His life and ministry focuses on Gods people and Christ-pt2
2 Cor: 1:21-24 · Randy Peterman · Feb 12, 2017
2 Corinthians (2017), No. 06
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/410261633367924

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

I don't even know if I prayed for the Lord to direct our study. That's my fault. So this morning we're going to continue on Paul's personal plea for reconciliation and patience with the church in Corinth. As we talked about last week, it seems they're kind of upset because Paul by the direction of the Lord was not going to go back on this third missionary journey back through Corinth. And it seems like after he sent his letter to them earlier, and we saw that he said in chapter 16 of 1 Corinthians, that he said it was his best intention, as much as it was up to him, that he'd come back through Corinth and spend the winter there, but then it didn't work out. So they were chapped and all irritated, and he is apologizing and is his way through the end of chapter 1 and end of chapter 2. So chapter 2, 21-24, we'll go ahead and read just that subsection of this communication.

It says, Now he who establishes us with you in Christ and anointed us is God. who also sealed us and gave us the spirit in our hearts as a pledge. But I call God as witness to my soul that to spare you I did not come again to Corinth. Not that we lorded over your faith, but are workers with you for your joy, for in your faith you are standing firm."

I love how When we look at this, we see Paul drawing the focus back to the Lord. As much as this is between two parties on an earthly, conditional basis, right? It's not a positional scenario, this is a conditional scenario. And Paul is pushing them towards the goal of understanding and reconciliation that's based on who they are in Christ. And so I think as we go through this this morning we'll see that there's actually a lot of practical application for us inside of the body and even for us with other believers that are outside of the body here at Holly Hills.

So I think there's a lot of value in there. The first question I have here is why does Paul spend so much ink on comforting the church in Corinth about his change of plans? I like that so much, I don't spend any of the writing. Because this is all handwritten, right? This is not a small trivial effort. He's dictating probably. Yeah, it's ink and paper. There's no iPads. No typewriters either. Well, it seems like we read back in 1 Corinthians that he really identified with the body there. He said in one place, I'm with you in spirit. I mean, he really identified with that body.

I've been studying, I do chapter 2, a good part of chapter 2 here, and it seems like, in some of my readings to study, it seems like Paul was more concerned with the church in Corinth than any other church that he visited. He visits amazing churches, but Corinth, even with all its problems, he identified himself a lot with that church, and when they hurt, he hurt. And so we see more of that as we get into chapter 2. He loved them.

And I think that's a powerful observation here is that Paul is spending a lot of energy writing this here so that they can take into account the care that he has for them. And so as we go through 21 through 24 here, we're going to observe that he is focusing on the Lord, but he's doing so in light of his care for them.

So, the next section here, after this introduction, is, God is the one who established and anointed. So, if we look at the sentence here, it says, now he who establishes us with you in Christ and anointed us is God. And in the Greek, God is also at the end. But I'm going to put God at the beginning, so you'll give me this liberty as your teacher to say that that is the crux of his argument here. So God is the One.

And I think we talked a little bit last week about how sometimes we take certain things that we're reading for granted. We go, oh, well, of course, this is faith or God or any of the words that we become familiar with. So I just wanted to highlight here that God's preeminence makes Him the final argument. If I have to explain to you that I'm not going to come to your house for dinner sometime, and I say the Lord changed our plans, and that offends you, then maybe take some time to consider the fact that sometimes God changes our plans.

In this case, God is the final argument. God is Paul's answer in the crux of what's going on. That being said, he wants to redirect their focus and their hope to be turned back to the Heavenly Father and not the earthly apostle. The question we have here is what is the impact on human relationships for the believer who spends much of their life on this earth with their focus on their Heavenly Father? What's the impact of our relationships when we're abiding?

If we were to ask it that way. Jack? Joy. Joy. That's a good answer. That's an important detail. So we're going to have joy. Well, you have all the fruits of the Spirit, certainly. Okay, so we have the fruits of the Spirit. That's the good big picture answer, right? But the thing that happens in our relationships is...

How many of you remember 1 Corinthians 13? I mean, we went over that in this class last year. 1 Corinthians 13... Well, let's turn there real quick because I think it's worth taking a look at 1 Corinthians 13 in context of If God is the God of love and God is the one whom we are setting our hearts and minds on, what we see in 1 Corinthians 13, I'll start in verse 4.

He says, love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous, love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly, it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness but rejoices with the truth. It bears all things, it believes all things, it hopes all things, it endures all things. So when we say that God is the one that is doing all these things and we know that the character of God and we're abiding as abiding believers that character of God is being poured out through us, this love covers these frustrations.

So let's just put ourselves in the shoes of the Corinthians. If we're the Corinthians and we're a little irritated, we've had a rough go because we really wanted to see Paul and he said he's not going to come. If we say God is in charge and God has called us to an abiding relationship that's based on love, the outcome of that as believers is going to be, oh, that's okay. Paul couldn't make it, but that's okay. We're going to be patient. We're going to be long-suffering and those things.

Randy, not too much of a rabbit trail, but just thinking about you know thinking about the body here at Holly Hills and other bodies and families and things and when you have a believer the Lord takes home a tendency sometimes and I'll say I've done it myself is to say well Lord why did you take that dear brother or that dear sister you know they were such a blessing to our body such a blessing to our family and you can get angry with God over taking them home when you think in your mind they were needed here to support the body and fellowship with the body. To be honest, I felt that way about our brother Hal. I have to realize that God makes decisions and his ways are not my ways. We went over to the Molloy's house for dinner like a week and a half before he found out he had the cancer.

I was like, sweet, I'm going to get to go spend time with Elder Hal and I'm going to get to know him. Of course, at that time I was substantially younger. So I thought, great, I'm going to get trained up by Hal and we're going to establish a relationship.

And the Lord said, nope. Okay. And we get frustrated. Or, the other thing I've noticed is anytime I start to get a good guy friend that I go to Holly Hills with, the Lord takes him and moves him away. I've lost Brad Mastin, Brian Webb, Jim Gould, Josiah Matthews moved away for a while. I was like, come on, people! And you get frustrated if you're walking in the flesh, right?

So I think we can kind of see the Corinthians' frustration in that. When Paul was there, he would keep them on the right track and show them that he would be there to encourage them. So it can be something where if we're in the flesh we'll be disappointed, but if we're abiding we start to see the character of God's love proven out through us. So Paul continues on, now that I've taken us in an out-of-order approach to God as the One. So God is the One who established us with you in Christ. And I really love the idea that Paul has here.

It's kind of mirroring Ephesians 4, where Paul writes about the church being united as one. So if you have your Bibles there, let's turn to Ephesians 4. And I've actually been teaching Ephesians 4. a chat Bible study, if you can imagine such a thing, with friends around the nation that are spread out, and family, I decided it was the best way I could encourage them. So we've been going through Ephesians 4, but if we start in verse 1, what we notice here is this sense of unity, and Paul is going to that same place, but with a little bit more terseness in this establishing us with you in Christ.

He says, Therefore I, the prisoner of the Lord, implore you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, showing tolerance for one another in love, being diligent to preserve the unity of the spirit and the bond of peace. There is one body and one spirit, just as also you are called in one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all." Paul just says tersely to the Corinthians, he's established us together. But the outcome of that is that Paul is trying to drive their attention to the fact that they are together in Christ.

Now, let's take a brief look at 1 Corinthians 1.6. We're just going to do a lot of Bible page flipping today, and I hope you'll forgive me for that.

1 Corinthians 1.6, we see Paul wrote a similar thing. It's translated ever so slightly differently here.

But he says, "...even as the testimony concerning Christ was confirmed in you." That word there is the same Greek word for established in you. So in 1.6, they're established or confirmed in Christ, and here he's reiterating that they're established, but he says, not only are you established and I'm observing that, but we're established together. And let's also observe that. Where the flesh would seek division, Paul is showing that there is unity in Christ.

I've been through Lots of leaving church experiences throughout my growing up time. And it hurts every time, right? It's tough. It's rough to go through those things. A lot of those things were rooted in things that reflect a misunderstanding on my family's part. When I was younger and I was just a child, my parents are leaving. I don't understand.

I love those people. Well, there's a good reason for division here, so we're going to divide and those things happen. But Paul doesn't want to see division or carnal separation here. He wants people to recognize that they're established together. So, we'll ask the question here, when we see our co-heirs in Christ as established with us, how does it change our perspective of who they are? If I look at Gary and I think, man, I could spend eternity with Gary. And we're going to both be gasping in awe at the Lord together.

That's kind of different from, oh, there's that guy Gary, he plays tennis. I don't know how to play tennis. I think like 1% of the people on the planet who wear tennis shoes actually play tennis. But Gary is one of them. But the thing is that if I see Gary and I observe some kind of difference in age or food preferences or anything else and I go, oh, this separates us. It doesn't matter what those things are, that sets us aside. But when I see Gary and I'm like, that's my brother in Christ. He walks in the door and I go, awesome, Gary's here. Jack, we missed you. You didn't sleep well last week so you weren't here. And we walked in the door this morning and we're like, Jack's here. Oh good. All is well, right?

Because you're my co-heir in Christ. Not just because I like your smile or something. So after having already established together in Christ, Paul then continues with this outpouring of some of the 34 things that are true to us in Christ as believers. He says that he has anointed us.

I want to take a little bit longer on this anointing business. I mentioned leaving churches a few minutes ago. We left one church This is back, let's see here, decades and decades. I think it was going into eighth grade or something like that. But we left one church and we went to a church that it turns out was pretty charismatic. And so at that point in time, I had pretty much never been taught about any doctrines related to the Holy Spirit. Had Daniel and the Lion stand down real good. Noah's Ark, nailed it. really understand who the Holy Spirit was and His indwelling in the life of the believer.

One of the things that often got bandied about in that church was somebody would say, oh, I'm going to pray for God's anointing on you. I heard it enough times that I didn't ever really question where was it in the Scriptures, where is it in the Bible, where does it... I mean, when I say where is it in the Bible, not only Bible address, but is it for the Old Testament or the New Testament or whatever else? So we're looking today at the only place in the New Testament that describes the believer as anointed. So this is very specifically a carefully articulated New Testament doctrine and we need to make sure we understand it. It's right here. And the idea in the Old Testament was that it was a specific ceremony for somebody being chosen. What are some of the examples of being anointed in the Old Testament?

Anybody remember? David, that's a really good example. David had to be called out of the field, right? The shepherd David. Oh no, no. Oh yeah, that's right, I've got one more son. I remember that from Sunday school. That one I can remember. It's like, oh, David had to get called out of the field. And they anointed him. And of course his brothers had to be just a bit shocked, right? That would have been a little weird.

So in the Old Testament, an anointing was the sign of being chosen. So the church collectively is anointed here. The church, collectively, we are anointed. And what is that anointing? It's being set aside or being chosen. It does not mean what often gets used in charismatic circles to mean you've got a special gift and you're even more extra-Christian-y than the average Christian. You've got more spiritual gifting or something. That's not what Paul is saying here. The anointing is done by God for the believers, universally. And it's Paul articulating that they're called out, that they're God's elect or God's chosen people. Nowhere else does this get brought out.

And then in Acts 10.38, Christ receives the anointing. And so we might be able to derive that Paul was talking about our being identified with Christ here.

But we want to make sure that we don't get from this the idea that you got some special spiritual gift or something that you're anointed. That's not what this is saying. And just to be very specifically clear about the idea of federal headship, that's a $5 word, but the idea of a federal head is someone that is representative of a thing. So Adam was a federal head. We go to Romans 5 and we see Christ became the federal head for the church.

And so what we have here with the anointing and the Mosaic Law, if we were to turn to Exodus, and I've got a bunch of cross-references there, we're not going to look at all of them. But each one of them, God says anoint Aaron and all of the Levitical priesthood.

But if we look at Exodus 40.15, and I'm going to jump there, you don't have to necessarily jump there.

Exodus 40.15, we see That the internet connection is slow? Getting me there on my computer? Well, I'll tell you what it says if you'll trust me. Exodus 40-15, it's once and for all.

It's an anointing for all of the priesthood that would come after him. It was a federal headship sort of anointing. And so the idea of anointing for a priesthood is substantial here, but what do we know about a priesthood here in the church today? Do we have a priesthood? We're all priests. And where do we find that at? We find that in 1 Peter 2 verses 5 and 9 where he says, we are priests. We are a priesthood. And we're all anointed. But who is the anointed priest over all of us? That's Jesus and we find that in Hebrews chapter 7 verse 24.

So it's worth pointing out that this idea of anointing is only here. It says that we're set aside and we're anointed to serve the Lord, right? It's not something Paul is using about himself. It's not what he's using just about the church in Corinth. It's representative of the body. It's part of his argument for unity. We're together in this. We're established and we're anointed.

Anybody ready to go do charismatic-y things? Was I clear on that? And I don't say that to be negative. I have lots of friends who are charismatic still and I still love them. I don't think that we can get there from here. Now, I've got a question here.

This is a rhetorical question because the answer is probably the rest of your life. The question is, what responsibilities come with being an anointed priesthood in Christ? The short answer is that we've got to rest, right? We've got to rest in who we are in Christ. But the long answer is the fullness of the Holy Spirit working throughout us in our day-to-day lives. It's the life of Christ lived out.

Which is way more than the Levitical law had, right? When Moses gave the Levites their laws, they had clothing and food restrictions, they had various duties they had to exercise, sacrifices, all those things. You had to memorize them, because if somebody showed up in your work in the temple, and they brought you a cup of flour, you had to know what to do with that cup of flour, because that was an offering. You had to have that memorized, and you had to be operating through the law. But as believers, it's grander than that, because the Holy Spirit works through us in different ways. So, because Paul isn't done, we're established, we're anointed, he then says that we're sealed, and that we have the Spirit as a pledge. How many of you seal a lot of letters? I do. I mean, Winnie does, because I get them sometimes. It's a happy birthday, right? I knew I could ask that question. Somebody, at least one person would seal something, right? We tend to just lick the envelope.

We put our address and personal identification and something on there so that it gets delivered on the other side of the letter. Put a stamp on it. goes out and we trust that the U.S. Postal Service will eventually get it there 99% of the time. This principle of a seal goes much further beyond how we normally take postal operation. So you'd have a wax or a clay seal on something that a person's seal would be used to mark to say this is me. and I am sending it. This is the authenticity of the letter.

It comes sealed from me. So who's sending us? Who's seal is on us? God's seal through the Holy Spirit. We're a letter, right? We're going to see more in this book that Paul's concerned very much about the letterness of who we are. But in this case it says we're sealed. And that means that we know who sent it, but it also means that we know the veracity of what's inside of that letter. This person sent it with the intent of clear communication, authorial intent. Being sealed means that we're marked as gods.

Ephesians 1.13 also tells us that we're sealed by the Holy Spirit or with the Holy Spirit of promise.

The idea being that we're to receive our salvation eternally waiting for that seal to be broken. When is that seal going to be broken? When we're glorified, right? It's the promise of the coming salvation. The rapture will happen. be resurrected, or go join with the Lord in the air, and that's exciting by itself, but that seal, it's like, okay, the promise is being fulfilled, but the seal of the Holy Spirit is waiting.

We look forward at that point in time to the uniting of our position and our condition, right? We're seated in the heavenlies with Christ in our position, that's what Paul tells us, but our condition feels frail and earthly, right? But at that point in time, our position and our condition will be united. We'll be with the Lord and glorified. So after telling them that they're sealed, he says the Holy Spirit is a pledge. I find the idea of a pledge more and more foreign in our culture today.

When I I originally went to buy the house that my family lives in. I had not saved up a down payment on the house. They said, don't worry about that. We'll give you a 100% loan. They reamed us with it. They gave us a 100% loan. You don't need a pledge. You don't need money down. You don't need to do anything other than approve you have a job. and you're stupid enough to pay this much to us. I was stupid.

But the reality is that we don't really deal with pledges today the same way that we used to. How many of you send checks on a monthly basis to pay your bills? That's a pledge. That's a funny way to think of it, but it's a piece of paper that says this is worth something and if you take it in and you turn it in, this is a pledge for actual monetary value. Again, I'm not going to try to go into the economic system of what monetary value means, but the idea here is that we have this principle of a pledge.

It's a bit of a negative example, but if we were to go back into the Old Testament, we'd find that Judah had promised his daughter-in-law Tamar that if she would wait until his youngest son got older, she could marry him, because his older son had passed away, and of course, by the order of the law, she was to remarry his next in line. Only his next in line, there was a pretty big age gap, it appears.

So she waited, and Judah did not live up to his word. And so if you go there, you find it gets even worse. that Tamar hears that Judah's coming by the village that she lives, and she prostitutes herself to him. Again, that's not a biblical admonition for prostitution. But Judah sleeps with her, and she goes, well, you've got to pay me.

And he goes, well, I don't have anything. And she says, well, I'll take your seal. Now, to me, that's a bonehead move. This is the very thing that says that something is legitimately from you and you're just gonna give it to the prostitute. So he already has made a mistake. Then he sends the sheep to trade back for his seal. Or a goat, whatever the...

See, I didn't learn that clearly in Sunday school, right? And Tamar's hiding. No one knows who this person is. and so then Tamar they find out she's pregnant and they go to stone her and she goes hold on and she waves the seal and Judah is convicted of his lack of integrity not only that he would sleep with his daughter-in-law which is frowned upon but secondly that he did not live up to his word and so the pledge of the seal This is kind of a negative story and I apologize for that, but the idea of a pledge is here's this thing that says I'm going to trade and I'm going to be good to my word.

Only we don't have Judah that we're dealing with. Who are we dealing with? We're dealing with God. We're dealing with the faithful and loyal and perfect God of the universe. So we're not only sealed by the Holy Spirit, but the Holy Spirit is given as a pledge for this time, this thing that's coming, the return of Christ and our joining with Him in position and condition.

I think part of why Paul brings this up again is last week we talked about yeses and noes, right? He said, let your yes be yes and your no be no. He didn't say it that way. He says that elsewhere. But he says, is our yes a no? And he's talking about how true is something and what's the veracity. But a pledge is a yes. which fits in alignment with what Paul said, that salvation in Christ is yes, and the pledge is a yes, it's God's faithfulness that is coming.

If we remove pledges from our financial transactions, if we remove pledges out of the equation, What is the sense of ownership that comes from that? If I can go to the bank and they'll lend me almost ridiculous amounts of money, whether it's through a credit card or whatever else, there's no sense of ownership. There's no sense of responsibility and duty. But it does build up a large financial system.

But God has an infinite and perfect promise with eternal value. When we think about things having value, what are we really measuring when we say something has value? Okay, integrity, that's part of a very good answer. Time is money, right? Usually money is representing our life energy, right? How much time we have.

So when we talk about this idea of pledge, God is infinite. God's time is infinite. The Holy Spirit comes from outside the time-space continuum, and His value is infinite. Is there a greater gift than the Holy Spirit? that can be given as a pledge? There isn't. And I think that's why Paul says this is the greatest pledge. This is the Holy Spirit.

Now, Paul keeps going and he says, God is my witness. So God is Paul's witness and this next part here is kind of a little It's a little shocking to a certain degree. He says, but I call God as my witness to my soul that to spare you I did not come again to Corinth. So God cannot lie. God is his witness. God cannot lie. If you're going to call any witness, there is no higher witness.

Today, I don't know if this was common when you were growing up, but I remember on the playground when I was a kid, I hear a lot of, I swear to God, kind of stuff. Sometimes it was used a little bit more derogatorily than others, but it was like, I swear to God. Your brother jumped over four kids that were laying down in front of him off the ramp? Yes, he did. I swear to God. that seems like a pretty low risk, low value, sort of a kind of thing to swear to God about, but it was one that was like, this is the highest honor, this is the highest thing that can be.

But in the New Testament, if God is your witness, what does that mean? Can you Can you bank on it, to use our previous financial analogy? What kind of precision is it if God is your witness? It's perfect. The interesting thing about witnessing in the New Testament, when we talk about witnessing, almost all of the references to witnessing happen when believers are testifying to who Christ is.

What's the beginning of 1 John? that they witnessed. What we saw, what we heard, what we witnessed. If we look at Acts chapter 10, right before interacting with Cornelius, we see in Acts chapter 10 that Peter was up on the rooftop, God gave him a vision and said, Dude, you are going to love bacon. And Peter wasn't happy. Peter was like, no, no, no, no, I'm not going to put anything unclean in my mouth.

I will always be kosher. I'm going to be the best Jew. And God's like, you're not a Jew anymore. You're mine, right? You're a Christian. You're a New Testament saint, you can eat the bacon, it's good for you. And I still, for whatever reason, can't convince my grandparents that that's true. But I eat bacon as often as the Lord allows. But after God tells him, you can eat the bacon, he says, alright.

There's some people downstairs waiting for you. And he goes downstairs and sure enough, Cornelius the centurion has come, or he's sent for Peter. He knows who Peter is. And Peter comes to Cornelius' house and he goes, I would never have associated with you before. But Cornelius was a righteous man, it's said. And so Peter does what? What does Peter do at Cornelius' house?

He preaches the gospel. He shares the gospel. And what he shares is a testimony of what he witnessed. So when we find witnessing in the New Testament, what we find is that it's either that God is the witness or that someone witnessed Christ almost exclusively. There's some really remarkable exceptions like Paul, before he was Paul, was Saul. And it says that there was a witness to Stephen's stoning, this guy named Saul, that they threw their coats down in front of. So Saul was a witness there, too. But God is his witness. This is true. There's veracity here. There's nothing to be doubted in it. He says, with God as my witness, We did not come so that we could spare you.

And the sparing you part, I have to be honest with you, I had to chew on this for a little while and I'm still not sure I fully understand the fullness of what this is. Not that I can't teach it, but just more that on a sociological level this feels funny.

To spare you, I did not come. It's a bit of a twist because in his earlier statement, God didn't direct our steps there. But then, further on top of that, he says, I wanted to spare you. Now, what would he be sparing Corinth from? Rebuke, or some sort of correction that would be necessary because things weren't as in good shape as envisioned. Okay, that's possible, although I think in this case, when we get to verse 24, I don't think that's the reason why. See, Paul didn't travel alone. He traveled with an entourage. And he was collecting money for Judea, so he could help the church out in Jerusalem and throughout Judea. And he had talked about staying there for the winter.

So, how many of you have had people come and stay at your house as guests for three to four months. This is a non-trivial commitment. I've had people stay at my house for months at a time. Even sometimes for no arranged compensation. But usually at some point in time they're doing dishes or they're doing whatever else. I have a guest room and I love it when people stay there.

It's really cool. But I think I would probably start to get a bit curious after a while. It's like, okay, this is kind of getting expensive. You know, what's going on? That's what Paul's talking about here. It was because I wanted to spare you the burden of myself and the entourage coming. So here's the thing.

Do you remember in 1 Corinthians 11, after we get past the covered hair part, we get straight into the communion part? And we always read the part where actually, as was given to me, and we go over that, but you remember when we actually talk through it verse by verse, what comes right before the communion description?

What are people doing? People are coming hungry. or they're coming drunk on stuff. So what's happening is there's actually a sociological, economical disparity between some of the members in the church. And it seems like the average was probably on the impoverished side. based on what's written there in 1 Corinthians 11.

And here, it seems like Paul's saying, listen, if I come, I love you guys. I want to see you. I want to spend time with you. I want to take care of you. But if I come, I will be a burden. And I know this. So I'm sparing you. So I understand this, but at the same time, I'm like, dude, I ought to come up with something. I'm like, Lord, I just pray for the fish and loaves. Just keep providing food. Paul already made tents, so I'm pretty sure he had that part covered.

Randy, he's going to expand. He's going to be expanding 23 a lot more. And give us a lot more insight into why. A lot more details on why. There was sorrow on both ends. He was sorrowful, and he didn't want to make them sorrowful. The mutual sorrow between the Corinthians and himself. Because he loved them. that he delineates that more in the first four verses of chapter two. So we're going to get more detail on that. Oh man. We're not at the ending yet, but it's a pre-ending cliffhanger, right? We're going to have to find out. You've got to come back next week.

But he's going to spare them by not coming. Now he says, not that we lord it over your faith. Another peculiar way to describe things, Paul does not want there to be any confusion about his motivation. That he's like, oh you guys aren't good enough. You're not Christian enough, right? We don't want to lord it over your faith. He wasn't questioning their fervor or their dedication, but instead he wanted to have them have a lighter load, and it sounds like Roger's going to talk to us more about the emotional side of this. But he's concerned for their well-being overall, and he doesn't want them to take it as something where they're not adequate. So he's not going to lord it over their faith. The adequacy that we have as believers is in Christ, right?

It's important that we call that out. And then he says, workers with you for your joy. earlier in 8-11 where he said that they were praying and they were helping. So Paul sees them as working with him remotely. Listen, it doesn't matter that we're hundreds of miles away on foot, which is quite a bit of travel time, right? It doesn't matter. We're working together with joy.

And so I have to ask this because we are We are Holly Hills, right? We don't want to have anything that ties in with works so that we might feel like we get merit. But without works as a means for salvation, how do we understand this idea of working together as a body? What does that mean? How do we put tennis shoes on this so that we don't feel legalistic but we also understand what Paul is talking about?

I'm not sure what the Greek word is, but it could be cooperation. Could cooperation be a synonym of it? I don't know. I actually don't know what it is. Yeah, it's synergoi or synergy. It would be kind of the modern English word for that. Fellow helper or fellow worker would be one of the possible translations of that in the Greek. Co-laborer.

But the idea of working here is not talking about works for salvation. It's not talking about earning your own merit. It is merely saying that the Holy Spirit is using these things, like Ephesians 2.10 teaches us, that he puts good works in front of us for us to do. But as we abide, he empowers us. He does the work through us. But we're co-laborers. We're doing that together. So there's workers with you for your joy. Now here's the thing. Here we go, tricky part. For your joy. Uh oh. What if we don't always feel joy when we're working for the Lord? You might have your eyes on yourself.

It might be that there's trials going on, whatever it is. But Paul recognizes, and of course as Roger has talked about in the next section here, he's going to talk about sorrow and forgiveness and things like that. The effort here, his love for them and his motivation in caring for them is rooted in this idea that they would have joy, especially if they're dealing with poverty and trials and suffering and cultural tension. I mean, they're in a pretty crazy, poor city. But the idea there is with the joy, it's a spirit-driven joy, right? It's a spirit-given rejoicing, not earned or a cheap quick gift. Isn't that how birthdays are? My nephew turned one yesterday, so he doesn't understand that yet, but next year when he's two, that greed muscle kicks in pretty good. I'm pretty sure he'll be like, what? I want that! But joy is longer lasting, right?

So, next thing, in your faith you are standing firm. That's why I love Paul's addressing here. He wants them to know that he loves them and he is caring for them and he did visit them and his evaluation at that point in time is that in their faith they are standing firm. They're wrestling with lots of doctrinal issues. We got the first letter, and we have this letter here, which we think is probably actually the third letter. And we see that Paul is doing some correcting. So he says, in your faith you're standing firm. I know you're believers. I know you're saints. We are established together.

But their doctrine is going to need to be corrected. But no matter what doctrinal correction is coming, and he's got some humdingers coming down the line in this book, no matter what doctrinal things are being corrected, he knows that their faith is firm. They are his brothers and sisters in Christ. And they're established in Christ.

And even if they're messed up in places, he knows that they want to know the truth and they want to know the Lord. And Paul just wants to help make sure that they get rid of that division, right? Because he loves them. As a conclusion here, when we consider Paul's plea with the church in Corinth to relax about his travel plan changes, we see that he cares for them deeply and he's attempting to write to them about their reconciliation and getting things so that they will maintain a healthy relationship with him. So they will listen, they will understand the rest of what he's writing about.

How many of you have ever gotten an angry email? Sometimes, if you get an email or a letter, maybe it's before email, right? If you get something that's angry, it starts off... I find that your normal human reaction is you get so wrapped around what happened in the first part of the letter that if you really actually want to understand what happened after that, you've got to try to calm down and keep reading.

I've read books. Richard Dawkins is a secular atheist author and somebody said, you should really read God Delusion. I don't think so, but they're like, no, it's really good. You'll like it. Which I was like, you know I'm a Christian, but okay. So I purchased the book. Very wasteful, I'm sorry. Bad stewardship. But I purchased the book. I couldn't get past like the third chapter because it was so angry towards Christianity and saying things like, if you raise your kids in a Christian or Muslim or any other faith-based way, it's child abuse.

And I was done. I was like, I don't even care what you say after that. One, it's not. And his proof for it was child abuse was that he said it was child abuse. I was like, that's not even rational, dude. But the thing is that when you get frustrated or angry enough, you won't receive whatever's after that, right? You won't even give it a chance to listen to it.

So Paul is establishing at the beginning of this letter He's trying to make sure that he's reconciled. He's trying to make sure that everybody's understanding that he loves them. He cares for them. He wants what's best for them. He knows they're established. And then, after he finishes this next section that Roger's going to teach, he's going to dive into deep things.

We have to go over 2 Corinthians 3.18 and keep mentioning that. But all of us who are teachers are excited about that verse, right? It's like the jewel of 2 Corinthians.

Buddies established. They're established. They're sealed. They're anointed. And they're with Paul spiritually in Christ. So, any other questions, thoughts? That usually means I should be done. I think we kind of raced through a few parts of it. All right, cool. Well, let's pray.

Heavenly Father, thank you for the truth of your word. Thank you for the integrity that we find in Paul because he leaned on you. Lord, we just pray for your wisdom and guidance throughout the week as we kind of mull on these things and meditate on your word and that we would understand the depth of integrity together with your Holy Spirit. We thank you in Jesus' name. Amen.