Highlights or gleamings, call it what you will, but I go through my old Bible. And picked out the highlights. Sometimes they're a little disconnected, but ultimately biblical truth that meant something to me that I highlighted in my Bible as I went through it. So this is not a verse-for-verse exposition of the book of 2 Corinthians, but it's a light gleaning of some of the rich truth found in the book that has blessed my soul, hopefully it'll bless yours too as we go through it. We went through already chapter one through three. 2 Corinthians is a very personal book for Paul. It was amazing how God, inspired his word yet used the personality of the people writing it. It's been said God could have used a monkey to write the Bible. He could have used a donkey. He had a donkey talk. I mean he could do whatever he wanted to do, but he chose man to do it. But he allowed man to be part of the process. Calvinists sometimes believe that we don't have anything to do with anything, but the truth is God wants us to be part of what he's doing. We're workers together with God. And so we are needed by God. And I say that honestly, carefully, but we're needed by God. God needs us in the process of this thing called getting the gospel out. But he needs us more than just to help him get the gospel out. He could have used angels to get it out. And he will in the revelation the two flying evangelists, as I call them, two angels gonna fly through heaven, and they're gonna preach everlasting gospel. I mean, that's the time when the angels are gonna preach it. But he's really chosen us to do it. As failing as we are, scared as we are, nervous as we are, fearful as we may be, as mumbling, jumbling, messing it up as we may do, he still said, you're the ones I wanna use. You go out and give the gospel to everybody. Gospel doesn't do a bit of good. Jesus' death doesn't do a bit of good if people don't hear about it. Faith comes by hearing, hearing by the word of God. So it's so important that we do what he wants us to do, but he wants us to fellowship too. He doesn't just want us to work for him, he wants us to walk with him, talk with him. You know, the song In the Garden, I believe I read somewhere it was the most requested song at funerals, was In the Garden. I don't know about the younger generation if they'll be that way, in the last two or three generations. In the Garden has been very popular at the time. And it talks about a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, walking with Him, talking with Him, Him talking to us. I hope that's the walk you have with God. I hope it's not a sterile, what can he do for me? I hope it is a fellowship of a relationship. In fact, you never had anybody love you like Jesus loved you. You never have anybody, even your mom and dad didn't love you like Jesus loves you. Nobody in this world loves you like Jesus loves you. You should be able to walk with him and fellowship with him. Should be sweet, I mean, I just think I'm with him 24-7. You know what I mean? I walked down, I saw some flowers, I have these, I think they're called Japanese orchids. And they're beautiful, they're purple. A couple, three or four shades of deep purple. And some other white, and some other things that God puts together on those flowers. I had a little flower the other day. Talking to God about how he was masterful. architect and designer and color coordinator. And I just praised his name and had me a little worship service by myself. He and I had a worship service together as I adored him and honored him for what he did on those flowers. How many times you walk by flowers, you don't think a thing about it? But God made them for you. I mean, he's God over everything. He made this stuff. He made all things for us to enjoy. And the good things I'm talking about, the pure things, he made for you to enjoy. I love to see a beautiful sunset. I go out to the roaches. They're out on the beach, got a house on beneath the beach, and their whole one side of their house has windows and it faces the ocean. And the sun sets right in front of them, night after night after night after night. And I said to them, they lived there for quite a while, 20 years I think. Do you ever get used to it? And they said, no. We don't get used to it. We still sit there in awe by God's work. In fact, you've been down there. You've seen how beautiful a location that is. So Paul opens it. Paul in 1 Corinthians was tough. He had a church that he had gone to and didn't wanna go to, by the way. When he went to the city of Corinth, he thought they were gonna kill him. He wasn't gonna stay. If I may say it this way, and I may be wrong on this, but I think he had his gut full of getting beat up by that time in his ministry, and he wasn't gonna stay. I believe God, Jesus, in fact, I believe, came to him. and told him that he would, he had many people in that city and he was not going to let them put a hand on him, he'd be all right. So he stayed there about a year and a half. Many people got saved. Corinth was a, it's a wild port city of wicked, you know, wherever there are sailors. Sailors are some of the worst lot, I'll tell you what. They're almost as bad as railroad people. Or police officers. when it comes to doing stuff, I mean, tell ya. So yeah, it's not that bad. Are you all right, brother? You getting back there? Can you hear me? Are we good? Fix it, whatever it is. What do you got? You think the batteries are going bad on this? I checked it, they were perfect. You're acting like they are. I'm acting? You're acting like they are. Okay, I'm gonna turn this off. Can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you now. Can you hear me? Yeah. Well, I'm glad you caught that, because I don't want to go all night long. At the end of the service, I don't want to hear, hey, we couldn't hear you. I have people walk out through the years. I mean, I have preachers, y'all, have I ever had this happen. You walk out and they go, I wish I could have heard you. I bet it was good. And don't, you know, I'm trying not to cut the wire now. Will you help me with this, brother? Right on the back of the. You want it all on the back? But I don't want it on. How's that? I'm going to be helpless. Thank you. Okay. So he was very, had to be very tough. Corinth was a fleshly, fleshy church. I mean, they were doing everything wrong. You almost could, you know, they were inventing stuff to do wrong. And so he corrects all that. We went over that. He corrects that in pretty much the book of 1 Corinthians. It's a tough book. But then so he comes back in the book of 2 Corinthians and the things he asked them to do, they did. Almost to his surprise, they did what he asked him to do, what the Holy Spirit had told him to write to them. And so in the second book, he kind of opens his heart to them and thanks them. You know, appreciative for what they've done in their spirit and he compliments them. He talks about how they didn't mean to harm him. We're gonna go in that in chapter seven. And he does not in any way try to really harm them. A preacher, when he tells you the truth in love, it's not, though it may hurt your feelings, it may hurt your pride. He's not trying to damage you. He's trying to save you. He's trying to save you. Chapter four, we see he talks about the ministry. Therefore, seeing we have this ministry, as we have received mercy, we faint not. And what happens because of that? We have renounced the hidden things of darkness, not walking in craftiness nor handling of the word of God deceitfully, but by manifestation of the truth, that's transparency, by the way, as I put in there, commending ourselves to every man's conscience and the sight of God. I don't believe in these pastors who won't let anybody know who they really are. I've met pastors who do a lot of work at hiding who they are, really are. They don't wanna get to be friends. In fact, I was taught this at school, believe it or not. I was taught at Bob Jones at one of the classes on pastoring, not to ever be friends with your congregation. I'm sitting there as a 19, 18, 19 year old kid going, that just don't sound right to me. So you're gonna give your life for these people, but you're not gonna be friends to them. Well, if you be friends with them, they'll take advantage of you, they'll get to know you, they'll disrespect you, you know, familiarity breeds contempt. That's where they were going on that. Well, I'd rather risk that and get beat up a little bit, which you will, than not to be friends and not to be, you know, brothers in Christ, sisters in Christ and have a relationship. You're my sisters and you're my brothers. If we can't be close here, what in the world? Well, that's a choice some preachers make, not to be friendly with their people, not to really know their people, not to eat with their people. I think that's nothing. People don't know how much money they make. I wouldn't go to a church if I didn't know what the preacher made. I wanna know how much money he makes. I wanna know those five homes he owns were not taken out of the offering. I don't think the preacher, this is gonna rub, maybe these preachers, I'm not sure where their philosophy is on this, but I can tell you this, this preacher doesn't have any control on the money other than suggesting to the deacons as a group of body of believers where it goes and how we spend it. I'm not on any account. I've never been on any account. Chris is not on any account. Thomas is not on any account. There's only a handful of people in this church that can spend the money, and they are authorized to spend it under authorization of the Pastor Deacon Board. We call it the Pastor Deacon Board. We love each other. We work with each other. They have respect of who I am and what my call is, and I have respect of who they are and what their call is. And I want absolute transparency. And I see it in scripture over and over again. This is just one, it's fired me up a little bit, but I got to settle back down. But... Paul says, but by manifestation of the true transparency, commending ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God. Look my life over. Look at my wife and I. Look where we live. Look what we own. You can know any of that and all of that. Doesn't make any difference. I wanna be absolutely transparent, and I want you to see Jesus in me. And like Paul says to his people, be followers of me. Well, you won't follow somebody you don't know. I wouldn't. So you gotta make sure it's a real deal, not a bunch of hypocrisy and faking things. The Church of Jesus Christ at large is being pillaged by charlatans, just pillaged. It's just horrible to watch as you look on the internet and stuff, what people are doing. to the church, and I sure don't want that, and he didn't want that either. Our motivation for witnessing, in whom the God of this world had blinded the minds of them which believe not. Dr. Bailey and I talk about people, you know, just not, he, Dr. Bailey gets a lot of unsaved people come through his practice, and they're, I mean, they're going to a cardiologist, and they're old. So what's that tell you? They're close to death. Right? They're close to death. They're old and they're going to a cardiologist. How many here, doctor believes you're a doctor, raise your hand. Look at how many there, doc. We're old, we're sick, and we're going to a cardiologist. But we're saved. Amen? We're going to heaven by the grace of God. So, he's got a responsibility and he feels he has a responsibility, tell him about Jesus. You know, where are you gonna go when you leave the planet? What's gonna happen? Have you made any provisions? He's always amazing. He and I are exchanged back and forth how he's amazed, I'm amazed at people not being concerned about what's after death. Do y'all know you're gonna die? Well, then where are you gonna go when you die? Well, I don't know. Have you researched it? No. Did you look carefully at anything? No. The Bible without challenge is the most soul, most read book in the world. It is the biggest, baddest one. It's the holy book of holy books by just statistical numbers. how many are printed, how many have been distributed. If just by the numbers, the Bible's the book. If you wanna know about what is gonna happen after death, you would make sense to me, literarily, that you would go to the greatest book ever written on things after death, the Bible. And that you would look at it and read it and you would find out what it had to say because your soul is at stake. We're not playing a game. Once you close your eyes in death, your choices are over, as far as I can tell. And so God gives you these choices, but how does that happen? Well, here it is right here. This is a tremendous verse. Why are people this blind? Because the God of this world has something to do with it. Not only are they partners with him, but they are blinded by him, because if that wasn't true, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine under them. I've seen this, and other preachers have seen this. If somebody will attend a gospel-preaching church, just attend a gospel-preaching church long enough, the Holy Spirit will break through. Break through and let them see Christ dying for them. You people that have unsaved loved ones and unsaved relatives or unsaved spouses, be of good cheer. Keep the spouse coming to church. My mother-in-law was one of the hardest women I ever dealt with about Christ. I dealt with her for 45 years. She just brushed me off like I didn't even, just weren't even the slightest little interested. She was low on money. I had a mother-in-law quarters. I said, you move down here from Sedona. Sedona, Arizona is where she lived. She came from Sedona, moved to my house. She said, Bill, for helping me, I'll go to church on Sunday morning. I go, that's the deal. You go to church on Sunday morning. She got saved six months. Six months, though, of sitting in the back. She sat in the back by the penalty box back there. She said, bend it back and listen to me carefully. Now she didn't, not only did I not have credibility, I was her son-in-law. I mean, you know, there's familiarity. I mean, when you're, the hardest people you got to work with are your people who know you real well sometimes, they're familiar with you. I mean, that's the way it is. Sometimes they, even Jesus, they say, don't we know him? Don't we know his brothers and sisters? Who's he make himself out to be? Well, the God of this world was blind in their minds because once the gospel, the glorious gospel of Christ gets through that darkness, oftentimes people will choose Jesus and be saved. But God uses us to help that happen. We have this treasure, this responsibility. What treasure do I have? What treasure do you have? You have the gospel. You know Jesus died for our sins according to the scriptures. He was buried and rose again the third day according to the scriptures. You know that. You can take people to the Bible and show them that. Do you know how fabulous that is? Right there, you have a treasure in you, this gospel, and it is in you, which is you're the earthen vessel. I'm the earthen vessel, meaning I'm full of flaws. I'm full of dirt. In fact, I am dirt. dust to dust, dirt to dirt. They put you in the ground where you came from. That's your body, not your soul and spirit. Your whole soul and spirit come from God. And they unite together like you are right now. You're a triunity, body, soul, and spirit. And so when you die, your body separates away from your soul and spirit, but your soul and spirit goes back to God one way or another. Save your loss. God's got responsibility for you. He takes it. We have this treasure, that's the gospel in earthen vessels, and that was God's choice that the excellency of the power may be of God and not of us. The Bible says no flesh will glore in his presence in the book of Corinthians. Why? You're not gonna have any pride in heaven. What a place will that be where there's no pride? Have you ever been around a three-year-old? There's not much, if any, pride in a three-year-old. They'll pick their nose right in front of everybody. You can bring a little, what's her name, Eve? Eden, Eden, I thought they named her Eve. I love the name, Eden was wild. But Eden, you can bring her up here and she'll, she got an itch, she'll scratch it. No pride. It's not just immaturity. It's a lack of pride. That's why Jesus said, except you become as little children, you're not even gonna see the kingdom of heaven. What does he mean by that? Don't become ignorant like little children. That's not what he's talking about. He's talking about, You gotta let your pride die. Let your pride go. That's what we have forward. We invite you to come forward and get saved a lot of times. That's part of the salvation is the dying of the pride, to get out in front of a group of people and go forward and let them know you got a need. Because pride doesn't want to let anybody know you got a need. And I think partially why God's given me so many ailments, shakes, Now I'm hard of hearing and it's because he's helping me, pushing my pride down. He said, get up there in front of all that group and just don't worry about it. Be humble. With a gun at my head. I love this section right here, man. This is my favorite part of the Bible. Paul says, we are troubled on every side and not distressed. I looked the Greek words up for each one of these today. I had looked them up years ago and looked them up. I preached on this a few times, but I just want to make sure I had it right. And the Greek word has connotative meanings. You have denotative meaning, which is a normal use of the word in almost any place it's used, and you have the connotative meaning, which is what is contextually determined, the meaning by the context, connotative meaning. So the Greek here just helps me understand kind of a connotative meaning, looking at it from another angle, because the translation, trouble's a great translationist, the one that ought to be there. I'm not trying to retranslate the Bible. I'm just trying to explain it. So we are troubled. That is, I'm being pushed through a narrow squeeze, but I still go through. That's the word distressed. I'm being squeezed. I'm being straightened. I'm being squeezed in my life, Paul said, but I'm getting through anyway. He says we're perplexed. The Greek word means unable to find a way out. But not in despair means I found a way out. I'm not able to find my own way, but somehow or another God shows me his way. In all your ways acknowledge him and he'll direct your paths. Persecuted, persuaded, pursued I should say by enemies, but not given over to them, but not forsaken. Cast down, and this is my favorite part of one. These are all metaphors. Cast down, that means to be knocked down, but not destroyed, can be interpreted, but not knocked out. Hiles preached on it years ago, knocked down, but not knocked out, one of my favorite sermons of his, because he took the same kind of path that I'm taking, and defining the words and giving them a little better understanding, maybe looking at it. Cast down, but not knocked down, but I'm, I get knocked down, how about you? Sometimes you're knocked down. I love boxing. I love boxing. My dad was a boxer. We watched every major fight there was, because he was a boxer, he liked boxing, and we watched fighting. Now some people don't think watching boxing is Christian. Personally, I'm gonna watch it as long as I can. But what I love about boxing is the guy that gets knocked down. In the first second round, he gets knocked down again. I saw YouTube the other day, the guy got knocked down five times. And about the seventh or eighth round, he whacked a guy and knocked him out. His opponent, he was knocked down. but he didn't get knocked out. And he kept swinging. And God gave him the victory on that. Then of course, what a victory that is. He looked so beat up. He didn't look like the winner of the fight to me, but he had his hands up in the air and his eyes are all swelled up and everything. I won. You did? Sometimes in the Christian life, we feel like, are we losing this thing? You may be getting beat up some, but you're not going to get knocked out if you keep trusting God. One of my highlights. Always bearing in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body. There's a lot of songs going through my head. A lot of our music that we sing is written around this stuff that I'm talking about. Key to victory is our vision for our light affliction. Now this is Paul the Apostle speaking, and you know some of what he went through, but our light affliction, which is but for a moment, that's how you overcome right there. Keep it light. Don't get feeling sorry for yourself. Don't suck your thumb, say I'm the worst off of anybody in the whole church. Woe is me. Nobody loves me, everybody hates me, I guess I eat worms and all that. Don't go there. Our light affliction, he made light of his major affliction, which is but for a moment, he also made it short. You ever been in pain? Pain makes time slow down. You have a bad migraine, it slows down. He said, but for a moment, working for, well, there I go. Now I'm losing my voice too, huh? Working for a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. There's two words in Greek for weight, at least two words. The words baras and phortion. I don't have phortion up there, but I just got what this word is. The word weight in this case is the word baras. The other word for weight is phortion. Let me tell you the difference. Baras, he could have used phortion here, but he didn't. Phortion is a weight that is reasonably borne, or is reasonable to bear. When you pick up some of your stuff, you're a worker, you pick up like a door or something, it's reasonable that you could pick that door up, right? It's reasonable, that would be 14. But this isn't the word, he used the word baros. Baros is a word too heavy to bear. The weight's just too heavy to bear, you can't pick it up. A doorway's 5,000 pounds, you're not gonna pick that up. Now, Jome, Show me, but I doubt that even. So think about that with what I just said. There worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. Too much to bear. I may have me a spell. you're gonna go to heaven and see what God has prepared for you, and you're not gonna be able to bear it. It's gonna be too much. We used to have, I'm gonna think, I just thought about this, Violet Cooper, 94-year-old woman, went to heaven. We had three 94-year-old women at one time, they all went to heaven same year. I don't know what that was about, but Violet Cooper. Violet Cooper, every time you says Violet, You're a wonderful Christian. She says, oh, I don't deserve it. Everything he tried to compliment, would you know Violet Cooper? That was a best mother. She would say, you remember, she'd say, no, I'm not worthy of that. I don't deserve that. I don't deserve that. You're going to heaven, God says, here's a place I'm made for, and you're gonna say, hey, if you can talk. I don't deserve that. Baras. a weight of glory, too heavy to bear. He didn't use fortia, because the Holy Spirit wouldn't let him. He used baros. Boy, that's a blessing hidden in the Greek. There's some blessings in the Greek that'll give you a spell. He says, while we look not at the things which are seen, this is our focus. Your focus tonight is what? You focus on the now and now. You focus on the here and here. You focus on the garbage around you and you're gonna be just like them and you're gonna go around depressed and despond, full of despond and despondency and all them other D words. For the things which are not seen we focus on, for the things which are not seen are temporal, but the things which are seen The things which are not seen are eternal. I knew something was wrong with what I was going to say. So, we're living in this material world. We see stuff, we touch stuff, we feel stuff. It would be natural for you to feel like that's what's permanent. it would be natural for us to feel like this is what's valuable, because I can touch it, I can see it. But the Bible says that's not what's valuable. The Bible says the things which you can't see, invisible things, are eternal. They're valuable. The things which you see, You know how you, do we not, whoa, do we not spend a lot of time on our bodies? What a waste of time. Do you know how much advertisement goes into trying to convince you to buy something that you can look younger? It ain't gonna work. How many people gotta get old and die before you believe that? I mean, it may help you for a while, you know. Best thing not to look in the mirror too much. Now, I'm not saying, God doesn't want you not to care about the material things. The Bible says that he that doesn't support his own is worse than an infidel. You're supposed to work, you're supposed to support your family, you're supposed to pay your bills, you're supposed to be honest before all men, you're supposed to do the things that God wants you doing to be in testimony of this world. That's all good, but don't get stuck on it. Because those things will be wiped away in a matter of a heart attack. Yeah, the widow maker. You stick around a, you hang around a cardiologist, you learn stuff. The widow maker. Right now, we have a guy in the hospital with Lloyd Gordon. I think he's had three, four now stints and he's still in trouble, he's still got pain, he can't figure out why. That's just my diagnosis now. But he's a fairly wealthy man. But if he dies, he's gonna leave all that. But Lloyd has cared about the invisible. He's done this, it's like juggling two things. You gotta have some respect to the physical, those things that you're seeing, but you should have most of your respect to the things which are unseen. And that's a juggling thing. And it's easy to get out of balance. It's easy to go too much for the physical, not enough for the spiritual. Or it's easy to be so spiritual that you're no good in the physical realm. My daddy used to say, you're so spiritually minded, you're no earthly good. And I don't know where that comes from. And I haven't seen a whole lot of people that way. But I have seen a few. I have seen a few. But it's a balance between the two. That which is eternal, that which is temporal. Hope you can get it. Highlights. Now chapter five. Ooh. A great motivation. For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, and house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For we, notice the word we. That's Paul speaking under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. He's including himself and those who are with him and you. the people he knew he believed were saved in the city of Corinth. And now through 2,000 years later, the Holy Spirit wrote that to us. And so we know. I didn't look that word up, but I got a feeling it's the word gnosko, to know by experience. I failed to look that word up because that's another one I'm, things that you can, by what word I would encourage you, I believe that's gnosko, that would be my guess on that, to know by experience, not just to know up here. You have book learning, then you have experience combined with book learning, right? This guy is a carpenter, you're a carpenter, right? You have book learning and experience combined, amen. That's where we are spiritually, we need both combined. So we know that we have a body waiting for us, a house waiting for us, a tabernacle waiting for us in the heavens that's eternal. The Egyptians were, by the Peruvians and the Egyptians alone, look at what they did to try to get eternal life. pyramids of thousands of pyramids in Peru, many of them lost in the jungle, in Mexico. All that religiosity there was about appeasing the wrath of the God who made them. They knew they had sinned against God, and they wanted to appease him somehow, but they didn't know how. So they slew people, cut their hearts out, all kinds of crazy stuff, shed a lot of blood. built those pyramids. People wanna live forever. You say, I don't care. Yo, you do. You do. That's the groaning of God's people, looking for eternal life. For in this we groan, I mean, it's Bible, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house, which is from heaven. Now if you go to 2 Corinthians 5.2, it says to be absent from the body is to be what? You know that verse, don't you? It pays to know that verse. So is there soul sleep? No. If you mean sleep, an unconscious state, I don't believe there is. For to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. text verses or classical verses people go to to prove, hey, after death there's consciousness. Well, you can go to other places, Luke chapter, I think it's 16, where the rich man, is that 15? Rich man, and he lifted up his eyes after he died being in hell, torments. He wasn't sleeping. There's other places, Romans chapter six, Revelation chapter six, souls under the altar, they're conscious, they speak, they got, There's 14 different things that they are aware of. So there's, as far as I can tell you, biblically, there's no soul sleep. I don't know where they came, I know where they came up with the word and I know where they came up, but it's just, I think it's a false doctrine because of what the Bible says here. But we groan. Have you ever groaned in your spirit? You can't verbalize it, it's just a groan. Earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven. I want to sing. I want to say, ♪ These are they who've won the battle. ♪ ♪ These are they who stood the test. ♪ ♪ Clothed in garments pure and spotless. ♪ ♪ The redeemed, the pure and blessed. ♪ That's you folks, if you're born again. People write music about that. I'll be done here in two minutes. Life after death. For we that are in this tabernacle do groan, or it is again being burdened, not for that which we would be unclothed. I don't want to die, but I want to be transformed. I want to be raptured, but clothed upon that mortality might be swallowed up of life. I groan not to die, I wanna skip death. How many here would like to skip death? Amen, if you don't, you haven't seen enough death if you don't wanna skip it. Therefore, we're always confident knowing that while we're at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord. And I give that other, 2 Corinthians 5, 6, I guess that was. Maybe I led you astray on that one. It's 2 Corinthians 5, 6. And then verse eight is a key one. Be after from the bodies present with the Lord. So anyway, that's it. However, it came down. And I'm gonna stop right there. Coming judgment. These are just highlights and I realize a little, what you're gonna call it, scrambled eggs. But hey, it's something to think about. May the Holy Spirit help us to meditate on these things as we go through the week. Father, help us tonight. If you would like to know more about the Lord Jesus Christ, you may contact us at the church website, gospelbaptistchurch.com, or you can go to Facebook and type in Gospel Baptist Church, Bonita Springs, Florida. Also, you could call the church office at 239-947-1285. Thank you, and God bless.