Second Corinthians 1:1-2

So today we're gonna talk about kind of an overview of the second letter to the Corinthians and really, really interesting book and quite different. It has a very distinctive character from the first book. So let's start out this way. I thought we could talk a little bit to start with about Paul's epistles in general and then focus in on 2 Corinthians.

It's interesting that all scripture, and by the way, the handouts you have, everybody get a handout? I learned this at the Bible conference two weeks ago, this one teacher, You know, each guy that taught was a pastor, and so they all have different methods, and some guys gave you an outline.

Some guys gave you the fill in the blanks. Well, I love the guy who gave us the fill in the blanks, but he gave you the first letter of the answer. Right? So I'm ahead listening to him, and every time I filled it in before we got to him, I did it wrong. So that's what you're gonna see and you'll see it here. Notice that it says forward with the black and then the blue and then I'll change colors on you later just to make sure you're paying attention.

All scripture, and by the way, most of this, the introductory part, is taken from Schofield and his reference Bible, because he did such a great job compared to others that I looked at. So he starts out with, says, all scripture up to the gospel accounts of the crucifixion, everything up to that point, looks forward to the cross. And has primarily in view Israel. and the blessings on earth through the messianic kingdom. So everything written up to the cross, including the four gospels, is looking forward to the crucifixion. It talks about the blessings of Israel, and it talks about the Messiah.

But it doesn't deal with the issue that Paul's epistles introduced to us. And you could put it in one phrase, hid in God. If you look at Ephesians 3.9, Paul says, to bring to light what is the administration of the mystery, which for ages has been hidden in God, who created all things. This was an unrevealed fact. the interval of the time between the crucifixion and the resurrection of Christ and his return in glory, the unrevealed purpose. He didn't tell us. The first thing is the outcalling of the church, the body of Christ, which the Greek uses the word ecclesia.

Now, Christ would refer to this, but he never amplified it. In Matthew 16, 17 through 19, Matthew says, and Jesus said to them, blessed are you, he's talking to Peter, Simon Bar-Jonah, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. I also say to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades, or hell, will not overpower it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.

What's interesting about these verses is that the Lord announced His purpose but without explaining what his purpose was and how he was gonna do it, when he was gonna do it, and what materials he was gonna use to create his church. But how the church should be built and what position it would have, the relationships it would have with the Lord, its privileges and its duties, none of that was revealed, left for Paul.

So when you start looking at Paul's epistles, this is what we begin to find out. We find out that Paul's epistles constitute precisely the scope of what Christ meant back then. Paul's epistles developed the doctrine of the church. So in his letter to seven churches, not all of his epistles, but Rome, Corinth, Galatia, Ephesus, Philippi, Colossae, and Thessalonica, the mystery which from the beginning of the world has been hidden in God is gonna be fully revealed in those epistles and fully instructed as to her unique place in the counsels and purposes of God. Through Paul alone, through his writings alone, what do we know?

We know that church is not just an organization like the Kiwanis Club. It's an organism, the body of Christ. It's united with his life. It's heavenly in calling and promise and destiny. Through Paul alone, we know that the nature and purpose and form of that organism, the organization of the local churches and the right conduct of such gatherings of those people. Through Paul alone, we know that we shall not all sleep, which we talked about in 1 Corinthians. The dead shall rise in Christ first. We find out that if you're living at the time of the rapture, you won't die, but you'll be changed. You'll be caught up to meet the Lord in the air.

So to Paul was committed the unfolding of the doctrine of grace. Now you see grace in the Old Testament, but I would say without knowing and having acquaintance with how Paul describes and lays out grace, you probably wouldn't see as much grace in the Old Testament as you do see. But that doctrine, which was concealed in the teachings of Jesus Christ, he was very gracious, but he didn't explain grace.

Why not? Because his mission was to the house of Israel. So Paul originates nothing, but he unfolds everything that God has laid out for the church. A concerning nature and purpose of the law. The understanding of why the law was given and what its purpose is is not laid out until Paul the Apostle starts to show us. The ground and means of the believer's justification. How does someone get justified? How do you get sanctified? How do you get set apart? And certainly, how we're all gonna be glorified.

And the expanded meaning of the death of the Lord Jesus. What does all that mean? The position, the walk, the expectation, and the service of the believer. That's all left to Paul. If you think about it, Paul was converted by the personal ministry of the Lord Jesus himself.

And it wasn't because he was persuaded, it's because he's walking down the road and the Lord Jesus in all of His glory now appeared to him. And he falls to the ground. And the second word out of his mouth is Lord. I can imagine any of you when you came to Christ that the very first thing you saw or experience was the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. I'd have been prostate on the ground because it must have been an incredible experience for him. And it totally changes him because he is gonna be the witness of the glorified Christ. The apostles are the witnesses to the Christ on the earth, not glorified. Paul starts with the glory of Christ. So, and that this glorified man, the second person of the Trinity, is the head over all things to the church, which is his body. That's what Paul has been called to do.

Now if you look at the epistles from a chronological order as to when they were written, you start with 1st and 2nd Thessalonians, then 1st and 2nd Corinthians, Galatians, Romans, Philemon, all the way down to 2nd Timothy. That's the time frame in which they were written. And even Hebrews has a distinctive place Nor can the order of the books amongst the writers of Paul be definitely fixed in terms of put the other guys in there and where do they fit. So when we get to 2 Corinthians, the basics are who's the writer? It's the Apostle Paul. What's the date? Well, some of the people I looked at said 57 AD. Some said 60.

That's why I put the little C there, which means about. probably wrote it from Philippi after the events of Acts 19.23. Now, the events of 19.23, I'm gonna refer to them a little later, but it had to do with this riot that went on in Ephesus, so. If you just quickly look at verse 23, you don't have to. About that time, there occurred no small disturbance concerning the way. The way was the believers. And that disturbance goes all the way into Acts chapter 20, verse 3.

Now, Paul probably wrote this letter within a year after writing the first letter to the Corinthians. The theme is Paul's authority. Paul is an apostle and what that authority means. Now, it also discloses a lot to do with Paul's heart, how he felt about things, how he viewed things, and it discloses a touching state of Paul's heart at that time.

He was physically weak. He was weary. He was in a lot of pain, both physical and emotional. He had spiritual burdens that were even greater than his physical problems. And those spiritual burdens on him came in two ways. There was one for the concern of the maintenance of the church in grace against the law teachers. We see somewhere in most of Paul's epistles there is this pushback by people within the body or outside to try to insert law into an environment of grace. He's always trying to maintain the grace position.

And two, he's got his anguish of heart over the distrust felt towards him by Jews, by Jewish believers. The doctrines that the legalizers would present always caused distractions. And that meant that they would always try to deny his apostleship. If you can get the leader discredited, you can discredit his doctrine. And that was a burden on him.

But the most dangerous, I think, sect in Corinth was that which said, I am I of Christ. You remember in chapter 1, verse 12 of 1 Corinthians was the verse. Now I mean this, that each one of you is saying, I'm of Paul, I'm of Apollos, I'm of Cephas, and I'm of Christ. This is the most destructive of all of the doctrines, and you wouldn't think that the one of I am of Christ would be so destructive, but it is.

They rejected the new revelation that Paul brought of the doctrine of grace. They grounded themselves, these people grounded themselves probably on the kingdom teachings of our Lord as a minister of the circumcision. You think about it, Paul's ministry is so new that it supersedes or goes beyond what the Lord Jesus taught.

So if you were legal in your thinking, who would you hang your hat with? It would have to be the Lord Jesus. because he taught law, didn't he? Sure he did. So next to him, here's the Apostle Paul who's teaching grace. Make up your mind. What are you gonna do? Follow the Lord Jesus who is the Messiah, the Son of God, or Paul the Apostle? It made for a very tense situation. When you reject the new revelation that Paul brings of grace, by the way, he got it from Christ, What happens?

In Romans 15.8 says, for I say that Christ has become a servant of the circumcision. Sounds like not a really important verse. On behalf of the truth of God to confirm the promises given to the fathers. In other words, if their law and Judaism is gonna prevail in the church, then Christ is the servant of circumcision, which is legalism rather than grace. Matthew 15, 24. But he answered and he said, I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. That's what the Lord Jesus said.

Acts 3.26, for you first, God raised up his servant and sent him to bless you by turning every one of you from your wicked ways. So it's seemingly, there's a new, We use the term dispensation, but I would call it a stewardship that is introduced by the death of Christ. The death of Christ ended everything that went before him. The resurrection began a whole new thing. It ended the whole realm of legalism and began the whole realm of grace.

So where does that leave the Apostle Paul? It puts him in a situation where it makes it necessary a defense of the origin and the extent of Paul's apostleship and his authority. Because if you can work your doctrine to pit Christ against Paul, you've got a losing situation there. So Paul has to reestablish his authority as an apostle, and that he does have the authority of an apostle.

So, 2 Corinthians, three major parts. The first part covers chapter one through chapter seven, verse 16. It's the principle of action in his ministry or an explanation of his conduct. This introduction is really unlike most other introductions of his epistles because Paul immediately begins to talk about himself. Usually he's talking about the Lord or the church.

Here he states his stresses and God's response. we read it this morning, then God comforts, who comforts us in all our afflictions so that we would be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort of which we ourselves are comforted of God. So this becomes kind of the pattern of the stress that Paul goes through and the comfort that he experiences and the service that is developed and qualified for service. It's interesting here that And it's a principle I think we all could, we can benefit from recognizing that it is a principle. God's greatest need in a believer's life is that he creates, I said that wrong, God's greatest attribute to a believer is that he creates a need in his life.

He puts a stress there. He always does that. He starts with that. Because if you're like me, if you don't have any needs, you are not gonna respond. You know, if I don't have a need to get up, I'm not getting up. If I don't have a need to go, I'm not gonna go. So he creates a stress, and then he comes along and he comforts that stress. He creates a service for a believer. He says, I want you to do X, Apostle Paul. I'm gonna tell him what things he's gonna have to suffer for my name's sake. He creates a stress, but that stress, that trial, creates and qualifies one for service.

And that's what these verses next week are gonna all be about. You can't just decide that you're gonna, J.D. was talking this morning about being anointed of the Lord. The anointing isn't, you know, we're gonna put a little oil on your head and wave over the top of your shoulder. We're not doing that.

You're gonna go through a trial, and what you're gonna find out is that right after you have learned through the trial and grown through the trial, Somebody behind you is gonna come up with pretty much the same situation that you found yourself in and went through.

Are you qualified to help them? Uniquely so, you are. So in your life, look around. This principle is operative all the time, in every circumstance that's going on. There are trials that are purposeful in the body of Christ, and they're all designed for us to serve one another. That's really what it comes down to.

In chapter 1, 12 through 2, 13, Paul's gonna lay out the background of his appeal, what he's doing. He's gonna talk about his new ministry from 2, 14 through 6. 2, 14 and 17 will talk about triumph. 3, 1 through 5, we'll talk about that he's accredited. 3, 6 through 2 Corinthians 3, 18, he's gonna talk about spiritual growth is not a legal thing. Chapter 4 up to verse 7, he's gonna talk about honest and not deceitful. 4, 8 through 18, suffering. chapter five, ambition, motive, moving motives, and chapter six, the supernatural character, and its appeal for separation and understanding of Paul.

That's what he's doing. And from then on, the second part of the epistle has to do with the collection for the poor in Jerusalem, and he's gonna take about two chapters to talk about that. And he's gonna use an example of the Macedonians, how generous they were. He's gonna use the example of Christ. He's gonna use the example that he is, or anyone who carries the collection has to be a trusted representative.

And his encouragement is based on the fact that God is so generous. And then the last part of the epistle from chapter 10 through 13, Paul is gonna deal with the defense of his apostolic authority. It has divine authentication. It's based on godly jealousy. It's a warning against false teachers.

And he's even gonna do in chapter 11 a little boasting about who he is. Gonna vindicate his office. So, And then right at the end, he's gonna talk about visits that he's gonna make. Then chapter 12 talks about a warning, and then he ends up, the last part of it, chapter 13 has to do with exhortation to examine yourself, and we'll talk about that, and then he concludes it all. at 11 through 14.

So I wanted to point out, I hope you can see these. Paul's in this epistle is going to be moving around a lot. And if you look at, can you pick out Ephesus there? I try, this map is not square on the page because I had to enlarge it so you could see the cities. So he's going to be in this epistle in five different locations. He's going to be in Ephesus where 1 Corinthians was written.

1.9 mentions of some of his detractors, and they had really gained a foothold. Then he's going to talk about Corinth. In Corinth, where he goes next, he faces his detractors. That's a visit he's going to make. Then back to Ephesus, he returned from the Corinthians and writes to the Corinthians, the first Corinthians, a stinging letter. I like how they pronounce it. They call it a stinging letter. And then in second Corinthians, when he writes, he regrets the letter, but then he doesn't really regret it because it served its purpose. In Acts 19, a riot breaks out in Ephesus and that must have been something else to be the Apostle Paul in a town which is now Turkey. And this one guy starts this riot and they're after him. They want to kill him. And then he escapes.

He goes up to Troas. You see where Troas is. And he meets Titus up there. And he's encouraged by the meeting with Titus. And that's where he's starting to learn about the doctrine of comfort. because he finds that Titus at first wasn't there, but then he did show up when he goes to Macedonia, and then you see Macedonia. See if you can see Macedonia on there. I hope it is. Yeah, you see where Berea is? That's upper Greece, that's Macedonia, okay?

So, elements of suffering at the hands of the Corinthian church. They're gonna accuse him in this epistle of not walking after the flesh. They're gonna say, hey, Paul, you're walking after the flesh. Then they're gonna say, and not only that, you're ugly. You're really ugly. And you are unimpressive. You're contemptible. We can't have ugly, contemptible people leading us. They said, you didn't treat us fairly. They felt that they were not treated as well as some of the other churches. And then they said that you're an imposter. You're not really an apostle. Agony at these elements caused him to feel weak, to be sorrowful, to have tears, persecuted, lots of afflictions. You know what's interesting about these elements of detraction against Paul?

Somehow the world never learns new methodology. This is exactly what happens today I'm not Encouraging you to read the paper or watch the news, but this is what's going on. That's how you go after your detractors William Kelly In part of his introduction says, a very different tone from the first epistle, yet not less distinctly from the same mind and heart is the second epistle. Of all the epistles, none abounds in a more rapid transition as indeed it flowed from profound exercise of soul.

John Darby says, Paul was at Ephesus intending to go to Corinth, but they were in such a bad state there that he couldn't go. But he wrote a letter, and then he went up from Ephesus to Troas and hoping to meet Titus with an answer to his first letter. But then he went to Macedonia, met Titus, and wrote them the second letter. the one we're gonna study. Now that his heart could open out more upon blessing for them, he could go farther on in the truth now, though they were still babes in Christ, now he thought he could lead them on. Why? Because the first epistle, the stinging letter, had done its work. They had adhered to it, they listened to it, and they responded.

This map, you see the green part? That was how far Christianity had expanded in the first 100 years. And the red line that goes around shows you the outline of the Roman Empire. But it's interesting that it had gone all the way south into North Africa, and out through all the way to Italy, to Rome, that far. It took 100 years to get that far. And so I saw this map and I said, well, I better include it. It looks kind of cool.

The circumstances through which he had passed evidently fitted him for the work in hand. This, however, is just what should be, nor does any epistle offer afford a finer example of what is suitable to the case in every point of view, personal experience, is used for the help of others in their trials, helps the work of the Lord in all of its varieties with the action of the Holy Spirit answering to it. The truth of God in its distinctive shape and highest forms and the glory of Christ contrasted with the Spirit under the letter of the law. to walk in service that benefits or befits such revelations of grace. If we are going to in any manner walk beside somebody else who is suffering, it's interesting how the Lord calls somebody to walk beside somebody else who's already been down the same road that that person's going down.

How do I say this? We all think we have great advice. We all think that our own experiences supersede everybody else's. And so if you have a problem, I've got an answer. I've noticed that I grew up in an alcoholic family. And the interesting thing I learned as an adult about an alcoholic family, in order to hide the alcoholism in my family, we always wanted to talk about you and your problems. Because as long as we could keep that conversation going, you weren't looking at us. That's human nature to do that.

Well, what does God do? He takes someone, that's why AA, I'll talk to Mike Maloof, He's an experienced alcoholic who's been sober for 30 some years. So I have to tell you, if somebody calls me up and they say, I've got a problem with alcohol, guess where my next phone call goes? It goes to him, because he knows about that. He's experienced it. He knows the way to go and the success is there.

Although I was in one of those kind of families, I never ended up at AA, which is really good. I ended up in the body of Christ. Thank God for that. But the point being is that your trials are not only for you, they are for your brother and sister in Christ, so that you can just walk beside them. Not too fast, not too slow, not too aggressive, just walk beside them.

So, Paul has this circumstance, where he's suffering because people have come in to discredit his doctrine of grace. And so he's suffering, and he's got evil all around him. And even though grace is abounding, the trials and wants of saints calling out the loving remembrance of others, the opposition, of self-seeking men employed of the enemy to hinder the blessing of saints and to lower the glory of Christ, to distract the weak and give scope for unscrupulous activity. It's a nice way of saying, they're after us.

On the other hand, the energy of the Holy Spirit working not only to bestow heavenly visions, but to give our faith an object. We can't just have faith for faith's sake. We have to know precisely what we believe in, but even more than that, who we believe in.

So to manifest Christ in the weakness and suffering where the power of Christ may rest are all brought out in this epistle and really forcefully And we'll see a lot of that. It's really cool how the grace of God overcomes. So the Corinthians edification was the nearest object to Paul's heart, actually next to the glory of God.

It may ever be, if we may even try to sever that faith, knows to be inseparable. I didn't say that right. If we may even try to sever that faith, knows to be inseparable, more than once. Paul will take the case of a soul under discipline, as he did in the first epistle, and show the grace of restoring that man. Remember in the first epistle, we talked about the man that was kicked out. Paul said, you gotta kick him out of the, no, he didn't say it that way. He said, I'm kicking him out, because I have the authority to do it.

You as a church don't have the authority. So out he goes. He's been turned over to Satan for what? The destruction of the flesh. Well, now Satan has done his job. This man is not relying on the flesh anymore, so he's knocking on the door asking to be let back in, and they won't let him in. And Paul says, you have to let him back in because he has proven himself to be worthy because of what the Spirit of God has done.

So he teaches them about grace. So we could say that vanity loves to speak of itself and its little doings. True greatness, while it delights in that which is its own source, which is an all-surpassing one, in whom it loses thoughts of self, can for the sake of others afford to speak of labors and sufferings, for that loved object and for all that he loves so as to refute those heartless distractions and lies." That was from a brethren writer that I didn't even get the initials from him. But I thought that was really interesting that we understand that the glory of the Lord Jesus is of so much importance to us that we can serve him without having to have credit. because we recognize that he's the one that loves us and he's the one that does the work and we are just being used of him.

A little more information on the riot. The second epistle was written after the riot by Demetrius, the silversmith at Ephesus, had stopped. The riot was over. And Paul had left Asia for Macedonia, and when Titus had rejoined him in that country with the welcome intelligence of the beneficial effect of the first letter on the saints in Achaia, so his heart was full. both of God's delivering power exhibited towards himself and the joy of the conscious work of the saints at Corinth. He was really excited that he could, how to put this, he was really excited that he found out that he wrote that letter which he thought, boy, you know, this is really gonna hurt them. but he found out that it worked. And for Titus to tell him, boy, I went to Corinth and you should see these people, they are turning around, they are everything that you wrote about, they're adhering to it and they think you're right. And it's, boy, it's different down there now. Well, that was such an encouragement for him, yet he knew it was the Lord who did all the work. So, John Darby says an interesting thing here.

He says, the epistle on which we're about to enter gives us more than any other an inner view of the church or the assembly of God. It does not, like the epistle to the Romans, lay the foundation of divine righteousness. It doesn't do that. but it is not at all reduced in its scope. It deals with the practical conduct of the Christian as well as the public walk of the assembly. It maintains the authority of Paul's ministry as an apostle.

It denounces party spirit. It exposes worldly wisdom. It insists upon the power of the Spirit. It urges godly order, both in the Lord's institutions of the communion and in the use of the gifts of the Spirit's manifestation. It commands holy discipline. It reproves listigiousness, which I had to look it up, I thought, what is it? It means the propensity to sue somebody above all before the world.

It propresses personal purity. It counsels the saints as to social and family difficulties, as to their relations with the heathen, as to good taste and conduct, privately or publicly, in men and women. Finally, it meets their speculations as to the future state and shows how an error as to this jeopardizes soundness of faith as to Christ himself, holiness of walk, meanwhile, and the brightness and strength of Christian hope. Nor does it withhold the light of God from the matter seemingly so trivial as the mode of collection for the poor saints, while it adjusts also the mutual relations of those who labored in the spot on the spot and of those who might visit them.

So, there's a lot, a lot of really incredible information and things that we're gonna learn in 2 Corinthians. I'm really looking forward to spending time with it. Now, let's just take a look at the first two verses. So he begins with a salutation. He says, Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, by the will of God, and Timothy, our brother, to the Church of God, which is at Corinth, with all the saints who are throughout Achaia, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

The first thing he does is he talks about his commission as an apostle. The best meaning of the word apostle is ambassador. Easy definition as an ambassador. If one of us was appointed to be the ambassador of the United States to anywhere, we would go off to that country and we would not be allowed to express our opinion about anything. The only thing we could say is what our country tells us to say. You can't say anything else. As a matter of fact, whenever you see an ambassador kind of go off the rails and express his own opinion about something, he finds himself home pretty soon.

So the whole idea of ambassadorship is that you were the official representative of someone or something. and you only had leeway to say what they told you to say. That's what the first definition of an apostle is. Obviously you had to have been appointed to that personally.

You had incredible powers that were given to you to do all kinds of things. You had spiritual gifts. And probably one of the things I admire most, these guys had incredible energy. It's like they never slept. So one had to have official credentials to be an apostle or an ambassador. With the apostles, you have an official Credential.

So Paul says that he has these. He says, Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ. He says, I am one of those. And it's by the will of God. That's how I got to be an apostle. And I'm an apostle of Jesus Christ. I can't say anything about anything unless Jesus Christ shows me and says, this is what I want you to say. So he always establishes his authority first, and he does it through the will of God, and so he doesn't need any human authentication about who he is and what his job is. He knows.

Then he says, and Timothy's with me too. On the Tuesday men's Bible study, we're now into 2 Timothy. 2 Timothy is a really interesting character. He seems to be so gifted and educated and blessed, yet he's reluctant. He turns out to be the pastor of the church at Ephesus. And Paul is constantly encouraging, and he's a younger guy, to step up, to enter into sufferings with me. And Timothy the timid, that's what I call him. Maybe that's what Timothy means, I don't know. So, but he says, my companion Timothy, who's with me in the letter, since this young man had assisted in founding the church at Corinth, he was involved in Paul's work in Corinth.

The recipients is the church of God, which is at Corinth. The church at Corinth was the local representative of the universal church. That's what we are. We're the local representative of the universal church. And this letter is written specifically to the Corinthians, and notice how it says, the church at Corinth, with all the saints who are throughout Achia. So, What sense would you say is this God's church?

He called it, he maintains it, and he'll complete it. We're here because he called us, he maintains it, which we've learned over the last few years, and he will complete it. And he adds to that the saints in the surrounding area of Achaia, which meant that this letter should be passed around to these different cities and towns that were in Southeast or South Greece. Again, just to show you where it's, how do you pronounce it?

A-C-H-A-I-A, Achaia. You see where Corinth is and all that whole area right there, okay? Then he says, grace to you. and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. It's interesting that grace is the most important idea in all of Paul's teachings. The reason it is is that it's the fundamental teaching of the entire Christian age, grace. And that's why it's so important.

We've talked here about unmerited, unlimited favor. It's unsolicited too. Nobody asks for it, it just shows. And here's another part of it. It's a spontaneous move of God towards us. Every move he makes towards us is in grace. Never any other way. So just to show you quickly how important this idea of grace is to Paul, if you look at all 13 of his letters, all of them, they start with grace and they end with grace. Just a couple examples. Romans 1-7 starts with grace. Romans 16-20 ends with grace.

Galatians 1.3, grace.

Galatians 6.18, grace.

2 Thessalonians 1.2, grace. 3.18, grace. All the way down to Philemon, verse 3, grace. Verse 25, grace. This pattern encloses every single letter that he wrote.

And verse two says, from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, grace to you and peace. In closing, I would say a couple of things from Bacon and John Darby. Where there is faithfulness, we often see what appears to be the heaviest trials. But in truth it is the display of the sustaining power of grace that allows that others may see and learn. Now there's a guy who understood. And John Darby says, when the heart is made full with the rich blessings of the Lord Jesus Christ, it will not turn back to Noah upon itself.

I couldn't resist that. I just love that, so let's close. Dear Father, how we thank you. We thank you for the Apostle Paul. We thank you for his 13 letters that he wrote to the churches and that we have them and we can read them and study them. We thank you for your spirit who shows us spiritual content and uses that material to reveal the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ to us. which carries out the purpose you have in mind for every one of us, and that's the conformity to the image of your son. So as we go forward here and study 2 Corinthians, that's what we're looking at, the conformity to the image of your son by beholding his glory in the word. We thank you, Father. We pray in your son's precious name, amen.