Christs life and ministries power is from God
2 Corinthians 4:5-7 · Roger Henderson · Apr 30, 2017
2 Corinthians (2017), No. 16
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/492655595361

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

Well, today we're going to look at these three verses. And maybe to kind of start off with a little bit, I'd just kind of like to, if you look back to what was read in verse four, it talks about the fact that at the end of verse four, at the beginning of verse four, it talks about the minds of the believers has been blinded, but it's been blinded in what sense? It says, they may not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ. A similar verse is going to show up in verse six here. It says that light shines out of darkness to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. So those four and six are somewhat parallel verses, but I think we see two different aspects. One we see in verse four is more focused on the gospel. and it's the light of the gospel in verse 4, whereas in verse 6 it's the light of the knowledge of the glory of God.

Speaking of glory, Christ's glory is not only his physical glory which was seen in the Mount of Transfiguration and which will be seen for all eternity, but It's his inherent character, who he is, and what he's accomplished. And that's kind of as a comparison with the gospel certainly shows his glory, right? You think about the gospel, I always kind of think, what are the glorious things about the gospel? If somebody asks you, if you take 1 Corinthians 15, what aspects could you point out that are glorious in that account of the gospel? I have the advantage of having prepared this, so I know where I'm heading. It might seem a little bit tough, but verses 3 through 5? Chapter 15, 1 Corinthians 15, 3 through 5. Well, let me just tell you where I'm heading here.

So I was kind of thinking of the fact, thinking about the gloriousness of the gospel, as in verse 4 we saw last week, which Randy taught. If you think about that, first of all, that God, you know, God gave himself, right? The person of Christ and the work of Christ. We see God gave himself. He's the subject of the gospel, right? He died. He was buried. And buried proved that he died. He rose. And he proved that he rose by that he was seen by over 500 people. 5,000? Number wrong. 5,000. Thank you.

So anyway, you can say that's a glorious aspect of the gospel. is kind of confined, if you will, to that and more. But here it says, we're going to learn today in verse 6, it's the light of the knowledge of the glory of God. So it seems like it's another level up. It's an increasing, increasing glory, increasing knowledge of what we have in Christ. So I was kind of seeing that verse 4 is glorious, but verse 6 is even more glorious because when you become a believer, you have access to the total revelation of who Christ is in scripture and then in our fellowship with him.

So it's another level up. This kind of struck me as I went through and studied this out. So we'll see that as we go through. I kind of wanted to have that as a preface of going in here. Thank you. Where did I get 5,000? Thank you. I don't know. Thank you. A lot of people, right? 500 is a lot. All right. So let's go on.

We'll start through these verses here. So first of all, I listened to Macaulay. Macaulay has taught through this I listened to it online on his website. I listened through what he had to say. He had a lot of good points, but I liked his organization. It's just outstanding, I find. He had an outline, or at least I perceived it to be an outline. I made it an outline because I listened to what he said. Here's my outline of those three verses, basically.

Verse 5 is a person of the gospel exalted, Jesus Christ. Christ extolled by Paul's preaching, we're going to see. Christ extolled by Paul's ministry as a bondservant. Kind of a contrast we'll see in that. Christ is extolled by God's declaration, both in creation and in salvation.

And then lastly, the boy seven has a marvelous paradox. You would think that if God was going to give us a treasure, wouldn't you think he'd lock it up in a steel chest so it wouldn't be broken? He doesn't work that way. We have treasure in earthen vessels. Weak, frail vessels. We have a treasure unimaginable.

And that's the greatness. And basically, that's to demonstrate God's power. God is able to put the treasure of all time in weak vessels as we are, but that's going to demonstrate His power. And we're going to see that that's actually kind of a way that God works, the way that He works. And many times, and I think of all of us, we all have Maybe we're going through different trials, physical, otherwise, you know, jobs, other things. But God works that way. I hate to say it, guys, but He works that way. He works that way, and we think, this is tough, but that's the way He works. He wants to show that it's His power and not ourselves.

And that's just, you know, hopefully you'll kind of see that when we get down to verse 7 here. So that's kind of a short outline of the verses. And that's actually from the Macaulay era. For we do not preach ourselves, but Christ Jesus is Lord. So basically, for is like an indeed, a kind of a sharp indeed. And the idea of preach is to herald, in general, to proclaim, to preach the gospel. And we see it in a couple of places. And this is just the word generically used.

Now in those days John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness of Judea. He's not preaching the gospel in this case, but he's proclaiming. He's proclaiming What God had him do, that he was a forerunner to Christ, that was his message that he put out. So preaching is heralding, getting out the news.

And then in the Galatians passage it talks about the fact that, let's read that, Galatians 2.2. It was because of a revelation that I went up and I submitted to them the gospel which I preach among the Gentiles. But I did so in private to those who were in reputation for fear that I might be running or had run in vain. Great, thank you. So Paul's preaching the gospel, he's getting out the good news about the Lord Jesus.

So it basically says here, for we do not, we do not preach ourselves. And I kind of went through this various verses that kind of talk about, Paul talks about the fact that he's not going to to build himself up. And this is one of the ones that kind of alludes to that.

Not that we lord it over your faith, but we are workers with you for your joy. For in your faith, you are standing firm. I actually found a better one. If someone could read 1 Thessalonians 2, 5, and 6. For neither at any time used we flattering words, as you know, nor cloak of covetousness, God is with me. Nor of men sought we glory, neither of you, nor yet of others. when we might have been burdensome as the apostles of Christ. We didn't come in flattering speech. We didn't have a pretext. What we meant is what we said. We did not seek glory from men. He's pointing out that he wasn't preaching himself, basically. That's the first part.

We do not preach ourselves, but we do preach Christ Jesus as Lord. So what I found was there are several verses, and I have two here, that are going to actually use the idea that Jesus is Lord. I think as Lord is important because it's Jesus Christ the Lord, but I don't think you have to make it Some will say, well, unless you make Jesus Christ your Lord, you can't be saved. So you can go off on that rabbit trail. I don't think that's the intent of Paul here. I think the intent is that Jesus Christ is Lord, and he preached the full message about who Jesus Christ is.

So there's two passages I have. Let's just look at them. Actually, the first one is, if you confess with your mouth Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart, That's that passage. But the other one that was more interesting is the one about on the road to Emmaus. Acts 26, 12 through 18. I'll get someone to read that. And this is where he kind of gets a full impact of who Jesus Christ is. I was so engaged as I was journeying to Damascus with the authority and commission of the chief priests At midday, O King, I saw the way of light from heaven, brighter than the sun, shining all around me and those who were journeying with me.

And when we had all fallen to the ground, I heard a voice saying to me in the Hebrew dialect, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? It is hard for you to kick against the ghost. And I said, who are you, Lord? And the Lord said, I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.

But get up and stand on your feet, for this purpose I have appeared to you, to appoint you a minister and a witness, not only to the things which you have seen, but also to the things which I will appear to you, arresting you from the Jewish people and from the Gentiles to whom I am sending, to open their eyes so that they may turn from darkness to light, from the dominion of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and inheritance among those who have been sanctified by faith in me. kind of proclaiming that Christ is Lord there. Actually, I was kind of noticing later on, in 18, they're talking about opening their eyes from darkness to light.

So light is used a lot in scripture, talking about the truth of what we have. Also, you could point to the fact that we talked about earlier in 1 Corinthians 15 that Jesus Christ, the preaching of Jesus Christ, it says in 1 Corinthians 15 verse 1, the gospel which I preach to you. That's kind of the introduction to the gospel. So we see there's a sharp contrast between we do not preach ourselves, we preach Christ Jesus as Lord, So, what is the believer's role?

Paul is going to talk about it next, and ourselves as your bond-servant for Jesus' sake. Actually, what an interesting thing here. Read this carefully. You first read this and you can think, well, we're a bond-servant of Jesus Christ. That's what he's trying to tell me. But no, what he's telling us is, we're your bond-servant. He's telling the Corinthians, It's both true that we are bondservants of Jesus Christ. But Paul is saying he is a bondservant of the Corinthians as well. So I think that's kind of cool. He's saying that our ministry is one of being a bondservant. And so that's kind of cool. And so there's various verses that talk about that.

I like the verse Galatians 5.13. And you can find a bunch of verses that we'll talk about as being... Let's try 513. I'm sorry. In fact, I'll just go ahead and read it. Let me just read it then, since I messed up there.

It says, For you were called to freedom, brethren. Only do not turn your freedom into an opportunity for the flesh. Through love, serve one another. And that serve... It's a related word, and the word for slave is the word doulos, and actually I have it next year. Bond servant or slave, it's the word doulos. And it speaks of voluntary service, implying obedience and devotion. And actually I had, and that's the verse we just talked about. I got a little ahead of myself there, but that's the one about, I love serving one another.

So it's both true in Galatians 1.10 it talks about that we're bondservants. I'll just read that.

1.10 says we're bondservants of the Lord, bondservants of Jesus Christ. It says, for I am not seeking the favor of men or of God, for I am striving to please men, If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a bondservant of Christ. So we're both a bondservant of Christ and a bondservant of men. But his point here is that we are bondservant of men.

And what's the reason for that? It's for Jesus' sake or because of Jesus. As I was studying, there's an old observation that's been said about this verse. The first observation is that 5a, we have Paul as a proclaimer. And in 5b, we have Paul as a pastor or under-shepherd. So there's kind of two aspects. He proclaims Christ, and then his ministry is one of being a bondservant because of Jesus. I thought that was kind of cool. And then in Peter here, it talks about the, It talks about the shepherd in line with the fact, and actually that's kind of where we get the definition of under-shepherd. And could someone read the 1 Peter 5 for me? Shepherd the flock of God which is among you, serving as overseers, not by compulsion but willingly, not for dishonest gain but eagerly. Good, thank you.

So that kind of puts it all, remember Paul had every right, he had every right as an apostle to Lord over, he didn't do that. He was a bondservant, and that's just basically what he says. He has we in here, so that's Paul. For we do not preach ourselves, but Jesus Christ is Lord, and ourselves as your bondservant for Jesus' sake. So that kind of sets the tone for this section. One of the things that I think is important here is that we see, for we do not preach ourselves, but Christ Jesus as Lord. We see Lord and then of course you get the Lordship Salvation. I know, you can go off on that rabbit trail.

The thing that's interesting is that that principle of Jesus as Lord is an alignment from the Gospels of God the Father being called Lord, or God being called Lord, is not just Jesus. It's not just Jesus Christ. It's Jesus Christ associated with God the Father. And so the idea in clarity of the gospel is you're not just believing in a name. It's not just a person. It's fully God and fully man, who said again in Jesus. And so when we get wrapped around the idea of Jesus as Lord, If we don't recognize that it has to do with this deity, and instead we strap to it a position of authority, we miss the point. Right, right.

Well, it's interesting, I had a discussion with a person recently, and they did not basically, they said, well, I've heard about 1 Corinthians 15, and I believe 1 Corinthians 15, but I just don't believe that Jesus is God. And I said, well, And the person said, I guess I'm not saved, which I thought was really, that was actually, Lord, we're going to keep talking. I said, that's really, that's interesting. The person recognized that and said, but I don't, he's not, he's not God.

This is a particular person, I believe he's a God or, you know, they haven't, they've demoted him anyway. But that's so critical that he is, he is who he says he is. If he's not, He's not able to pay the price for our sins unless he's God. It's impossible for that to happen.

So that's key. And the Lord part, actually, that's where the Lord part is key. So that's great. Thank you. For God who said, light shines out of darkness, is the one who is shown in our hearts. The one who is shown in our hearts. OK? Hot key, because, literally because, God who said, light shines out of darkness.

So go back to Genesis. I'll just read this part. Genesis 1. I like to read a little bit beyond verse 3 there. It's not often you get to go to the first book of the Bible. Even though we do study Genesis. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep.

And the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters. And God said, let there be light. And there was light. And God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness. I'll just stop there. So basically, the point here is that He's going to focus back on the physical light that illumined all men. He's going to focus on that. And he's going to say, this is a god who said, light shines out of darkness. This is the one who is shown. Shown is this idea to shine, give light. And a couple of verses there. Let me just see about those.

So this is just going to show, can someone read the Matthew 5.16 passage? Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven. So this is the one who is shown, it's going to show in our hearts that that can happen, that 5.16 can be true. The Proverbs passage is a passage that This is in the Septuagint, which means when the Greeks translated the Old Testament, they used this same word.

And it talks there about the light of the dawn. It's not actually all that explanatory. But what is good here is this parallel idea of the one who is shown in our hearts. And we actually have kind of seen that parallel idea back in the first part of chapter 3. So let's go back there. And look at that for a second. So back to chapter three. And I'll just go ahead and read this part.

Are we beginning to commend ourselves again, or do we need as some letters of commendation to you or from you? You are letters written in our hearts, known and read by all men, being manifested that you are a letter of Christ cared for by us, written not with ink, but with the spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone, but on tablets of the human heart. So I thought it was interesting that we see here, and actually I wondered here, So you see here where it says, light that shines out of darkness is the one who is shown in our hearts.

So if you look at this verse here in 3.3, it says the Holy Spirit, it says the Holy Spirit with the Spirit of the living God, not in tapas of stone, on tapas of the human heart. It focused on the Spirit of God riding on the tapas of the human heart. So I kind of wondered, You know, just as a parallel idea, this is really focused probably on the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the one who is giving us the light. And that's kind of consistent with other places, I think. So we can kind of see that consistency as we look at 3.3. So we have the Holy Spirit riding upon our hearts.

This is the one who's shown in our hearts and he's going to tell us, he's going to give us something, give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. Now, the 219 talks about a lamp shining in a dark place, a prophetic word. Anyway, so I kind of saw a parallel here with the fact that earlier we saw that he writes on tablets of the human heart. Well, now he's going to give us a light of the knowledge of the glory of Christ. I mentioned before, earlier on, he wants to give us this expanded knowledge of who Jesus Christ is and his glorious nature.

Okay, so let's go on. To give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God. So actually, based on this contrast here. So actually, there's like three things I found. You have in verse six here, we have the glory of God, light of the knowledge of the glory of God. We have in verse four, we have the light of the gospel of the glory of God.

And then 3.18, Let's turn to 2 Corinthians 3.18. What do we have there? We have what you just studied a couple of weeks ago. It says, Beholding as an emir the glory of the Lord. So we have the We have the glory of God, we have the glory of Christ, and the glory of the Lord. All with different aspects and different things that the Lord's doing in our heart. I thought it was just kind of amazing. It's like a triple threat program. There's even more. This is just a set of passages in Corinthians.

So we have the knowledge of the glory of God, the gospel, the light of the gospel, the glory of God, and then we have his written word, the mirror, is the glory of the Lord. Kind of interesting, all that similar phraseology there. So we have it resulting in an illumination being given of the knowledge of the glory of God.

And it's in the face of Christ. And actually, if you don't look, what do you think, I'm kind of giving away, what do you think the face of Christ means? If you look at your notes, if you look at the definition of the word, you'll figure it out. What do you think he's trying to convey to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ?

One thing could be And I saw some people kind of go down that path. They'll say, well, that's kind of focusing on his physical, he has a glorious countenance, right? But if you look at what the word says, what that word means, the word for face, prosopon, it actually has the idea of presence of a person. So if you look at these couple of verses, Josh, the face is considered the noblest part. So if you're in some person's presence, you're in their face, it being in your face so to speak, that's kind of a negative aspect of this, but I didn't think about that, get in his face, but you're in his presence, right? That's the whole idea, you're so close in his presence it's uncomfortable.

So I don't know, it kind of fit that the point here is that this light of the knowledge of the glory of God is in Christ's presence and we learned A couple weeks ago in 318, we had the idea that we saw his word and reading his word, the mirror, that was one level of interface with him. We have to have the facts, but the next is sort of this communion with him in John 17, talking about that we see ourselves where we are with him and we're abiding with him and fellowshipping with him. So I think it fits better the fact that this is the presence of a person. And the two verses here kind of carry the idea across.

Could someone read Acts 3.13? And this is going to pick up the idea of presence, not so much the topic of this verse here, the glory of God here. More about the presence idea.

Acts 3.13. God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, our fathers, has glorified his son Jesus, whom he delivered up and denied him in his presence. of Pilate when he was determined to let go. So you could have rendered this with this prosopon, you could have said, in the face of Pilate. So that could have been rendered that way.

So I'm just trying to give you some logic here for why I think that it's in the face of Christ preached to be in the presence of Christ. And for the believer now, we can't physically be in Christ's presence. We're with him in fellowship. We're with him spiritually, not physically. And then the second Thessalonians 1, and these will pay the penalty of eternal destruction away from the presence of the Lord, or the face of the Lord, you could say, and from the glory of his power. So when you see the face of something, think of presence. Actually, we're going to see it next week a little bit when we look at the next couple of verses. That will kind of come up again, this idea of face or presence. So are you kind of okay with that? I think that's pretty reasonable. Okay, good. Okay, so now I found a couple more things I like from Macaulay here.

He did a little summary of verse 6, kind of showing some parallels. So we have, in verse 6 we have the first part is, let there be light, and then we have light of the knowledge of the glory of God. So we're going to fill each of these columns out. So the first point is that In Genesis, we see universal light. It was dark, and God created physical, universal light. While the light of the knowledge of the glory of God is only for those who put their faith and trust in Jesus Christ. They have the spiritual light. Then we have light generated by His word.

Actually, it's in both cases. Maybe a little bit different idea, right? He spoke the word, and there was light. In this case, it's by the written word, certainly, and actually by the word Jesus Christ. That's generated by the knowledge of the glory of God. And then lastly, it dispels physical darkness versus dispels spiritual darkness.

You probably could add more to this list, but I thought these points were kind of neat. But we have this treasure in earthen vessels. And we're going to see the purpose of that in a second. But we have this treasure in earthen vessels. Okay, so what... Let's just look at the word. Literally it could be now. We have, or literally we are having, it's continuous action in the present, present tense, we're having, we're continually having this treasure in earthen vessels.

And treasure here is the idea of anything laid up in store metaphorically of spiritual treasures. And let's see, did I have... Okay, I didn't actually have verses for treasure. Okay, so I guess the big question is, what do you think this treasure is referring to?

And I don't think it's hard. Once you see it, I think it's easy. But I think in the context of what we've seen, and the other two verses, I think there's something that seems to be, at least to me, seems pretty obvious. I think most people kind of agree. So what's the treasure? But we have this treasure. He went through and he talked about, in verse 5 and verse 6, anything that kind of pops out there that you would say is a treasure.

Is it Jesus Christ? What's that? Is it Jesus Christ? Or the Holy Spirit? Keep going. Is it the knowledge of the glory of God? Wouldn't you say, isn't that the pivotal part of this passage? It's the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. That's a treasure that we have. We have this treasure. We get to experience the knowledge of the glory of God. That's all who he is and what he's done. So that's the treasure, right? That seems to be the treasure.

Most people I've come across agree with that. And it's in context. One of the key things in the context of the passage So that treasure, I didn't put it down there intentionally. I didn't want you to know what my thoughts were to start with. You guys answered good. That's great. Don't believe it because I say it. Look at it and convince yourself. If you have something different or you want to add to it, I'm fine with that too.

But I think it focuses back on the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the presence of Christ. Isn't that what the Christian life is about? Isn't that what we spend our time with Him? We see about who He is and what He's done, who we are in Him. It's all about that interaction and that knowledge that we have.

That's why that knowledge, I think, kind of moves from the light of the gospel knowledge to this knowledge of this further knowledge, if you will. And here's the amazing part. It's in earthen vessels. It's figuratively of the human body formed of clay and fragile and feeble. And then we have verses that talk about that.

Could somebody read 2 Corinthians? Let's go back there to 5. 5.1 has the same word, earthen vessels. It's translated a little bit differently. Can someone read 2 Corinthians 5.1?

For we know that if the earthly tent, which is our house, is torn down, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. So it's rendered their earthly tent. It's also rendered vessels in other places. So we have this marvelous, we have this treasure.

Like I said, this is kind of the paradox. We have this treasure of unimaginable value, but it's in earthen vessels. So the next part of the verse is going to explain God's thinking, if you will. Whenever you see a so that or whenever you see that or so that, that's going to give an explanation for the previous part. He says, but we have this treasure in earthen vessels so that, or this is the reason we have that. This is the reason that we have that situation.

With a purpose that? Surpassing Greatness. This is one I love Vern's. He would get out and he'd show something. He'd have a ball. Ballo is the word for B-O-L-E. And it's hyper. You're throwing your ball to your buddy, and you throw it two miles past him. Where did that one go? So it's just way over the top. It's just not greatness. It's surpassing greatness. It goes way over the top.

So God wants to show, by putting this treasure and this weak, feeble vessels, this knowledge of the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ, He wants to show his power. He's doing that intentionally. He's not doing that haphazardly. He's doing that intentionally. Let's read that one.

2 Corinthians 12.7. Can someone read that? That's going to give us expansion on the word there.

Because of the surpassing greatness and revelation For this reason, to keep me from exalting myself, there was given me a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan, to torment me, to keep me from exalting myself." If you go on that passage, it's actually going to fit in with the fact that Paul is going to say, God's purpose is exalted in my weakness. When I am weak, then I am strong.

It's going to be a whole paradox that we see here. But the main thing here is the surpassing greatness of the revelation. The revelation that Paul got on Damascus Road. Actually, this is a different one. He's speaking in 12.7. He's speaking of the fact that this is his whole ministry. Let me just go back and make sure I'm getting off the track here.

This is basically the first verse in the Thorn in the Flesh. He's just speaking of that God purposely gave him this Thorn in the Flesh to keep him from exalting himself. God had a purpose in that. surpassing greatness of power will be of God and not from ourselves. So God wants to show that his methods and his ways, that's his purpose and it won't be from ourselves. So we kind of covered this a little bit back earlier, so let's go back to chapter 2 of Actually, last year he covered it. 1 Corinthians chapter 2. So in there it says, this is 1 Corinthians 2 verse 1.

And when I came to you, brethren, I did not come to you with superiority of speech or with wisdom proclaiming to you the testimony of God. For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. And I was with you in weakness, in fear, and much trembling. And my message and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith would not rest upon men's wisdom, but on the power of God." So Paul, he's given this message kind of before. It's to rest upon God's power and not power from ourselves.

And I think one of the classic verses here, classic chapter, it's the one in Judges here. This is the one, actually before I tell you about it, let's just go there for a second. You all know the story pretty well, I'm sure. Let's turn to Judges. And you talk to any general, any man of war, and you say, here's our plan. Here's what we're going to do. And they're going to say, you're out of your mind.

But God's going to show you. His power, this is a classic illustration of It's God's power, not ourselves. So could someone read actually Judges 7, 2 through 8. It's not too many verses there, 2 through 8. This is the one where God, this is God's plan for victory. Not man's plan.

The Lord said to Gideon, the people who are with you are too many for me to give Midian into their hands. For Israel would become boastful, saying, My own power has delivered me. Now therefore come, proclaim in the hearing of the people, saying, whoever is afraid and trembling, let him return and depart from Mount Gilead. So 22,000 people returned, but 10,000 remained. Then the Lord said to Gideon, the people are still too many.

Bring them down to the water, and I will test them for you there. Therefore it shall be that he of whom I say to you, this one shall go with you, he shall go with you. But everyone of whom I say to you, this one shall not go with you, he shall not go." So he brought the people down to the water and the Lord said to Gideon, you shall separate everyone who lapsed the water with his tongue as a dog lapsed. I'm glad you're reading this because it always makes me laugh. Thank you for reading it.

Now the number of those who lapped putting their hand to their mouth was 300 men. that all the rest of the people kneel to drink water. The Lord said to Gideon, I will deliver you with the 300 men who leapt, and will give the Midianites into your hands. So let all the other people go, each man to his home. So the 300 men took the people's provisions and the trumpets into their hands. And Gideon sent all the other men of Israel, each to his tent, but retained 300 men. And the camp of many was below him in the valley.

So, you know, it's just it's just our ways. His ways are not our ways. It's just it's just totally different. Now, I'm proposing you go out and you know, that's that's actually the problem is people read about Gideon and then they start doing things. Well, yeah. And the problem is, well, OK, hey, we'll just, you know.

But anyway, the point is that it's His power and not ourselves. He wants us to be trusting Him. His solution is not our solution. His way is not our way. And then I just have one last little point here. The contrast of God and from ourselves. So that's the contrast. That we have this treasure in earthen vessels with a purpose that The surpassing greatness of his power will be of God and not of ourselves. So that's those three verses.

Next we come up with a really interesting section talking about the trials and what the Lord is doing, how he's working through that, and how these difficult things that we may go through in life, that he has a plan and a purpose for those. And he will use those.

So any last thoughts or questions? I thought you'd explain it a little more. How is it laughing this way? Well, the only thing would be you could argue that that was because they were eager to go fight. I mean, I don't know. That's just when I looked at that. Well, it's sort of like, well, I actually have some pictures. I think Vern's had some pictures. Go ahead if you have something.

Yeah, what I heard was that the fact that if you're down on the, you know, drinking the water like a dog does, You're not aware of anything going around. The enemy can attack while you're down. If you're going like this, you're dead. It shows more trust after you're down left because you're more vulnerable.

I thought it showed readiness. They were anxious and ready to go fight. I mean, if you're going to have people fight, right? You want them to be ready, right? You don't want them to say, well, let me think about that. You notice he set all those doubts or concerns. He sent those guys, all the people home. You all go home. Well, let's just go ahead and close.

We thank you, Father. We thank you so much, Lord, for this day. Father, we thank you for the blessings we have. Lord, thank you that your desire is, Lord, that we trust you, that we recognize the wonderful treasure we have. And as you talked about those various kinds of glory, glory of the Lord, glory of Christ, and the glory of God. All those different aspects of your glory that we have the privilege of, as the Holy Spirit enlightens our minds, shows us the wonderful things of Christ. Thank you for this opportunity. In Christ's name, Amen.