and their extreme poverty have overflowed in a wealth of generosity on their part. If you're looking at that sentence as a math equation, it doesn't sound like it computes. They're severely afflicted, plus they're abundantly joyful, plus they're extremely poor equals a wealth of generosity. Americans look at that formula and say that there's a mistake in there somewhere. Those things don't add up, but that's how it added up in the Macedonian churches. Verse three, they gave according to their means, as I can testify, and beyond their means of their own accord, begging us earnestly for the favor of taking part in the relief of the saints. Yes, not as we expected, but they gave themselves first to the Lord and then by the will of God to us. You can get the sacrificial and the generous out of there, and I hope you see that these afflicted suffering believers did it with joy. And just to be real clear, because I had some people honestly ask me this, the Lord loves a cheerful giver, I'm not cheerful, I don't want to be a hypocrite. And if that's you, you need to be honest about it. I appreciate people being honest and saying, I'm not cheerful in giving, that's great. But what you change is not your giving, what you change is your attitude. So just to be clear on that, I think you all get that. Number four, giving flows out of a relationship with God. You really got to get this down. It flows out of a relationship with God. It doesn't result in a relationship with God. I'm studying with a few guys through the book of Proverbs, and this week we're studying about money. And one of the verses we looked at, and I'm paraphrasing it, talks about wealth does not profit on the day of wrath. On the day of judgment, your money is going to do nothing. When I asked some of those guys Tuesday, I said, do you really think there's anybody out there that thinks they can stand before God, and they're still going to have their money, and they're going to pay their way into the club? Do you really think that? That's not what anybody thinks, nobody thinks that. What people do think is I have a lot of money, and I'm so, so generous, I'm giving so much of it away that I'm earning points, and I'm building up, God's going to owe me by the time I get there because of how much I've given away. I've been so generous with my money that I can get in, and you know people like that. I know people like that. I've had people like that in my churches where you talk to them and they say, well, you know, I know how much I give, and it's great. It doesn't profit on the day of judgment, not a bit. It flows out of a relationship with God. Look at chapter 9, verse 12. The ministry of this service is not only supplying the needs of the saints, but is also overflowing in many thanksgivings to God. By their approval of this service, they will glorify God because of your submission, flowing from your confession of the gospel of Christ and the generosity of your contribution for them and for all others. When it talks about your submission in verse 13, it's talking about you participated in this offering. You submitted to God's will and you gave to this offering. And when they think about that, they're going to understand that your submission, you're giving flowed out of your confession of the gospel of Christ. So giving flows out of a relationship with God. Make sure you get that order correctly. First, a confession of the gospel of Jesus Christ, a relationship with God through faith in Jesus. Then giving, not trying to flip those around. Number what are we on? Five. Giving follows the example of Jesus. You're going to read about that in chapter 8, verse 8 and 9. I say this not as a command, but to prove by the earnestness of others that your love also is genuine for you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, though he was rich for your sake he became poor so that you by his poverty might become rich. So the humility of Jesus in humbling himself from the throne of heaven to be a servant in giving up riches, eternal riches, heavenly riches to become the lowest of servants as a picture of what ought to motivate our giving. Giving next six promotes healthy dependency, healthy dependency. Chapter 8, verse 13, says I do not mean that others should be eased and you burdened, but that is a matter of fairness. Your abundance at the present time should supply their need so that their abundance may supply your need that there may be fairness, he uses that word twice, fairness, as it is written whoever gathered much had nothing left over and whoever gathered little had no lack. And what he's basically saying here is believers ought to take care of each other. And today you have enough and you need to share with other believers who don't. And someday it's going to be repaid to you someday, somehow, sometime it's going to come back to you and he's talking about we're dependent on each other. We should rely on each other. Next one, giving should be done responsibly. Some churches today need to hear this and we're not going to read it all, but I'll just give you the verses. You can look at 2 Corinthians 8, 16 to 24. He starts talking about Titus in those verses. Titus was kind of like the guy handling the money and doing this collecting and traveling around with Paul. And he's basically giving Titus's resume and credentials saying this is a guy you can trust. We're being above board here. We're not trying to swindle you. We're not trying to cheat you. This is a guy you can check with these people. You can check with these people. This is his character. You can trust him and we're trying to do this responsibly. Nextly, we already kind of talked about this, but giving is a result of God's grace. It flows out of a relationship with God, but he then even takes it further to say when people give, it's because God has poured out grace on them. So look at chapter 8, verse 6, he says, "Accordingly we urge Titus that as he had started, he should complete among you this act of grace, but as you excel in everything and faith and speech and knowledge and all earnestness and in our love for you, see that you excel in this act of grace also." Twice he calls giving an act of grace. And then look at chapter 9, verse 8. God is able to make all grace abound to you so that having also efficiency and all things at all times you may abound in every good work. His hope is that God would pour grace out on them and they'd be generous in their gift. One last point about stewardship, giving results in God's glory. And he talks about that in chapter 9 down in verse 13. You can read that 9, 13 to 15, results in God's glory. Real quick, flip over to chapter 5 and we'll knock this last section out. Chapter 5 gives one of the clearest and most helpful explanations of what the gospel is in all of the Bible. And I just sort of broke down five different parts of it and you can jot these things down if you want to. They'll be up on the screen. How do we have salvation through Christ? Paul describes that in chapter 5, especially in verse 21. For our sake, he made him to be sin who knew no sin so that in him we might have, we might become the righteousness of God. He talks about this exchange. Jesus Christ who was righteous took our sin so that we who were sinful can receive his righteousness and through faith this exchange takes place. In verse 17 and 18, he talks about how regeneration changes. Our condition is as sinners, new birth is what regeneration means. And he talks in verse 17 saying, "If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation." You remember back in chapter 4 he said, "When we go preach to these people whose eyes are blinded, we're not trying to win an argument, we're preaching the gospel and we're praying that God who made light shine out of darkness would make light shine in their heart, that he would create something new in them," and then he says the same thing here. If you're in Christ, you're in new creation, the old is passed away, behold, the new is come. And you say, "Well, how do you become a new creation?" That's something you do, right? Verse 18, "All of this is from God." God does that. You can't do that. Paul couldn't do it. A missionary can't do it. No human being can do it. God does that. He says that right there in verse 18. In verse 16 it talks about repentance, "How does repentance change the way that we think?" And in verse 16 he talks about, "Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we now regard him thus no longer, meaning our thoughts have changed when we think about Jesus." He talks here about how the gospel changes the way that we live our everyday lives. That's the fourth one. Verse 7, "How does a Christian live everyday life?" Verse 7 says, "We walk by faith, not by sight." That's a pretty good verse for the sermon series we just finished up last week. That God's not going to spell it out for you in advance in writing in the sky and tea leaves and a palm reading in your horoscope. That's not how it works. We don't live by sight. We live by faith in trusting Him. And then lastly, how do we represent Jesus to the world? Verse 18 down to 20 we'll read this, and then we'll pray. All this is from God who through Christ reconciled us to Himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. That is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore we're ambassadors for Christ. God is making His appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ to be reconciled to God. Let's pray. Father, help us to understand tonight this good news that we see in 2 Corinthians that Jesus became sin so that we could become righteous. That you have created something new in those of us who believe in Jesus. That we have changed the way that we think, that we have changed the way that we live, and that you have sent us out as individuals and as families and as a church family. You have sent us out to be your ambassadors when we're at school, when we're at work, when we're in our neighborhoods, when we're in our homes. Father, in every moment of every day we are called to represent you to the world and to take this message of reconciliation. And Father, I pray that you would forgive us when we think that we need to be some sort of great orator or great preacher or great debater to share this message of reconciliation. When we look at Paul and we see him admit his shortcomings and we look at ourselves and we're painfully aware of our own shortcomings, but we understand that you can use us just as you use Paul for your glory, for your kingdom, for your gospel. Father, help us to be good stewards as we think about the heart of this letter and Paul talking about giving to this offering, help us to be faithful with the money that you've entrusted to us. Father, we do pray for those of us who are in this church family looking for work, needing work, praying and trusting you to provide and to give direction. Father, whether we have much or whether we have little, we want to be faithful with what you entrust to us. Father, we're grateful for your word and as we think about this relationship that Paul had with this church and the ups and the downs and the highs and the lows, we think about our own church. Father, we pray that we would not be enamored with the super apostles of our own day, that we would not be focused on personalities like the Corinthians tended to be on Apollo, Sir Peter or Paul or whoever the next great preacher was, but that our eyes would be fixed firmly on Jesus and loving Him and representing Him to the world. Father, we are grateful for the time that we've had to study tonight and as we continue in our study, finishing up the books of the Bible, pray that you would help us to understand your word in the big picture so that as we dive into it and as we read in our own lives that we can make sense of things and we can understand it and apply it. We love you and we pray in Jesus' name.