Hear now the Word of God. For our boast is this, the testimony of our conscience that we behaved in the world with simplicity and godly sincerity, not by earthly wisdom, but by the grace of God and supremely so toward you. For we are not writing to you anything other than what you read and understand. And I hope you will fully understand, just as you did partially understand us, that on the day of our Lord Jesus, you will boast of us as we will boast of you. Because I was sure of this, I wanted to come to you first so that you might have a second experience of grace. I wanted to visit you on my way to Macedonia and to come back to you from Macedonia and have you send me on my way to Judea. Was I vacillating when I wanted to do this? Do I make my plans according to the flesh, ready to say yes, yes, and no, no at the same time? As surely as God is faithful, our word to you has not been yes and no. For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, whom we proclaimed among you, Sylvanus and Timothy and I, was not yes and no, but in Him it is always yes. For all the promises of God find their yes in Him. That is why through Him we utter the Amen to God for His glory. And it is God who establishes us with you in Christ and has anointed us and who has also put his seal on us and given us his spirit in our hearts as a guarantee. But I call God to witness against me. It was to spare you that I refrained from coming again to Corinth. Not that we lorded over your faith, but we work with you for your joy. For you stand firm in your faith. Let's pray. Father, this is your holy word to us, your church, your people. We have heard it with our ears, just as you gave it to the Apostle Paul. We pray that you would write it on our hearts. and that it would penetrate deeply and would bring forth fruit in our lives. That our faith in you would be more firm, that our confidence in you would be more strong, that our love for you would be more steadfast, even as your love for us is indeed steadfast in Christ. It's in His name we pray. Amen. Amen. You may be seated. I'd like to begin by asking you a question. It's an unusual question. Be honest as you think of your answer. When you think of God, do you think yes or no? Let me be more specific. When you think of how God responds to your truest desires, your deepest needs, your most heartfelt longings, do you think his response to you is most commonly, no, you can't have that, or yes, I will give you that? Now, the problem with that setup is, in part, how we understand our truest desires, our deepest needs, and our most heartfelt longings. And we'll talk about that later. But also, I think if we're self-aware and we're honest, we know that our response to that question fluctuates depending on how we feel. And too often, we project our fluctuating feelings onto God. And we think that our relationship with God is a bit like that game we used to play when we were little. We had the flower, and we'd pick off the petals. He loves me. He loves me not. He loves me. He loves me not. Oh, I'm doing great. I read my Bible. I had my quiet time. I mean, I went to church. Wasn't that hymn lovely? He loves me. Oh, I lost my temper with my spouse. Oh, I said something to my co-worker that I really shouldn't have said. Oh, I really am doubting whether or not I really believe all this stuff is true. Oh, maybe he loves me not. Oh, what a great quiet time I had with the Lord. You know, I'm sure he loves me. And you know, oh, what a wretched sinner I am. I'm sure he loves me not. And we go back and forth and back and forth. But God never changes. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good. His steadfast love endures forever. That's the common Thanksgiving refrain we find throughout Scripture. God does not change. His heart for his own, his covenant promises, his determined goodness toward his own, his steadfast love, his yes in Christ is unchanging. But circumstances can sometimes lead us to think otherwise. The church in Corinth, they weren't sure if the Apostle Paul really loved them or not. The Apostle Paul had made a change in his travel plans. He had modified what he was planning on doing for good reason, but they didn't really understand the reason, and they just thought, well, he wanted to come visit us, and now he's not gonna come visit us. Maybe he loved us, maybe he doesn't love us anymore, and they're playing that flower petal game with the Apostle Paul. And there's people in the church who are stirring that up to say, hey, you can't really rely on this Paul character He is not trustworthy. He says yes when he means no at the same time. But Paul wants to clarify to them that he is not saying yes and no to them at the same time. It's not that he used to love them and now he's mad at them, but rather he has always dealt with them in what he calls simplicity and godly sincerity. He always has dealt with them as a father with children, always loving them, always wanting their good, and sometimes, because of how they were acting, that meant that his plans had to change, because what would be for their good might change. But it was always for their good. what we read. He says, "...for our boast is this, the testimony of our conscience, that we behaved in the world with simplicity and godly sincerity, not by earthly wisdom, but by the grace of God, and supremely so toward you. For we are not writing to you anything than what you read and understand, and I hope you will fully understand, just as you did partially understand us, that on the day of our Lord Jesus we will boast in you You will boast in us, rather, as we will boast in you. And so, what Paul is saying is, you know how there's some people who say something nice to you, but there's something in between the lines of what they say, right? and you kind of get the idea that they're being nice, they're saying nice things, but underneath it all, probably not, right? And that's actually the way the super apostles, we're gonna deal with them a little bit more later in the book, but these super apostles who were so impressed with themselves and their rhetorical gifts and who demanded to be well-paid and highly honored, these super apostles, they came into Corinth And they basically flattered, because one of the things, if you're really skilled in rhetoric, is you can really, really flatter someone. And what they were doing was flattering with a purpose to get money from them, or to get loyalty from them. And of course, one of the things that you do when you're flattering someone is that you paint the person who's opposing you in the most negative light possible. So Paul has already called out these so-called super apostles. He's gonna do it later in the book. And so what they would have to do is counter this. Now that's hard to do with the Apostle Paul. He's the spiritual father of the church in Corinth. He's an apostle. He's the best, most widely traveled missionary in the history of the church. He's the most successful church planter around, and so how do you badmouth the Apostle Paul? Well, it seems like they made a lot out of his change in travel plans. He said he was going to come, and then he didn't. But Paul says, because I was sure of this, I wanted to come to you first, so that you might have a second experience of grace, or a double experience of grace. I wanted to visit you on my way to Macedonia, and to come back to you from Macedonia, and have you send me on my way to Judea. Was I vacillating when I wanted to do this? Do I make my plans according to the flesh, ready to say yes, yes, and no, no at the same time? As surely as God is faithful, our word has not been yes and no. Paul is defending, you can see in those verses, Paul is defending his own apostolic credentials, not because he's really all that concerned with having everybody like him and speak well of him. He's not a needy people-pleaser who's like, oh, the people in Corinth don't like me, I better write to them and make sure they like me. No, he has a much deeper and more serious concern. He is a real apostle. not a fake apostle. He preaches the true gospel of Jesus Christ, not an imitation gospel. And if they reject him, the risk is that they're going to reject Christ and the real gospel that he's brought to them, and they'll instead go after a cheap substitute gospel, which is what the super apostles were preaching, a gospel in which Christians, by the way, don't suffer or experience any kind of distress. because the argument against Paul seems to have three main points to it. Number one, he's rather unimpressive, don't you think? A leather worker? Tent maker? All he spoke about was Jesus Christ and him crucified. He didn't do any of the wise rhetoric things that we're used to seeing from professional speakers. He didn't even take a salary from us. He's an amateur. Second, that guy is always in trouble. He is constantly suffering hardship. This group over here is trying to get on that group over there. They beat him over here. They put him in prison over here. He's constantly going from one form of trial and suffering to another. Maybe God's not happy with him. Oh, and you know what? He's also always changing his mind. He almost seems to stumble his way through life instead of charting a clear course and sticking with it. You know, what's interesting about all three of those accusations that were being made against Paul is that those same accusations could be made against the Lord Jesus, and actually were. Because for the Son of God, he was rather unimpressive in his appearance and demeanor, son of a carpenter, from a backwater town that few people had ever heard of, or nobody important ever came from there. He suffered, he was rejected by every major group in Israel. The Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Herodians, the Zealots, they didn't agree on anything except one thing, they all hated Jesus. He suffered much, and he did keep moving around. He would go to this area, then he would leave that area, he'd go over here, and he was kind of hard to predict. So again, one of the things you have to get to get 2 Corinthians is Paul sees himself as being in Christ, and he sees Christ as being the center and core of his ministry. So for someone to reject him and his ministry is running the risk that they're going to reject Christ, because what he's doing is just what Christ would do, and what he's preaching is just who Christ is. So that's his real concern. So what were Paul's travel plans, and why did he change them? I gave you a little map on your insert. I don't do this very often, but this is one passage that might be helpful for you to have a map. And you're probably not going to be able to read it. I should have made it sideways. This is the missionary world of the Apostle Paul. When he wrote 1 Corinthians, he was in Ephesus, and you see Ephesus right across the water from Corinth. Ephesus is in Asia Minor, present-day Turkey. Corinth is in Greece, or Achaia, as it was known then, Greece. So he was in Ephesus. He's writing to Corinth. His plan was to go to Macedonia. That's up north where you see Philippi and Thessalonica. His original plan was he wanted to go through Corinth and then up to Thessalonica and Philippi and then back down through Corinth and then across to Ephesus and then down to Judea. His whole trip, by the way, the purpose of it, as we'll find out later in the letter, is he's taking up a collection for needy saints in Jerusalem. There had been a great famine in Judea. all of the Christians were being discriminated against because they had all been kicked out of their synagogues, and so he's taking up an offering to go and relieve, do famine relief for those who were in Judea. And it's taking a while to get all these things together, but he wants This is where this idea, this second experience of grace, in verse 15, I wanted to come to you first so that you might have a second experience of grace, because I wanted to visit you on my way to Macedonia, and to come back to you from Macedonia, and have you send me on my way to Judea. It's the same word in Greek would be second or double and so it could be a double experience of grace. In other words, Paul would minister to them on his way up and minister to them on his way down. They would get a double experience of grace from having him come and minister the word among them and also being able to be of service to him twice in taking the gospel forward and in collecting this offering for the saints in Jerusalem. So that's what he means by second experience of grace. I do have to say, just as an aside, there are some Christians who have read into this phrase a whole theology that's not here. There's a whole group of Christians who follow in the teaching of John Wesley, who see in here a second experience of grace or a second blessing and that is they say you first come to Christ and you come to salvation and your sins are forgiven and you're justified but then you have a second experience of grace or a second blessing that's being baptized in the Holy Spirit and having a radically transformative experience that leads to total sanctification and in total sanctification You don't sin, and you don't want to sin anymore. So it's a form of perfectionism. And they get this phrase from this passage here. See, the Apostle Paul's talking about a second experience of grace. He had already been to Corinth, had already preached the gospel, they'd already become Christians. Now he wants to go back and give them the Holy Spirit. so they can be baptized in the Holy Spirit, so they can be totally sanctified. He's waiting for them to be repentant before he's wanting to go back in, because he can't go and give that to them. So what they do is they take a phrase, and they read a whole theology into it, which isn't there. Paul is simply saying, I wanted to see you on my way, and I wanted to see you when I came back, I wanted to come twice, I wanted to bless you with God's Word twice. That's all he's saying. It's not this second experience of grace. To be clear, The Bible is very clear that all Christians, all of those who trust in Jesus Christ for salvation, have the Holy Spirit. Because without the work of the Holy Spirit, we can't trust in Christ for salvation. As many as are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God, Romans 8 says. Not some of those who are sons of God are led by the Spirit of God, and some aren't. There aren't haves and have-nots in the Christian world. There aren't some people who have the Holy Spirit and some people who don't. If you're a believer, you have the Holy Spirit. And sanctification, for all believers, we are all sanctified. We've all been called by God. We've all been set apart for God. We are all holy in Christ. And we are all being sanctified. We are being made more holy in our character and our conduct. So the sanctification is, for all Christians, both a finished reality in Christ and an ongoing experience of growth. There's no two classes of Christians. There's not those who have and those who don't. So that's not what Paul means here. What he means is that he wanted to be a blessing to them, but he had to change his mind. Why? Again, you have to have a little bit of history. So remember, Paul writes 1 Corinthians, and when he writes 1 Corinthians, one of the things he's doing is he's calling upon them to to deal with a particularly notorious, sinful person within their congregation. We'll deal with this more next week as we get into how the case was resolved, but it appears to me that this is the case of the man who had his mother-in-law, who was sleeping with his father's wife, sorry, his stepmom, his father's wife. And so, in this case, Paul said, you have to deal with this. This is notorious sin. You're openly boasting of your tolerance of it, but you need to deal with it. You need to put him out of the fellowship. You need to put him under church discipline. And he, in 1 Corinthians, when he writes to them, he says he's sending Timothy, and he expects them to take care of this, or else he's gonna have to come himself, and it's not gonna be good. So this is what we read in 1 Corinthians 4. I did not write these things to you to make you ashamed. but to admonish you as my beloved children. For though you have countless guides in Christ, you do not have many fathers. for I became your father in Christ Jesus through the gospel. I urge you then, be imitators of me. This is why I sent to you Timothy, my beloved and faithful child in the Lord, to remind you of my ways in Christ, as I teach them everywhere in the church. Some are arrogant, as though I were not coming to you. But I will come to you soon, if the Lord wills, and I will find out not the talk of these arrogant people, but their power. For the kingdom of God does not consist in talk, but in power. What do you wish? Shall I come to you with a rod or with love in the spirit of gentleness? That's pretty strong language, but it's language of love. Kids, your parents love you. Your parents love you more than you can even begin to understand. You'll only begin to understand it when you become parents yourself. Your parents love you more than you can imagine. Sometimes they express that love for you by cheering for you and encouraging you and saying, good job, way to go. Sometimes they express that love for you with a different response, a response of discipline, because what you've done is actually harmful to yourself. And because they love you, they want to lead you away from that which hurts you. Just like if you had some piece of metal, you know, you see a little toddler piece of metal and they're heading toward an electrical outlet. A loving parent doesn't say, oh, what a good job. You go ahead and stick that in there. You'll have such a fun time. No, you grab the child, you say no, and you get them away. So as you grow up, you obviously know better than to stick pieces of metal or electrical outlets, but we do other stupid things, things that we shouldn't do, things that hurt us, things that hurt others. And our parents, because they love us, They say, get away from that, get that out of your life. That's wrong, that's bad, and they're not doing it because they don't like you, they're doing it because they love you, right? So it is with God, and so it is with Paul and the Corinthians. They were tolerating gross immorality, and they had to deal with it. So Paul sends 1 Corinthians, and Paul sends Timothy, and it doesn't go well. So Paul sends another, more painful letter, and Paul makes himself the painful visit that he told them in 1 Corinthians 4 he was gonna have to make. And it still doesn't go well. And so now he's stuck with, what am I gonna do? I'm not gonna come again. I've already written to you. I've already sent Timothy. I've already written to you again. I've already come myself. You still haven't dealt with this problem in your church. Boy, I'd love to be able to stop in on my way to Macedonia and bring you a blessing. I'd love to stop in on my way back from Macedonia and bring you, but I, there's no point in me coming right now until you do, I've already told you what you need to do. So he's trying to give them time and space to repent so that when he comes to them, he can come to them with encouragement and with, you know, a well done. Thankfully, as we'll find out next week, they actually do deal with the situation, which he gets the report from Titus that they've dealt with it, and now he's writing 2 Corinthians and saying, good job. So he's in Macedonia, and he's gonna stop in on his way through, because they've done what they're supposed to do. So here's what they were missing. It is because Paul's heart for them did not change, that his plans had to change. because he still loved them and was still concerned for them, it wouldn't have done any good for him to make that extra visit. They knew what they needed to do, and Paul was waiting for them to do it, and thankfully they did. But he wants them to know his heart toward them is unwavering because, again, he wants them to see that his heart really is a reflection of God's own heart for them. So he wraps up this section by saying, do I make my plans according to the flesh, ready to say yes, yes, and no, no at the same time? As surely as God is faithful, verse 18, as surely as God is faithful, our word to you has not been yes and no. So that's where he starts pointing us in this higher direction. It's not about me and my faithfulness, Paul says. It's about you understanding God's faithfulness. So then he gives us two verses that, to me, are among the best verses in the Bible. I don't think I'm supposed to have best verses in the Bible. It's all the Bible, right? But he gets to 19 and 20, and we get to four clauses. He's explaining the reason for this. And the reasons he gives, the first and the second reason, in verse 19 and 20, are just wonderful, important truths that are so important for us to understand and grasp, because they really are the heart of God for us. Verse 19, for the Son of God, Jesus Christ, whom we proclaimed among you, Silvanus and Timothy and I, the implication is not those super apostles who are fakes, but the real ministers, the Son of God, Jesus Christ, whom we proclaimed among you was not yes and no, but in Him, it is always yes. Nothing is more disastrous for a Christian's spiritual stability and well-being than believing that the Son of God and our Savior Jesus Christ, the Righteous One Himself, might be sort of vacillating back and forth in His attitude toward you. If you think He wavers in His heart toward you, you will have no stability in your Christian life. Because he is the rock of ages. He is the rock of our salvation. He's the anchor for our souls who has entered into the holy place on our behalf. He is our high priest. He is our surety. He is our older brother. He is the one who is for us and who has shown how much he is for us by going to the cross and laying down his life for us, enduring unspeakable agony for us. And there's no way in the world after he's done all that that he's gonna say, I'm sorry. I'm just tired of you. This is like the 15th time we've gone over this thing. Okay? Forget it. Done with you. And then the next week, oh, okay. I mean, I guess we'll be all right. Jesus isn't like that. He is our rock. And so we need to believe that it is always yes in Him. Are my sins forgiven? Yes in Christ. Am I an adopted child of God? Yes, in Christ. Have I received every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places? Yes, in Christ. Do I have perfect and eternal joy waiting for me when this life is over? Yes, in Christ. Do I have a true and eternal home in the family of God? Yes in Christ. Am I a citizen of the heavenly kingdom? Yes in Christ. Further explaining how the Son of God is always yes. Why is it that it's always yes in Christ? You know, it's always yes in Christ. Why is that? How is that possible? Verse 20 comes along. If you're going to memorize a Bible verse, memorize 2 Corinthians 1. It is one of those to hide in your heart. For all the promises of God find their yes in Him. That is why it is through Him that we utter our amen to God for His glory. All the promises of God. no matter how many they may be, no matter what they may be, they are each and every one of them yes in Christ and Christ alone. That's why it's always yes in Christ and not yes and no. It's not like God made a list of promises and he said, here's a bunch of promises over here and here's a bunch of promises over here and here's a bunch of promises over here. And some of these I'm going to keep in Christ The rest of them, well, you're out of luck. I know they look nice, but you can't have them. No, they're all yes in Christ. Sinclair Ferguson was preaching on this passage, and I listened to it earlier this week, and he said at one time, he ran into someone at the end of a conference he was speaking at, and she came up and she had this book manuscript, and she brought it to him, and her friend was with her. And her friend said, oh, my friend here, she quit her job and devoted herself full-time to gathering together all of the first-class, top-rate promises of God in Scripture and putting them all together in one book that we're now sending off to the publisher. And we're wondering if you would bless the manuscript. I don't know what I would do if I was in that situation. I probably wouldn't be as nice as Sinclair Ferguson was. But I think his response to her was, I am sure that God will never fail to bless his word. Very nice response, right? But he said, what I felt like asking her was, which ones didn't make the cut? What'd you do with the second-rate promises of God? They're all yes in Christ. If we back up the tape of history, and we go to the beginning, we see that at the beginning, God created Adam and Eve, male and female, in His own image. and he walked with them in the Garden of Eden, and he gave them dominion over all of his creation. And the essence of the power and privilege of being made human was to be made in God's image, to have fellowship with God, and to be given dominion over creation as God's image bearers and vice regents over his creation. Great power, great privilege, and then we blew it. Adam and Eve chose to sin against God, marring the very image of God in them with sin, with evil. So now there was something in humanity that does not reflect God's character at all. There's still stuff in humanity that does reflect God's character, but we all know there's a whole bunch of stuff in humanity that doesn't reflect God's character at all. And so they hid in shame, and they lost their fellowship with God, and their relationship with God's creation was marred and fallen, marked by danger, fear, and bloodshed. And they were driven out of their home with God in paradise, and made to live mortal lives, their days numbered, and their lives marked by sin, alienation, and hostility. And whatever problem you can think that you ever have in life, it came from this point in human history. broken relationships, financial problems, health problems, mental health problems, pollution and creation, wars between nations, evil in the world, natural disasters. It all came from this point when Adam and Eve, chosen, blessed, privileged, broke covenant with God and were driven out. shame and sin. But even as they were driven out, they were given a picture and a promise. The picture they were given was the fact that God, they had clothed themselves with fig leaves. I don't know if you guys have much experience with fig leaves, but don't recommend wearing them. They had clothed themselves with fig leaves. God clothed them with animal skins. but a death was required for their clothing. God gave them a picture, and then God gave them a promise. God said to the serpent, I'm going to put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed, and you will crush his heel, but he will crush your head. So the seed of the woman would come to crush the head of the serpent. A picture and a promise was given at the beginning. And 2,000, 4,000, however many thousand years later, Jesus came to reverse all of this. He came to embody the perfect image of God that Adam was intended to be. He came to finish the work of Adam's perfect obedience that he had left undone. He came to take away the sin, guilt, and shame by taking it all on himself on the cross. And the most powerful word that was ever spoken by any human being, anywhere in the history of the world, was spoken by Jesus on the cross when he said, Tetelestai, in Greek, which we translate as, it is finished. All the promises of God, sin removed. Alienation solved. It's why the thick veil in the temple that had separated God from His people was torn in two from top to bottom when Jesus died, because now there was reconciliation between God and His people. It is finished. It is finished. It is finished. And then God gave his amen to the finished work of Christ by raising him from the dead three days later. And death and hell were conquered forever so that when we see Jesus again in the book of Revelation, he holds the keys of death and hell. He came as our Emmanuel God with us to bring us back to God, to reconcile all that was alienated, to mend all that was broken, and to raise all that was fallen. And he's coming again to finish the work and bring it to complete fruition. It's already been finished, but we're waiting for it to be revealed at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Do you know that all of the sinful worldly pleasures we chase after, to get back to our opening question, your deepest needs, your most heartfelt longings, You know that all the sinful worldly pleasures that we chase after to try to satisfy those things, they are all making false promises to give us what only God in Jesus Christ can give us. Peace, forgiveness, reconciliation, the removal of guilt and shame, eternal and unfailing joy, and so much more. The world The world has only shadowy, temporary, cheap imitations of these things, and they're always followed by regret, and they always take more than they can give. Satan has no power to create anything. He only has power to distort, and he only has a heart to steal. But all of God's promises are yes in Christ. And because all of God's promises are yes in Christ, it is through Him that we utter our amen to God for His glory. Our amen is our yes back to God in response to His yes in Christ. Jesus says, it is finished. God raises Him from the dead to say, yes, I accept your work is finished. And we say, Amen. So be it. Back to God for his glory through Christ. And I think it is very appropriate that whenever God speaks the gospel to us in promises kept in Christ, the right response we should give back is always, Amen. So be it. I believe it. Yes, it is so. Now, the last thing we see in this passage, very briefly, is that because God's work in Christ is not uncertain or incomplete, God's plans and purposes for us are not uncertain or incomplete either. How does he take that and apply it to us? Christ finished, how does it become ours? Verses 21 and 22. And it is God who establishes us with you in Christ, and has anointed us, and who has also put his seal on us, and given us his Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee. See, he's given us his Spirit. God does three things. He establishes us in Christ. He anoints us in Christ. And he seals us. the Holy Spirit. To say He establishes us means He makes us secure, He confirms us in His kingdom and family, and so if God establishes us, we are established. No one can unestablish what God has established. And now, God has anointed us is a very powerful word. This word for anointed is chrysos. It's the same root as Christ, the anointed one. It's the same verb that's used of the anointing of Christ for His Messianic ministry that's used of our anointing in Christ. Christ is anointed as our mediator, the prophet, priest, and king. We are anointed in Christ as his ambassadors and a kingdom of priests. 1 Peter 2.9 says, but you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a royal priesthood, kings who are priests. In Revelation 5-9, we find the 24 elders around the throne of God, and they sang a new song saying, worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation, and you have made them a kingdom and priests, and they shall reign on the earth. If you belong to Jesus Christ, you are a child of the King. You are royalty. You are given that dominion that was taken from Adam. It is restored to you in Christ. You are a priest. You have the power of making intercessory prayers through Christ, your great high priest, before the throne of God. You have power in prayer, and you are an ambassador for Christ, a prophet who speaks the word of God to the world. And this comes through the Holy Spirit, who not only anoints us, but who seals us as a guarantee. That guarantee is an earnest down payment of our heavenly inheritance, of our full and final redemption. Now, this is where a lot of Christians struggle, because He's given us the Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee. And you can see the footnotes as a down payment. A lot of Christians struggle because they misunderstand the difference between the down payment and the full purchase. Romans 8, among other wonderful things it addresses, addresses this. It says, not only the creation, but we ourselves who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, we who have the Spirit grown inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. That's Romans 8 23. For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope for who hopes for what he sees. But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. If every promise is yes in Christ, then why is Renna Abbott dying of cancer? If every promise is yes in Christ, then why do I still struggle with sin and doubt? If every promise is yes in Christ, then why are millions of our brothers and sisters around the world facing persecution, imprisonment, confiscation, and even death for the name of Christ? Because what we're given in this life is a down payment. We're given the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. We are anointed Christ. We are secured in Christ, but it's a down payment. The full inheritance is kept in heaven. And that's why Jesus says, don't store up for yourself treasures on earth, but store up for yourself treasures in heaven, because that's where your inheritance is. And when Christ, who is our glory, appears, we will appear with him. We will be like him when he appears, for we will see him as he is. The first flowering happens here in this world, but the full flowering and the ripening of the fruit and the abundance of the harvest come when Jesus comes again. We are not being asked to finish the work of redemption ourselves, but we are being asked to be patient as we wait for the full redemption of our bodies and the coming of glory and the perfection of Christ. And we can help each other do this. Paul's setting us an example in this passage of how we help each other do this. We remind each other of the truth. He says, I call God to witness against me. It was to spare you that I refrained from coming to you again in Corinth. Not that I lorded over your faith, but we work with you for your joy. For you stand firm in your faith. Gospel ministers don't establish you in your faith. That's what the Holy Spirit does. But Gospel ministers can work with you for your joy in the Lord by reminding you of what the truth is. And you can do that for each other. Remind each other of the promises of God. Someone's having a down day. Someone's really struggling. Yes, sympathize with them. Yes, pray with them. Yes, put your arm around them. Give them a hug. But then remind them that in Christ, their inheritance is kept in heaven. In Christ, every promise of God is yes for them. And in Christ, every suffering a believer endures is only temporary. God has kept all of his promises. They are all yes in Christ. We can rejoice and we can rest in him, even as we serve one another, to strengthen our faith and our confidence in him. That's what God's calling us to do. Trust him. Rest in him. and build one another up in our confidence in Him. Let's pray. Father, we thank you that every promise is yes in Christ. The promise of love and acceptance, of peace and security, of a home, of freedom, of joy. They're all yes in Christ. All of these things have been given to us, are being given to us, and will be given to us through Christ Jesus, who is the same yesterday, today, and forever. And he who died for us and who rose for us and who is coming again for us will not fail to keep us as we trust in him. So Father, strengthen our faith and increase our joy in Christ. even as you increase our dissatisfaction with the passing pleasures of this world. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.