Christs life & ministry is care & concern for the spirtual...
2 Cor: 7:2-16 · Randy Peterman · Aug 6, 2017
2 Corinthians (2017), No. 30
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/49261722127510

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

2 Corinthians chapter 7. Normally I'd like to put the verses that we're going to be studying at the top of the handout, but that was a whole chapter and I felt like maybe that would be excessive. So what I've done is I've numbered the verses kind of in the headings there. Hopefully I remembered to do it in all the right places. I tried to double check that before I left this morning. I mean before I sent it to the printer this morning. I think I got it right.

Chapter 7 is this really remarkable, I would almost say it feels like an island in the book because he kind of turns a corner and he's going to go back around to where he was before earlier in the letter. It almost feels like if this was a mirror image or something this is the center of that and the rest of the book is going to turn back into some similar topics.

But in chapter 7 we find out some encouraging things and so Paul is going to review that with the Corinthians and he's going to temporarily move past some of the rebukes and the trials and despair language that we had earlier. So hopefully this morning despite having to go quickly you'll find yourself going, alright, Paul's moved on to some encouragement. Unfortunately we're going to get back into some corrective writing shortly after this. This is atypical for Paul. I think it's worth calling that out.

When we look at the book of Ephesians, the first several chapters of Ephesians are encouraging positional truth kind of doctrines followed by this doctrinal correction about marriage and about the body joining together with spiritual warfare and things like that. In this case, 2 Corinthians is actually at least maybe 3 Corinthians, and we're going to see some of the evidence for that in this chapter. I don't want to rabbit trail on it because I don't have an answer for this question, but it's worth thinking. Why do you think we don't have the other letter that seems to be implied by this.

And obviously the Holy Spirit knows what needs to be in the canon. But it's clear that it had an impact. So I think it's interesting. All right. So let's let's dive in because if I do too long of introduction we'll miss something else. I did want to include a little bit of verse one in this, even though Bob went over it last week.

He says, Therefore, having these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God. Make room for us in your hearts. We wronged no one. We corrupted no one. we took advantage of no one. I do not speak to condemn you, for I have said before that you are in our hearts to die together and to live together. Great is my confidence in you. Great is my boasting on your behalf. I am filled with comfort. I am overflowing with joy in all our affliction."

So that's the first four verses there, just to clarify that. And there's a lot in there, right? But we're not going to keep going with just the first four verses. We're going to keep going past the first four verses. I think it's worth noting there that in verse one he says, having these promises, and he's referring to the Old Testament citations at the end of chapter six.

Having these promises, perfecting holiness in the fear of God. Now when he says perfecting holiness, we all get a little nervous, right? Because we're not ready to get involved and make ourselves perfect of our own account, right? So how do we understand perfecting holiness? The theological word that we use for this is sanctification. It's the process by which we're growing and maturing.

If we look at 2 Peter 3.18 We see that Peter says that we grow in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ and we grow in our knowledge of grace, right? And so the idea there is that sanctification is the progressive understanding of what is true of us in Christ, and we grow in those things. So Paul's saying that we're perfecting holiness in the fear of God. It's not that holiness is lacking something, and so we're adding to it.

It is more that we, in our own lives, the Lord is growing us and the Holy Spirit is working out through us. And that is the foundation for the rest of the book. chapter well also the rest of the book but he's focusing in he's gonna he's gonna build on that principle this idea that we're growing individually and then growing together and he's gonna build on that as kind of a premise as he eases into into some of the encouraging parts of the book so he says in verse 2 make room for us in your hearts we wronged no one we corrupted no one and we took advantage of no one so he says make room in your hearts.

And I actually sat down and I studied this verse with Abigail, my 14 year old. And I said, sweetheart, let's take a look at this. Because she took the Greek class with me. And so I said, let's look at the Greek. And I'm not going to go into the word nerd stuff with you too much here. But I think it's important to call out that there's an imperative here that he's saying, hey, make room in your hearts.

And the expectation is that they will do it. Right? But how are we supposed to be understanding the enablement and the empowerment of this making room? Who makes the room? The church in Corinth is going to make room. The believers that are stumbling are going to make room. But who's empowering that making of the room? The Holy Spirit. So Paul is using an imperative because it's reasonable, it's logical that they should make room.

As we walk in the Spirit, the elements that make divisions possible for the flesh and the devil go away. So when we find division in the church, is that a fruit of the Spirit? Remember reading in Galatians where he says the fruit of the Spirit is None of those things, but the fruit of the flesh is all of those things. He says earlier, everybody remembers the fruit of the spirit, but the fruit of the flesh is a few verses earlier. And they're stinky and they're divisive and they're terrible.

So Paul is saying, make room in your hearts. But we know that that is something that is rooted in the principle of the believers in Corinth abiding. That they're walking in the spirit. And as we abide, the very love of God is manifested through us, and we become radiators of God's agape love. Do you feel like a radiator? We always think of cars, right? But there's lots of opportunities for us as believers to be radiators, even if we're not cars. And the church in Corinth was without excuse for making room. Right? And why were they without excuse?

What Paul tells us here, we wronged no one, we corrupted no one, we took advantage of no one. If someone has offended you, and maybe you've experienced this, I hope you haven't, but I think most people have, when someone offends you, you tend to have kind of a callous there, and you might be more inclined to distance yourself from that person, because there's offense there. which is really the place where there's the greatest challenge for that, is either in our own families, in our own marriages, in our relatives, and in the church body. With friends, it can be a challenge, but sometimes people part ways on account of those things. But Paul says, I didn't come with offense, I didn't come with harm, I didn't come with any way that was abusive to you.

So the church in Corinth had no excuse for making room in their hearts. And then he says in verse three, I do not speak to condemn you, which is a good positive thing there, for I have said before that you are in our hearts to die together and to live together. So Paul comes with reciprocity. He says, open up your hearts because you're in our hearts. Let's be the same towards one another. Let's be equal. Reciprocity. But he doesn't say it's just reciprocity in the sense of you're in our hearts.

What's the second half or the latter half of that verse? He says dying and living together. Now we've already been through earlier verses in 2 Corinthians here where Paul talks about the threats on his missionary journey. But Paul is talking about something there that is deeper than just the threats on his missionary journey. What is he talking about?

There's a possibility that a wave of persecution could hit hard and they would be in the same boat together. That's right. Whether they're together or apart, they're bound together in Christ and they're unified together in Christ as a father and his children church if you will. understanding that they're unified.

We could go to places like Romans 14.8 or 1 Thessalonians 5.10.

If you've got your Bible with you, let's turn to Philippians 1.22 briefly. This hopefully is familiar to you. We'll actually read 1.21-24.

For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain. But if I am to live on in the flesh, this will mean fruitful labor for me, and I do not know which to choose. But I am hard-pressed from both directions, having the desire to depart and be with Christ, for that is very much better. Yet to remain on the flesh is more necessary for your sake." So Paul, as a father, as an apostle, planting this church in Corinth, is bound to them. And the same thing he writes to the Philippians.

There's a principle, this is not new and remarkable only to 2 Corinthians, but there's this principle of knowing the eternal. My hope is in the eternal. My life is in the eternal. Yours is too. We're bound together in that. But the living and dying there is an important element of what's taking place there. But that is because the depths of their hearts are intertwined. Alright, that was a lightning round, verses one through three. Any questions on that? Because we're going to keep going if not. Alright, continuing on in verse four.

Great is my confidence in you. Great is my boasting on your behalf. I am filled with comfort. I am overflowing with joy in all our in all our affliction." That's twice I've read that as an owl, as though it's a bird. Okay, great is my confidence in you, great is my boasting on your behalf.

So, Paul is confident towards them. And I think that's an interesting thing, because he's spent six chapters getting into their business, has he not? And as far as we know, there was at least two other letters before this, where he's had to do corrective things that have caused them some anxiety. And yet, and I think this is important, and we're going to circle back around this if there's time in the closing, it's important to recognize that he has confidence towards them.

And so we'll ask this simple question and we'll dive into it more later if there's time. But when you look at the church, and this is a rhetorical question, nobody say this out loud, especially since Roger's in here. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. No, you'll understand why I said that in a second.

When you look around at Holly Hills, are there gaps where you think, oh no, there's parts of this church that have growth opportunities? Things that maybe you would hope for change and development. And I'm saying that not because there's massive flaws in Holly Hills. I'm saying that because remember how we used that $5 theology word, sanctification, earlier?

The idea of growth is built into the church. Do you know what you need to grow? Weakness. You don't grow in strength, you grow from weakness. So when we look around in the body and we see, oh, that person has to grow or they have weakness, that's actually God's plan.

That's why he's got elders that come in and they help us grow so that when we become elders, then we can help them grow. That's why Titus chapter 2 matters so much. We're going to grow, we're going to learn, and we're going to be the older generation at some point in time. Some of you are the older generation, some of you are not.

That's okay. And you pass that down. And that growth has to happen through the void, through the gap that's there. So Paul's riding to this church, he's filling the gap, but he's also saying, hey, I have confidence in you. You are growing. Does that make sense?

Sometimes we see voids and we see weakness and we go, Oh, that's terrible. And we reject things, right? If you buy a product and it doesn't do what it says it's going to do, that's a problem. But what I love about the church is God already tells us we stink, right? But he's working on it together. And so Paul is calling this out. He says, I have confidence. He's planted this church. He's establishing them. And he has confidence.

Now verse five, continuing on five through eight, he says, For even when we come into Macedonia, our flesh had no rest, but we were afflicted on every side, conflicts without, fears within. But God who comforts the depressed comforted us by the coming of Titus, and not only by his coming, but also by the comfort with which he was comforted in you, as he reported to us your longing your mourning, your zeal for me, so that I rejoiced even more. For though I caused you sorrow by my letter, I do not regret it. Though I did regret it, for I see that that letter caused you sorrow, though only for a while."

So Paul says our flesh had no rest. And there's that dangerous word flesh, because we can interpret flesh two ways at least, right? Probably three ways easily, right? So the flesh, the Greek word sark, means your physical body. My flesh is stinking it up lately. I've been having weird microbiome issues, if you can imagine such a thing. Three trillion bugs revolting, right?

So the flesh, and then there's our earthly bodies, the flesh, and then there's our carnal sin nature, our body, the flesh. So when we look at the New Testament, we've got to see which version of the flesh Paul is talking. Context will almost always paint that out clearly. So Paul says, our flesh had no rest.

Well, do you think that's his carnal sin nature? No. No, thank goodness, right? Thank goodness that's not what he's talking about. Although if you read Romans chapter 7, you could kind of get to where you could see how that could be one place, but this is definitely not the case here.

Paul already wrote in 2 Corinthians verse 1-8 that they were burdened excessively. So their flesh had no rest. Acts records quite a bit of turmoil on Paul's missionary journeys as he brought the gospel to places. So we're not stunned to hear that they were afflicted on every side. And then he says, conflicts without fears within. So the people surrounding Paul in his missionary journeys that were secular were aggressive towards him. When we look at Acts chapter 19 verses 23 through 41, a whole community riots and they go to threaten him. He had his whole life threatened, and they were trying to hatch plans time and time again.

I've got three addresses here in Acts 9.23, Acts 14.19, and Acts 22.22.

There's plans. One of the times he was stoned, and they thought he was dead. But the believers came out and prayed over him, and he got back up and walked back in, which is always one of my favorite stories in Acts. I can't wait until my dad gets to that in the main service. It's a great story. Because it's not a story in the make-believe sense. It's a recording of a historical event.

So conflicts without and fears within. He's already talked about the turmoil that was going on inside themselves. That they had despaired of their own lives. They were concerned. Now I want to ask this question that's here. In our modern times, does this level of affliction exist? Depends on what part of the country and world you're in. That's the thing. That's the reason why I ask this question.

For us, in America, while we feel some sense of threat from the growing university system where there's a lot of agnosticism and atheism and immigrants are coming in with Muslim ideas, that's a concern for us, right? We feel a sense of pending threat. But it's not every day where we face it. But there are people who every day are being threatened. And so we as believers have an opportunity to be praying, and maybe the Lord will even move in us in other ways to be involved with missionary services and things so that we can reach out. But for Paul, this was a daily reality.

And so that's his context. And so when he writes several times in here that he's rejoicing or he's encouraged, that's the context. that makes those encouragement words in that vocabulary even more bold a statement. So he says in verse six, God who comforts the depressed. And I think that's an interesting thing here.

We could spend some time talking about psychology and mental health, I don't think that's the context for this, so I would like to sidestep that. If you want to have a conversation about that, we can and should, but maybe after the class. I saw disheartened. I saw it was a better word. Actually, some translations have humble, which I think could lead you off the wrong path a little bit, but disheartened seemed a little more There's depression, there's oppression. Disheartened or lowly state would be what I would write down. If I were to do the expanded explained or a translation of this myself, I would say lowly. Someone said humbled. I think humble is maybe not quite right, but it's a lowly or disheartened state.

One thing to call out there is Paul says that God is the one who comforts those who are disheartened. And why do we know that? Where could we go to to see that Paul's not just saying this for himself, but this is for all saints? I know one of the chapter headers somewhere in the book is he said, Blessed be the God of all comfort who has comforted us with every means available.

I'm not using the exact same text. So that we can comfort others. And that's true. I don't have the address for that off the top of my head. But what came to my mind as I was studying this was actually the Psalms. If you read through the Psalms, the Psalms actually talk about God being a God of comfort. And those who were saints in the New Testament Church, if they had come from a Hebrew background, would have been familiar with the Psalms. So we could go back to the Psalms, and I've got them listed here.

And since time is tight, I'm going to suggest you go in your own personal study time, check those out, okay? There's quite a bit of encouragement. One of the things that Paul says in Psalm, I think it's 43, 5 through 6 here on this list, is he says, why are you discouraged? Put your hope in the Lord. And I think that's often for myself, and this is just me speaking, and this is an anecdotal statement of myself, okay? that when I find myself discouraged, I'm often looking to myself for the solution.

I'm looking to myself for hope. And how much supernatural omniscient power do I have? I can tell you none. My wife will guarantee that. And I don't mean that because she makes fun of me. I'm just saying she's watched. We have a good marriage. She doesn't go around talking slanderously about me.

So the idea here is that Paul is saying God comforts the depressed. He knows it's true and God is the only one that can comfort Paul in these times of despair. But how did God do that? And the answer here is the coming of Titus. God used Titus' return from Corinth as an encouragement I want to briefly call out this arrival of Titus as a principle in our own lives as believers.

When we come together, that should be an encouraging thing people would remark on. Oh man, I'm so glad that we got together. This summer I got to visit with my brother. I got to visit with my brother-in-law and I had a surprise visit from my buddy Dave in Texas all within a three-week period, all within July. And it was just exhilarating for me as a believer to get time with three brothers in Christ. It was just intense, focused, sharing time.

Because you know, when you don't see somebody often, when you get together, there's kind of this gushing. Right? Maybe you've experienced that. I hope you have. And that encouragement that comes from somebody visiting us should hopefully not be foreign to us.

How many of you, when you see people, don't make eye contact? This is symptomatic. When I walk down the hallways at work, I look at people in the face, because I'm really extroverted and social. I'm like, hi, you're eyeballs and eyeballs, let's meet.

A lot of people do one of these numbers, where their head's looking down at the ground, or they're looking over at the wall like, I wonder if that paint's dry, because they don't want to make eye contact. But the thing is, as brothers and sisters in Christ, there should be the eye contact and the expectation of this encouragement.

The other thing I want to draw out with Titus' coming is we use the internet and GPS and cell phones and texting and instant messaging and all of our modern technology to communicate about traveling. When I went out to Carson City and back, my brother would text me and say, Randy, I know you're driving. How long is it going to be? When are you going to get here? Because he wanted to see me, I think, mostly. But also he was probably worried about whether or not they'd defeat us.

But Titus didn't have that. And Paul was calling, I'm sorry, the Holy Spirit was calling Paul to different places. If Gary goes out on a road trip I bet you you communicate with Matt and various other people in your life, you're like, I'm here, I'm doing this thing, and people know what's going on, maybe even post something on Facebook, and we all know what's going on. Paul didn't have that. So if the Holy Spirit calls Paul to some other part, what does Titus got to, what does he have to do to find Paul? He's got to find the breadcrumbs. It's like Hansel and Gretel with fine churches in this town and then going, OK, did you see Paul? Yeah, Paul left here and he went there. And so he's like, OK, we're here.

And so when Titus comes, it's a bit of an unknown. And we even see in other parts of Paul's letters that he's concerned because they hadn't seen somebody yet. And part of it is because we take technology for granted. But letters had messengers. Titus was the U.S. Postal Service. He was the mailman, carrying it directly there with threats on the road and everything else. So Titus's arrival would have come as a remarkable and awesome thing.

Remarkable not because God couldn't preserve him, but Paul was aware of the threats. He himself was constantly under threat. So then verse 7, Paul comes And not only by his coming, but also by the comfort with which he was comforted in you. As he reported to us, your longing, your mourning, your zeal for me so that I rejoiced even more.

So the news from Titus was important. Titus was comforted. They probably did more than just a quick weekend stop with Titus being there, right? So Titus has been discipled by Paul, and he's carrying the letter. And Paul probably, as best as we know, based on especially his letters to Timothy and Titus, sent out Titus to confirm the establishment of the church. So Titus is there, let's guess, for more than a couple days. And during that time, Titus was encouraged by the church in Corinth. These are the same stinky people that were stinking it up that needed the other letters, right? And Titus was encouraged by them.

So if somebody comes into Holly Hills, I'm going to pick on you. You're visiting, sort of, right? Like you're off and on Holly Hills. You listen online too, don't you? So you're not really, you're only like remotely part of the body, but when you come visit, we're like, hey, what's going on? Right?

And hopefully you're encouraged. But we always get excited and we're like, oh, did he bring his trumpet? But the idea of when believers come together and we come in passing that we encourage one another is important. And so Titus comes back and he has positive news. And I want to call out here the Corinthian passions. Titus' report of these believers, as Paul writes here, is He reported to us your longing.

Your longing for what? For Paul to come again. They were sad that he wasn't coming. Your mourning. So the longing was there and they were mourning that Paul did not come. That it was Titus that showed up. Poor Titus. And your zeal for me. Remember in 1 Corinthians chapter 3, Paul has to call him out. I'm of Peter. I'm of Apollos. I'm of Paul, I'm of Jesus. He's like, no, we're all of Jesus.

And your zeal for me is because I am a co-apostle and a representative. And so it stopped being political. And so when Paul says zeal for him, it is that they are behind Paul as an apostle, not that they favor him like Apollos and Peter. So their passions have been corrected and restored.

We don't necessarily have the exact same scenario in our church today, right? We don't tend to have apostles. And when I say tend to, literally, we have no apostles, despite what the church down the street thinks. So we don't get visitors like Paul coming through Holly Hills. But we do have missionaries, right? We do have missionaries that we support and missionaries that on occasion will come back on furlough and we can invest in them and we can pour into them and encourage them.

Which is, I think, a sign of a mature body. Because what happens otherwise is everybody waits for the missionary to come home and they're like, tell us a missionary story. When did you almost die? Those are the best ones. And the missionary comes back and they're exhausted. The missionary's been out there serving and serving and serving and serving and maybe alone. If you read Hudson Taylor's Spiritual Secret, you find that there's often times when you have to wait patiently for the field to be ready for the harvest. And so the missionary comes back, they come back exhausted and they're not encouraged by a church that just wants to hear the good almost died stories. That's not the case here.

The Corinthians passions were restored and they were able to pour in encouragement to Titus. And for us as believers we want that same thing. Now, Paul was concerned about those things, wasn't he? That's why he mentioned them. It's because he was concerned about them. And so I've got questions here.

We're not going to talk about them this morning, but I want to highlight them for your own meditation later on this week. When we evaluate the walk of other believers, are we critical where we should not be? How does our view of sanctification impact our perspective? That's the second time or third time I've brought that up.

But if we look at what Paul's doing here, he's saying, I know you're saved. I know God is faithful to mature you. And I want to encourage you with this. And he's bringing this up. I know that you're growing. I know you're stinking it up some places, but I know you're growing. I know that the Holy Spirit is active in you and you will mature.

And that same thing happens at Holly Hills. That same thing happens at other churches, even the ones that you left because you were like, wow, the Holy Spirit can still be active in the life of those believers too. Now, we're going to get into what I was hoping to make the longest part of this lesson because I think it's super critical, but I'm just running my mouth too much. Verses 8 through 16, which we will not all read all at once, let's take a look at verses 9 through 11.

I now rejoice, not that you were made sorrowful, but that you were made sorrowful to the point of repentance. For you were made sorrowful according to the will of God, so that you might not suffer loss in anything through us. For the sorrow that is according to the will of God produces a repentance without regret, leading to salvation. But the sorrow of the world produces death. For behold, what earnestness this very thing, this godly sorrow has produced in you, what vindication of yourselves, what indignation, what fear, what longing, what zeal, what avenging of wrong, in everything you demonstrated yourselves to be innocent in this matter.

So this is closing a bookend to the passions of verse 7. So Paul has talked here about sorrow. I am sorry I made you sorry. But he's doing it, he says it led to repentance. So how do we define repentance? Let's make sure we all have the same definition of repentance.

Change of mind. Let's give it a more theological, biblical context. A change of mind in what frame? Towards Christ. I have my definition as the last sentence in that first paragraph there between verse 9 and 10. We define repentance as a change of mind back into alignment with what God has declared as true. So repentance for believers is not just that we changed our mind, it's that we changed our mind to line up with what God has set as a standard.

I've been doing some home improvement projects at home, and how many of you have seen some DIY projects that look like somebody just got some duct tape and baling wire? I try really hard to do precise work. I can tell you where all my flaws are, but I try really hard to do precise work, and I do that by having proper measurements. I align the edges and make sure that they're 90 degrees if they're supposed to be 90 degrees, or 45 degrees if they're supposed to be 45 degrees. And we line those things up.

So when we think of repentance, the way I think about it from a woodworking and a craftsmanship perspective is I have a standard. and I want to bring my thinking around to a lineup with the standard. Because if you don't, it looks like a kid's treehouse that's ready to fall out of the tree and you're going to die if you climb in it. I built a couple of those.

But the idea of repentance is that we've realigned our thinking to line up with what God has declared is true. So Paul was sorry that he hurt their feelings. It wasn't his intent to hurt their feelings. But he was only sorry up to the point that it hurt their feelings, and after that he was grateful that it led to their changing of their minds, their repentance. and restoration to biblical thinking.

Now I want to call out something that Paul has put here. I've used some different terms to describe this before and now that I've studied this I would like to recant my previous terminology and use Pauline terminology. In the past I've said that the Holy Spirit leads us to conviction back into fellowship and that the flesh leads us to guilt back into thinking about I'll do it better. That's the way I've described it in the past and I've taught that. If you listen to recordings and you stumble upon it, you won't be surprised. But Paul uses different terminology here and so moving forward I'm going to try to use that same terminology as I teach.

But the idea is that when the Holy Spirit moves in our lives, what is the goal of the Holy Spirit's bringing about repentance? Okay, to bring glory to Christ. And what should change in our personal walk when we repent? Should we feel guilt? I used the word guilt there just a moment ago, but the idea is that we have repentance back restoring fellowship, right?

When we were being carnal, we weren't walking in fellowship. We weren't abiding. We weren't walking in the Spirit. We were being carnal. We were being jerks. But when the Holy Spirit convicts us, we repent of our carnal way of thinking and we're restored back to fellowship.

And to emphasize this, Paul has used an important word here. Paul has used the word regret. He says, without regret. In verse 10, he says, produces a repentance without regret. So where does regret come from? Self. That's the flesh. That's the other way we can interpret flesh, or one of the three ways. So, without regret.

How many of you have lived with regret throughout your lives? Growing up, before I started to understand this principle of walking in fellowship, I was really good at regretting. I probably had almost a PhD in regret, maybe at least a doctorate. I could regret, and what I would do, this is just a little confession here, not in a Catholic-y sort of way, but what I would do is I would start to think about one regret, and then they would kind of domino into each other, and I'd start to look back at my life. And what's the thing about regret? Roger just sort of hinted at it there. Who are you beholding when you're regretting? Yourself. And what are you thinking about? What are you going to do next time? You can do it the right way. Yeah, I'll do better.

But Paul says as believers that it should, and the implication here is that it should be normative for us. Every single one of us. If you're here today, if you're listening on the recording, if you're a believer in the world, regret should be something that we understand is not inspired by the Holy Spirit.

We sing that song in the main service, Jesus paid it all. Or did he just pay like 90%? He paid it all. The regret comes from the idea that maybe that's not paid for. Maybe I should go back and try to fix it. If we went back and patched up all the sins, arguably we cannot do that technically, but if we could go back and patch up all the sins, would we still be righteous before God? No. But how are we righteous before God? through Christ, through what he did. So we should be rejoicing like Paul in all the trials. We should be rejoicing when we look back at the sins and the things that would cause us regret, because God can use those. In our testimonies, does he not use our sin? When you share your testimony, when people say, well, why are you a Christian? Oh, let me tell you about this awesome list of sins I'm the Vanna White of my failure, right?

This is like, look at how terrible this is. And Jesus saved that. That's the point here. No regret. When we're regretting, and let me tell you just briefly, as a parent, just every day, things I say to my daughters, I go, oh man, I opened my mouth and said that. And then I have to come back to them often and say, I'm sorry that I said that that way or whatever else. So regret should not be part of the believer's life. So we need to not let regret take a foothold in our minds and we need to be focused on abiding in fellowship and not making the flesh better at not sinning. Let the Holy Spirit do the work. And I really, really, really want to spend more time on that, but we have 10 minutes.

So, verse 11. In verse 11 he says, for behold what earnestness this very thing, this godly sorrow has produced in you, what vindication of yourselves, what indignation, what fear, what longing, what zeal, what avenging of wrong in everything you demonstrated yourselves to be innocent in the matter. And so Paul, we get the implication here in this chapter that Paul had written another letter that we don't have on record, excuse me, that was correcting that very thing.

He was correcting their attitudes, he was correcting their zeal, he was correcting their respect for him. In 1st Corinthians, the first letter has some of that, but there's some implication here that it was more than that. But he said, that stuff was dealt with. You responded to my letter correctly, and Titus came back and said you did. So Paul is encouraged. In verse 12, so although I wrote to you, it was not for the sake of the offender, nor for the sake of the one offended, but that your earnestness on our behalf might be made known to you in the sight of God.

And he's made repeat reference to this idea that you're backing Paul now, you understand Paul's goal as an apostle, that he's been sent out by God. But he says something that's interestingly only in 2 Corinthians, but it's in 2 Corinthians four times. He says, in the sight of God. Paul uses the phrase in the sight of God multiple times, and it's worth noting that he is constantly setting his sight on things above.

If we look at 2 Corinthians 3.18, who are we beholding? The Lord, right? In God's sight. I want to be looking at God because I know God's looking at me. and God is the judge. God is the one that is the standard if we're talking about repentance and alignment. So verses 13 through 16, the last of the chapter here.

For this reason we have been comforted and besides our comfort we rejoiced even much more for the joy of Titus because his spirit has been refreshed by you all. For if in anything I have boasted to him about you I was not put to shame. But as we spoke all things to you in truth, so also our boasting before Titus proved to be the truth. His affection abounds all the more toward you, as he remembers the obedience of you all, how you received him with fear and trembling. I rejoice that in everything I have confidence in you." So for this reason we've been comforted. They have rightly aligned themselves. They've responded to the first two letters. And so Titus doesn't come back and say, they totally ignored your letter. I got there, I read it out loud, and they were like, Paul Schmall, right? That's not what happened.

So he comes back and he's encouraged. They're comforted, despite the trials that are around them. And they rejoiced much more. Now I think it's important to know that the church has a reputation. Paul boasted about that church. When Paul's out traveling on his missionary journey, he's running into new communities and he's establishing new churches.

And you know who he's boasting about? That he's written these hard letters to? He's boasting about those people. even in our own lives when we think about our own mistakes. There are times when the Lord uses us as his agents that other people will remember for a long time and they'll share with others.

My brother in Christ, Tony, who lives in Austin now, before Jessica and I got married I used to think it was really funny if I could come up with a snappy, witty comeback all the time. And I was engaged to Jessica and I would sometimes be snappy and witty and insult Jessica, thinking that I was being funny. And so one evening after hanging out with Tony and Aaron, his wife, Tony said to me, Randy, I need to talk to you about something. And he said, Randy, You think you're being funny, but you're treating God's child, Jessica, inappropriately. And unless you stop doing that, you're not welcome back in our house. That kicked my honey. I didn't like that at all.

But I needed that. And I asked Tony for his permission to share that story. But I've shared it again and again on occasion because Tony had to do tough love. Tony had to be honest with me and up front with me, and he had to tell me, you know, you're going to marry this girl and you treat her like that? And on occasion, I still sometimes think I'm being funny, and Jessica has to say to me, oh, that hurt. And I have to apologize to her, but I try a lot harder to understand what's coming out of my mouth before I say it.

But in this principle here, Titus comes back. And what he's boasting about and what he's saying with Paul It's true. Paul has been boasting about Corinth. He's been talking about Corinth. If you were to meet Tony, you'd be like, oh, well, now this Tony guy seems like he's pretty interesting. I kind of want to meet him now. Right? Well, I hope you think that, at least.

I think he's a great brother in Christ. But the same thing is true of Corinth. Paul's boasting on Corinth. So maybe these churches are thinking, well, if I get on a journey, I've got to go through Corinth. Remember, it's a crossroads. And they're probably thinking, I can't wait to go meet the believers in Corinth.

And Titus comes back and goes, yeah, they're neat folks. The stories that Paul told, his boasting, were rooted in the character and the truth of the Corinthians, despite their flaws. And I think that's a cool thing that we get to see as a captured moment in Paul's relationship with them. He says, you received him with fear and trembling. And I think that's a good thing. We hear that, we hear fear and trembling, and we go, wow, that was weird, right?

Because that's not normally how we describe relationships now. But what we want to observe here is that Paul had seen a callousness in Corinth before that had caused him to write the letter, the second, the first, second Corinthians, whatever, however you want to call that, the second letter. He was correcting them, because they had stinky attitudes, and they were abusive towards Paul. Because he had to say, hey, I'm not coming.

And they responded to it appropriately. They got that message. And so when Titus shows up as a representative of Paul, we see fear and trembling and we think, wow, that's kind of freaky. But that was Paul's referring to their reception of Titus with honor and respect. because he represented Paul. If we're going to talk about repentance, that shows a real change in attitude. So Paul's complimenting them on that. He says, I rejoice that in everything I have confidence in you. Verse 16, the second time. He has confidence in them or towards them.

I told you if we had time we would go over this idea of of looking at correction in the church and how there's gaps in the church we have a very little bit of time so I'm going to go over it as a conclusion just because I think as we look at the bigger picture of this letter there's some principles about this that we can walk away with so I would like to just kind of poke at it a little bit and then we can discuss it more in private conversation or you can meditate on it during the week. The church's growth as sanctification is progressive. It requires time and it requires starting from weakness and going to strength. And this can happen through the direction of the Spirit. Sometimes the Holy Spirit moves in somebody's heart and mind just independently. God just nudges them and they start moving and there'll be a gap that gets filled and there's growth that happens. And sometimes this happens through correction of one another, directed by the Holy Spirit.

Galatians 6.1, that's correction. The Holy Spirit fills a gap and grows and sanctifies the church through correction. And sometimes it's through learning directed by the Holy Spirit. That's why we have these Sunday school classes, so that we can learn and grow. But when we see gaps in the church, we have to know that God's not passive. about gaps and holes and growth opportunities.

Here at Holly Hills, whatever you thought of when I asked that dirty, rotten question earlier, whatever your thoughts were, God's not passive about those things. God is active in those things. And He may use you for those. He may use somebody else for those. But the idea that we have gaps and holes and problems in the church doesn't mean we need to go find another more perfect church. Where will you go where there are no humans? Nowhere.

But when we look at what Paul's writing here, these are the stinky Corinthians that he wrote the first and the second letter to. They're the same people, but they're sanctified, they're being grown, they're being developed. And so when we look in the mirror and we say, hey, there's a dirty rotten scoundrel looking back at me. We're being sanctified. And we look at one another and we go, wow, there's that person that said that one thing or did that one thing, or maybe has been estranged, maybe they've been distant. They're still being sanctified. So this should draw us together as a body. In Ephesians 4, a sort of body that's drawn together.

So Paul started this in verse 2 saying, open your hearts to one another. So what keeps you from opening your heart to another brother and sister in Christ? And how can we help each other abandon closed heart thinking and embrace an open hearted thinking? We can answer that other than to study God's word together over time. But let's close in prayer and then we'll have some fellowship before we have to do some more learning and singing.

Heavenly Father, we ask that you would impress upon us this week some of the truths that are in here that matter to you and that we recognize all of them matter to you. But we ask that you would grow us in these things and as a body we grow closer and closer and closer until your return. We thank you and we praise you in Jesus' name. Amen.