So 1st Corinthians 14 and then we'll be in 2nd Corinthians. We might get up to chapter 3 in 2nd Corinthians. We'll see how it goes. But our real focus here is trying to wrap up this huge focus that's been on the Spirit and the spiritual gifts in the book of 1st Corinthians. Because the reality is that there is a lot of argument and disagreement over the nature of these spiritual gifts. I'm not here to solve that this morning. If you want a solution to that, you got to put in a lot of work and a lot of reading, a lot of history, and a lot of discussion. And that's just not what we're here for. We are here to learn about the Spirit of God. Now that he gives gifts to the church, is not a debatable point. That is clearly expressed all throughout scripture, all throughout the New Testament. And there is this aspect about why the Spirit of God is doing this to the church, why he is giving them certain things, and it is always for the up-building of the church. It's always for the improvement of the fellowship. It is for the preaching of the gospel, both to believers and to unbelievers. We'll put forward, just in passing, that the gift of tongues is meant primarily for the edification of the church, and the gift of prophecy is meant primarily for the calling of unbelievers to repentance. Regardless of such, these gifts are being given to the church so that the church is built up. And so what was happening in Corinth, as we've discussed multiple times, is people were using these spiritual gifts to focus on themselves. Look at the amazing gifts that God has given me. I can speak in a language that I have never studied. I can prophesy things about the Word of God and about the nature of reality and the coming judgment into the world. And what was happening in Corinth was so many people This was an unusual problem in the earlier church. So many people had so many gifts that they were tripping over one another in the gathered assembly and talking over one another and all of them speaking at the same time, which just led to absolute chaos. And because of this, Paul writes, chapters 12 and 13 about the concept that all of these gifts come from one spirit so there should be a singular goal in mind and the focus should never be self or even the church the focus should be Christ and he expresses this in the concept of chapter 13 that we walked through two weeks ago that all of this is done in the concept of love. He says it doesn't even matter if I'm able to prophesy magnificent things. It doesn't matter if I can speak with the tongues of men or even if I could speak heavenly languages, the tongues of angels. He says all of it's completely ridiculous if I am not doing it in deference to the other person. If I am not preaching the gospel so that that person may repent and be saved, if I'm just preaching the gospel so that I can think highly of myself, I'm just making noise, right? If I am speaking in tongues not to glorify God, which is the primary purpose of that, and to declare his wonders to other people, but instead I'm doing it just so I can show off, then I've lost every purpose and meaning that I even had that spiritual gift to begin with. The same goes for every spiritual gift. Everything that the Spirit of God does in the life of a Christian is meant to glorify God. And that is what our huge takeaway is going to be from the book of 1 Corinthians about the Spirit of God. Everything he is doing in the church is to glorify God. Sometimes that means we are given gifts that are extraordinary. Sometimes that means our suffering. Sometimes that means that we have to carry out church discipline. Sometimes that means that we have to condemn people's sins. But in all of these things, that is not for us to come and lord over somebody else, not at all. It is meant to protect the church. It is meant to purify the bride that Christ may be glorified. It is always the focus of the Spirit of God to do these things. And so for the church in Corinth, they had a unique, as you can see, I mean, you just read first Corinthians and then read all the other books in the New Testament. It is very unique what was going on in their church. And so if we're going to read that and expect it to be normative, we're going to come up with some problems because it's. Never normative, not even in the early church, right? It's not even normative in the book of Acts that people are speaking in tongues and prophesying on this level. Something was going on in Corinth that the amount of gifts they had directly related to how much insanity was going on in their church. And that's kind of a strange thing, isn't it? They had many more spiritual gifts than other churches, and they had many more sinful issues going on in their church than other churches. Right? You read the church in Ephesus, right? The book to the Ephesians. Is he dealing with any massive sinful issues? Is there a guy sleeping with his, you know, dad's new wife or anything? Nothing like that's going on. Nothing like that is being challenged. There's some challenges going on in Galatia, but it's not to the church. It's to those that are outside the church that are trying to teach them wrong gospel. And he's telling them to not be stupid. Don't follow that teaching. That's wrong. It's going to kill you. And so instead, all of these things that we see in Corinth, we see as almost hand in hand, a whole lot of spiritual gifts sometimes can cause or at least encourage a very lackadaisical attitude to the important aspects of the church's function. Because the church gets very distracted when it carries out its spiritual gifts or even just its Christian life for its own benefit. There's been a lot of Christians throughout history that try to identify these gifts this way, that way. I'm just going to put a big blanket over it and say, whatever the Spirit of God does in the people of God should never end up with them focused on themselves. Jesus said this in one of my favorite parables. It's in Luke chapter 18, where it is the Pharisee and the tax collector going up to the temple. What is the Pharisee's attitude? He goes to the temple to pray, he lifts his eyes towards heaven, and he thanks God, he's very, very grateful that he has not made him like other sinners. He has made him conscientious about how much he tithes, about how mature he is spiritually, about how often he comes to synagogue, and about all of these types of things, right? Tax collector, what was his attitude? What did he say? He wouldn't even lift up his eyes to heaven. Instead, cast himself to the ground, beat his breast and said only one sentence, Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner. Those two people were focused on completely different things. The Pharisee was focused on himself. This is exactly what Paul is teaching to the church in Corinth. If you're going to maintain the gifts of the Spirit, make sure you have the same goal as the Spirit of God, and that is the glorification of Christ. Elsewise, it will destroy you. Even the best spiritual gifts will destroy the person holding it if they do not humble themselves. And that is the chief aspect of all of this. Without humility to love one another, the spiritual gifts are worthless. In fact, they become a harm to the church. and it has happened many, many times throughout church's history that something great happens and then people relish in how awesome it is that God used us for that and then they lose the focus. They lose every focus that they should have on Christ and instead They just look at what happened where they are and say, God did something great here with us. Isn't that marvelous? Yes, it is. Problem is, if we just focus on that without humility, we will end up being like the Pharisee going, thank you, God, that you have used us and not like those other churches that you haven't used. See that attitude? It creeps in so quick and it usually happens where great things have been given and where great things have been done. And the church in Corinth here is encouraged. Look, basically, it would be better, I'm just going to paraphrase chapter 14. It would be better for all of you to shut up than to use these gifts in a way that glorifies the self. It would be better if nobody ever said anything, if nobody ever prophesied anything, if nobody ever spoke in tongues. And so he says in verse 12, He says, so with yourselves, I know you are all eager for manifestations of the Spirit. Since you are eager for the manifestations of the Spirit, this is what this church was seeking after. Let's keep these spiritual gifts up. Let's keep speaking in tongues. Let's keep speaking over one another because it's so great that all of us have this gifts. We can all prophesy. We can all talk about things. We can all speak in languages we never studied. I mean, this is a remarkable church. He says, if you want to hold these things, since you are eager for manifestations of the Spirit, since you really, really want that, then you should aim for only one thing, build up the church. And in building up the church, what is it to be focused on? What is it to be infatuated with? Not the self, but one another and Christ by extension. He doesn't want them to have disorderly worship. He wants everything to be ordered. Why? Because with disorder, even if you come to speak prophecy to an unbeliever, to bring them to repentance, if you're speaking over one another, what good is it? Have you ever tried to evangelize side by side with another Christian? What if you're just talking over one another? That's the picture he gives. How is that going to be intelligible? How could anyone understand what in the world is going on? He says it's no different than with tongues. Same for edification for the church. If you're going to speak over one another, Even in languages that you can't understand, if somebody is just going to speak in a language, let's say I come into church, and let's say I don't, but let's say I have the gift of speaking in tongues. And I come into church and I start speaking Russian. None of you guys know Russian. And I start speaking of the glories of God in Russian, and there's no interpreter there. What's the effect? Everyone gets to look at me. They don't know what I'm saying, but boy, is it an impressive thing that I can say it. You see the difference? It has nothing to do with what I'm saying. It has to do with that I possess this gift. And all that does is it builds up that person rather than the church. It doesn't actually edify. And so he's actually putting out to there, if there's not someone interpreting so that they can understand what in the world is being said, don't speak. There's no point. Especially if you're all speaking at the same time. Now, whenever I say speaking in tongues, I know it gets really confused with this modern day neo-paganistic nonsense that goes on in some churches where people just say a bunch of syllables. That is not speaking in tongues. If you want to translate this, it's speaking in languages. That is what it means. It is intelligible. It is meant to express something specific. It is Not just a list of syllables. Here, that by the way does not come from Christianity. You can come to Church History, someday I'll talk about where that comes from. But here, why is it orderliness must be a part of all of this? Because we are not just spiritual beings, we are also intellectual beings. We need to be able to hear one another in turn. Like if we just all come to church and we're all just talking all the time, everywhere, all the time, everyone's a teacher and everyone's a prophet and everyone's speaking in languages, what's going to be the effect? Nothing. In fact, if an unbeliever comes in to hear the gospel, they're going to all think you're out of your minds. Right? They're kind of right. There's a little bit, and that's a judgment on that person because Christians aren't actually out of their minds. And that's what he's saying is let's be consistent. Scripture doesn't come over and speak over itself all the time. It presents an orderly account of the glory of God manifested in history. And so there are some very strict rules that he imposes only on the church in Corinth here at the end of 1 Corinthians 14, which goes beyond our focus here, which is the spirit of God. But there are a number of people that just basically says, sit down, be quiet. including women. And a lot of people take that out of context and say, oh, all women in all churches always need to be silent everywhere. That's not true. It's not what he's saying. He's saying, look, there's such disorder going on in Corinth that not only do most of your prophets need to shush and only two or three speak, but most of the people speaking in tongues needs to be quiet. Almost everybody needs to be quiet everywhere because all of them were just looking to build themselves up. God is not a God of confusion, but of peace. That's verse 33. As always, anytime I'm near 1 Corinthians 15, I'm tempted to talk about it. It's all about the resurrection and how important that is, but that's not focused on the Spirit of God. There's no explicit references there, so I will control myself, and we will move forward to 2 Corinthians. Any questions before we leave 1 Corinthians? We talked at length about it for several weeks. In fact, this was our fourth lesson in that book alone. Any questions or thoughts before we leave it behind and go to 2 Corinthians? Okay, let's go to 2 Corinthians. Turn to chapter one. We'll sit most of the time in chapter three, but I also want to give us the introduction here. And here is Bible Project on that. Even though it's called second or two Corinthians in our Bibles, there are multiple clues within this letter that it's not the second thing he ever wrote to the church. Paul started this Jesus community in Corinth some time ago on one of his missionary journeys. You can read the story in the book of Acts chapter 18. And after moving on, Paul got a report that things were not going well there. So he wrote the letter that we call First Corinthians to correct these problems. And it appears that many in the church rejected Paul's teaching in that letter and rebelled against his authority. And so we learn in this letter that Paul had followed up in person with what he calls the painful visit. And after that, he sent a letter which he says was written with anguish and tears. And so after all these measures, most, but not all, of the Corinthians realized their arrogance and they apologized to Paul. They wanted to reconcile. And so Paul wrote this letter to assure them of his love and commitment. The letter's been designed with three main sections, each addressing a distinct topic. So Paul first finalizes his reconciliation with the Corinthians, then in chapters 8 and 9 he addresses the topic of forgotten generosity, and in the final chapters Paul challenges the remaining Corinthians who still reject him. Let's dive in and you'll see how it all works. So Paul opens up by thanking the God of all mercy and comfort who brought peace and encouragement to him and the Corinthians during this time of division and dispute. He acknowledges things have been tense since his painful visit, and he makes clear he's forgiven them, he wants an open and honest relationship. But why had they rejected Paul in the first place? Well, we discover later in this letter that the Corinthians had disregarded Paul as a leader. He was poor, he earned a meager living through manual labor, he was under constant persecution and suffering, he was often homeless, and to top it off, He wasn't a very impressive public speaker. And so once the Corinthians were exposed to other, more wealthy, impressive Christian leaders, they started to think less of Paul. They were actually ashamed of him. So Paul responds first by showing that their elevation of these leaders, simply because of their wealth and eloquence, is a betrayal of Jesus. It shows a totally distorted value system. True Christian leadership, Paul says, is not about status or self-promotion. Paul depicts himself and the other apostles as captive slaves to King Jesus, who's leading them on a procession of triumph. Paul's job isn't to be impressive, but rather to point people to the one who is, Jesus. He then alludes to the recent demand of the Corinthians that he provide some letters of recommendation to prove his authority and credentials. And this is ridiculous to Paul. Their church wouldn't even exist if he hadn't started it. And so he says they are his proof of genuine leadership. They are his letter of recommendation. He cleverly quotes from the prophets Jeremiah and Ezekiel, saying that God's Spirit has written his letter of recommendation on their hearts as his new covenant people. The Corinthians shouldn't need any more proof than that. The mention of the new covenant leads Paul into a long comparison between the old covenant between God and Israel, mediated by Moses, and the new covenant between God and the Corinthians, mediated by Jesus and the Spirit. made at Mount Sinai, it was truly glorious. It made Moses himself shine with God's glory, but that glory eventually faded. Not to mention the fact that the laws of that covenant were ineffective at truly transforming is even more glorious because the resurrected Jesus is the very glory of God and he lives on forever. And it's his spirit that's now transforming people to become more faithful just like Jesus himself. Now this all sounds amazing. I mean who doesn't want to share in God's own glory? But Paul goes on to show how the paradox of the cross turns upside down the Corinthians' ideas of glory and success. After all, Jesus' glorious exaltation as king took place through his suffering, execution, and death. On the cross, Jesus revealed God's salvation. He died for the sins of the world to reconcile people to God. But the cross does even more. It reveals God's character. He's a being of utter self-giving, suffering love that seeks the well-being of others. The cross also reveals a new cruciform way of life. And Paul's goal is that his life and ministry imitates the cross. So although his apostolic career has been marked by humility, suffering, by poverty, it was all to serve the Corinthians. And so when they disapprove of Paul's poverty and suffering, They disapprove of Jesus, too. Paul's way of life and leadership is actually the proof that he authentically represents the crucified and risen Jesus. Paul really wants to reconcile with the Corinthians, but he won't let things lie until they've been transformed and embrace this upside-down paradox of a cross. After this passionate appeal, Paul moves on to address the topic of forgotten generosity. So the Jewish Christians back in Jerusalem, they had fallen into poverty due to a famine. And Paul was raising money among the new churches that he started, full of mostly non-Jews. They would all send a relief gift as a symbol of their unity in the Messiah, Jesus. And so many of his churches, they were thrilled to give, but the Corinthians, in the midst of all this conflict with Paul, hadn't saved up for the gift. And for Paul, this isn't just about money. It's another sign that the Corinthians have not been transformed by the gospel about Jesus, which, at its heart, is a story of generosity. Paul says, you know the generous grace of our Lord Jesus the Messiah, that even though he was rich, for your sake he became poor, so that through his poverty you might become rich. He's telling the story of the gospel through financial metaphors. Jesus gave up his glorious honor, or wealth, and he lowered himself to die like a poor slave. so that other people who are impoverished through sin and death can be exalted and become wealthy through the riches of God's grace. To be a Christian is to let this story sink deep into your mind and heart, letting it transform you into someone who's more generous, more willing to share your life and resources to help others. In the final section of the letter, Paul focuses on the main source of his conflict with the Corinthians, that group of impressive leaders that he sarcastically calls super apostles. So they came to Corinth, promoting themselves and badmouthing Paul as a poor, unsuccessful leader. And at the risk of sounding self-promoting, Paul says, do these guys really want to compare credentials? He can totally take them on. Are they Jewish Bible experts? Well, so is Paul. He was a Pharisee, for goodness sakes. He has the whole Bible memorized. Do they want to brag about their superior knowledge of Jesus? Paul is actually seen and hung out with the risen Jesus. He's actually had visions of Jesus' heavenly throne room. But more importantly, Paul has given his entire life to the mission of Jesus. He sacrificed comfort and stability, and he never asked the Corinthians for money. Unlike the super apostles who charged a lot, Paul earned his own living. But, Paul says, he refuses to brag about these accomplishments because these aren't the things that really matter as Christians. Instead, what he'll brag about is how flawed and how weak he is, because it's in those inadequacies that he discovers the love and mercy of Jesus. Or as Jesus once told Paul, my grace is sufficient for you, my power is made perfect through weakness. Paul concludes the letter with a sober warning to the Corinthians. They need to check themselves. Their contempt for Paul, his way of life, their love for these super apostles, It all shows that they don't grasp who Jesus is on a fundamental level. They're not living like transformed followers of Jesus, and so he invites them, once again, to humble themselves before the love of Jesus. 2 Corinthians gives us a really unique window into the life of Paul and the paradox set before us by the cross of Jesus. The cross challenges our values, our ways of seeing the world. We value success, education, wealth, but God values humility and weakness. because his love and power were made known through the suffering death and the resurrection of Jesus. The cross also unleashes the transforming power and presence of the Spirit to empower Jesus' followers to take up his cruciform way of life and make it their own. And that's what 2 Corinthians is all about. How much of that sounded familiar? Book of 2 Corinthians. Even compared to 1 Corinthians, how would you put it on a scale of 1 to 10 of familiarity, the book of 2 Corinthians? In your own experience in church life. Have you ever heard a sermon series through it? Have you ever heard a sermon series through 2 Corinthians? Would you say you're more familiar with 2 Corinthians or say something like the book of Romans? Yeah, how about 1 Corinthians? 1 Corinthians more so? Ephesians? Galatians? Colossians? Do you ever ask yourself why one of the longest epistles in the New Testament in our culture is almost entirely ignored? You should ask yourself that, because 2 Corinthians is one of the most ignored of the New Testament books in our culture. And the reason for that has much to do with the fact that it is interacting with a culture very much like us. We do the exact same thing. Every single thing that the church in Corinth was doing after the close of the book of first Corinthians is almost entirely what the American church suffers from massively. We want the same kind of leaders. We want the same kind of success for our leaders, for our churches, for our personal lives. And so it makes us fall back on legalism rather than on the spirit of God. And so all of this condemns very much the typical American way of doing church. And so if you ever wonder why, when you settle up in 2 Corinthians, why you go, why you almost feel on unfamiliar territory there in the New Testament, this is why. Because in our culture, we don't want to hear almost any of that. We want the super apostles. We want the guys, I mean, literally a study was done on the likelihood of a pastor being called by a church and people will call it, you know, the Lord has called them here and all this. Strangely enough, if they have a British accent, they have a double chance of being hired by a church. Is that the Spirit of God doing that? They seem like they know a lot more, right? They seem like they'll be much more successful. Why would accents have a thing to do with that? What about credentials? Same thing. Now, I'm not against credentials. I'm working on my doctorate right now, okay? But if that is why you are hiring or listening to somebody, I promise for every sane person that is getting their doctorate in theology, I can show you 10 others that are insane. Don't do that. I know a lot of nutty ones. And I don't care if this is going on the internet. You guys can call me. This whole... They're looking at it as gold. It's going to raise them so they make a lot more money. Absolutely. And they will state it outright as such. Yes. They want the letters behind their name. 100%. And they are unapologetic about that. They're like, oh, that's just the way of it. Yep, if I want a big church or if I want a big ministry, then I need these letters behind my name. It's our. Right. But where is Christ in all of that? It is nothing but our culture. And this I will put forth Tim's theory. Why 2 Corinthians is so muted down in our culture is because it talks to us exactly where we are and we do not like this message. We don't like this message where it starts off with a praise to God who comforts us in our troubles. We want a God who takes us out of our troubles. We want a God who makes our stocks go up. We want a God who gives us a job that's very successful and well-off. We don't want to really follow somebody like Paul who is speaking of poverty as a positive thing or literally as an unimpressive, unimposing person. The guy was like 5'5", by at least cultural estimates at the time and a report, balding and a very hard public speaker to listen to. How often would that fly in this culture as a leader? He wouldn't get hired by a single church. I can almost promise you that. And he preaches suffering. Suffering as a good thing. Suffering as a reality that God is working on you and molding you and fashioning you more into Christ. And he says, how is it that this is not exactly what the gospel is? Because the Christ that we follow did these exact thing. He had no place to lay his head. He was unimpressive to look at. He just looked like a normal guy compared to who he was and is. looking like a normal human is humiliating. He's the God of the universe. Created all those humans. Sorry, I wish that would stay up there and not fall asleep. And so all of this is to say, what is it that true Christian leadership does? In our culture, it is about building a church that is very much like a business. We want them to be a business leader. They need to be energetic. They need to be engaging. We need to be able to get more customers. That's what we call evangelism. We need to be able to grow. We need to be able to expand. And maybe we can franchise it out and have multi-sites, okay? That's not Christian leadership. I will go to my grave defending that. That is not Christian leadership. Christian leadership looks like Christ. We will do what is given to us no matter the cost and no matter the outcomes. And this is exactly what he says. What is it that true Christian leadership does? It is not about the status of the leader. It is not about the status of the church. It is about pointing others to Christ, pointing Christians to Christ, pointing unbelievers to Christ. That is it. It is doing exactly what the Spirit of God does, which is how he brings life into people is not by just It is by pointing them and sending them to Christ. He does not convict of sin and then leave them hopeless. He convicts them of sin and then points them to Christ and say, there's the solution. And Christian leadership does the same thing. And so they come back and they go, what? I want letters of recommendation. We want all this cultural stuff, all these things. We literally do that when we hire pastors. I'm not against the practice, I'm just saying. We've gone way down this road. And that's where we're going to pick up in chapter three. 2 Corinthians chapter three. Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Or do we need, as some do, letters of recommendation to you or from you? You yourselves are our letter of recommendation, written on our hearts to be known and read by all. And you show that you are a letter from Christ delivered by us, written not with ink, but with the spirit of the living God, and not on tablets of stones, but on tablets of human hearts." What a remarkable way to say that. He was like, you want to go back to where we held all the cards. We don't. The Spirit of God drives these things now. The Spirit of God writes directly on our hearts. He's not writing on tablets of stones. Isn't it fascinating? And this is probably why I'm going to walk through 2 Corinthians next after John. I've been toying with the idea for several months, which is kind of why I'm a little bit more excitable about 2 Corinthians today. But This kind of concept is so built into the push for success and doing things better almost always falls back on legalism. Let's talk about why for a second. We would almost rather, if success is up to us, we would rather have the rules of the game rather than the spirit of God who blows any which way he will, right? Because if we know the rules, we can control the outcomes. at least so we think so, right? Then the law say, and this is what we get from the book of Galatians, the law says, do this and you will live, do this and you will die. Those are the rules of the game, right? So if there's a pride enough in us to think that we can control the outcome, if we were honest with ourselves, we would much rather the rules because then I can just do what is right and I will make the success flow. People run the church like this. And this is what he's talking about. They would much rather prefer leadership like that. And what he's saying is, one, just on a practical side, we can't actually do the law. We don't have the ability. So even if that was the way it worked, that's the whole book of Galatians. Even if that was the way it worked and the way success came, none of us have any hope for that. But two, we've entered a completely new era of covenant now. We have entered the age of the Spirit where the Spirit of God is the one that's actually doing these things. You ever wonder why Christians differ from one another in scruples and in rules, right? There's not one way to live the Christian life. Vic, you and I probably have different views on all manner of things. Is it our job to create uniformity or is it our job to, through humility, have unity? We don't want uniformity. I don't want you to all be like me. Now I want to be like you. I want us to all focus on Christ and have unity with humility amongst one another. And that means if I have a different view on alcohol, or voting, or citizenship, or food, or days of the month, or days of the week, or the year, or whatever the case may be, if I can celebrate Christmas and you can't, we should still be able to fellowship. Those are not the gospel. Those are scruples. and Christians differ from one another, and that is a good thing. In fact, I would go so far as to say it is a great thing that Christians differ from one another when it comes to these things. It is by design, it's not a bug, it is actually a feature of the church that teaches us that humility is absolutely essential to fellowship. You say difference is good, but a lot of the difference don't really indicate that people are really going in the right direction and they call themselves Christians. Right, and so that's where the scriptures, when they say something, we all must agree with that, regardless of what we would prefer. But I'm talking about things that the scriptures don't speak on with that level. So like, for instance, there are some people that believe eating meat is wrong, morally, and against Christian rules, right? I don't agree with that, but there are Christians who hold to that. I'm not going to sit here forever and a day and convince them with scripture that eating meat is right. Nope. If they can't eat meat without violating their conscience, don't eat meat. And I won't serve meat. Nor will I bring it when I go to their house. That is the humility of walking with one another that's required. Here we're speaking of things that are not clearly expressed in scripture that people hold to. Christmas is not discussed in scripture. or celebrating it or not celebrating it, both are acceptable ways of living. In fact, Romans 14 says explicitly that each of us should be fully convinced in our own minds, not sit here and try to debate it to no end. That would even, I would say that that rule should be amongst most of the things we do as a church, but hey, I'm not here to make more enemies. Verse four. Such is the confidence that we have through Christ toward God. Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God, who has made us sufficient to be ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter, but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. His main role. What's that? Law is the letter, yep. Yeah, it's a play off of this physically written down versus now the Spirit of God is not physically writing down what he has us doing. He actually has us doing different things all over the place. And that's on purpose. And when you are sitting at the foot of Sinai, you could literally point at the law written with the finger of God. It was posted right there. Right? You don't do these things. Don't do these things. We have been given a much better covenant, but it's not in our hands anymore. It's not in our control. We don't get to determine its outcome. And so he actually calls, now watch this in verse seven, he calls the old ministry a ministry of death. He's going to go for full hyperbole, but it's also true because the law and the letter could not give life. Only the Spirit of God has that role. We've discussed it from the very beginning all the way forward. The role of the Spirit of God is to give life. And he does that through Christ. And so here he calls the way it was before the giving of the Spirit, he calls it the ministry of death. He says, verse seven, now, if the ministry of death, carved in letters on stone, came with such glory that the Israelites could not even look at Moses' face because of its glory, which was being brought to an end, Will not the ministry of the Spirit have even more glory? He's challenging them on this concept. You guys are looking at legalism and the way to carry this out as such a glorious thing, but then you denigrate what the Spirit of God is doing today. He says, how would it actually not be more so? Isn't what the Spirit of God doing directly into the people's hearts far better than just writing these things on dead stones? Isn't that a great thing? He says in verse nine, for if there was glory in the ministry of condemnation, again, another terminology for the era of the law, the ministry of righteousness must far exceed it in glory. Indeed, in this case, what once had glory has come to have no glory at all because of the glory that surpasses it. You know that the moon seems very, very bright at nighttime. Why is that? It's the brightest thing in the sky. It looks great. In fact, some nights with a full moon, it can almost seem like you can just walk by the light of the moon and it's bright and all this type of stuff. The moon is not always in the night sky. Sometimes it's in the daytime sky. Yeah. How bright is it compared to the sun? It's like a wisp, a little fingernail hanging up in the sky. Is it there? Yes. Is it shining with the same brightness? Yes. Does it matter? No. we will walk by the light of the sun. Doesn't mean that we don't pay attention to the moon, the moon's unimportant, the moon didn't serve its purpose, it did. And he's saying the same thing. The ministry of condemnation had its glory, but the ministry of the spirit has such more glory to it that to go back to those shadows and pictures in favor of that while missing Christ in the spirit is to just simply miss the whole point of everything entirely. But he's saying to the church in Corinth, but at least you had this. It put it back in your hands so that you could control success again. That sounds pathetic. Because the way he's addressing it, he's saying, look, there was glory in the ministry of condemnation. That's like the moon at night. But after the sunrise, there's a play on words. After the sunrise, the ministry of righteousness, it far exceeds it in glory. Who cares about the moon when the sun is shining down? The answer is nobody. In fact, even your telescope can barely see it. If you focus in on it and try to use sun filters and everything, you still can't see the moon so much during the daylight. One glory far exceeded the other, surpassed it, and the other was being brought to an end. The ministry of the Spirit, he identifies in verse 11, what the Spirit is doing is now permanent. That's not a small promise. It means that we are not to expect yet another age of the church outside of the eternal state. That's a huge promise. The law came with temporality to it. All of it looked forward to an ultimate sacrifice. Think about it. If you come to the Day of Atonement, you come up to the temple and you have one animal killed and one animal sent off as a scapegoat, both representing the payment for sin and the eschewing sin from your life, those two pictures, the moment that all sins are handled and taken care of, the clock starts for next year's Day of Atonement. Next year, we will all be back here in the same sinful state again, looking for another sacrifice, looking for another scapegoat, looking for more appeasement and peace. It was temporary by design, but the ministry of the Spirit through Christ is permanent by design, once for all. And he uses this to express to them, verse 12, since we have such a hope, we are very bold. We're not like Moses. We're not like Moses who put a veil over his face so that the Israelites might not gaze on the end, the outcome of what was being brought to an end. Their minds were hardened. He says, for to this day, even when Jews read the old covenant, the same veil remains unlifted because only through Christ is it taken away. It says, yes, to this day, whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their hearts, but when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another, to another, to another, for this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit. It is a remarkable capstone. Because what he expresses to them is to identify the outcome of these things. He says, think about it this way. If you actually go back to the law, what freedom do you have? What joy in life do you have? What promise of peace do you have from the Lord? The law doesn't have that ability. Think about what the law says. Do this and you will live. It doesn't say do it once. It is all the time. Don't do this or you will die. That is one time. One sin brings death. James points this out very well. The same God who commanded, do not commit adultery, also said, do not murder. You become a transgressor of the law to break even one infraction of the law. When it says that in the greatest commandment, let's just boil the whole thing down to two commandments, right? The greatest and the second. Greatest commandment, love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, strength, and love your neighbor as you love yourself. And you say, well, I don't love myself very much. Yes, you do. You feed yourself. You clothe yourself. You drive yourself places. You take care of yourself. You should love the Lord your God more than that. At every minute of every day for your entire life, from before you were born to when you die, where is there freedom in that? all we will see is our failure. If that is the only version of ministry that we pay attention to, all it will be is a burden that none of us can hold on to. Because all of us will fail all the time. And you can see this when it comes up. And ministries that, and here I'll just point it out directly, ministries that focus on success become some of the most bizarre versions of legalism you'll ever see. I've seen it in many, many churches, where this focus on, we will get this church to this, we will get it to that goal, and the goal is never Christ, it's always multi-site, it's always 500 people instead of 200 people, it's always something like this. What will eventually happen, I promise, is that that church will no longer follow Christ. give it five years, give it 15, give it 40, give it a hundred years, give it past the time you die. There is no church in history that became self-absorbed that that was a great thing of freedom in the person of Christ, ever. It just doesn't happen because that's not how the gospel works. That's not how Paul's leadership works. That's not how Christ's leadership worked. Christ, when he went to the cross, how many people were with him? This man who could feed 25,000 people with a snap of his fingers, who could raise people from the dead. Who was left with him at the very end, at the foot of the cross? You had two fingers up, who were the two people? At the foot of the cross. His mom and John. That's it. Everyone else left. Everyone. Even the ones who were defending him with a sword the night before. 25,000 people left him in one day because he didn't want to make them more bread. I know multiple seminary professors that would condemn his leadership for that. You lost the opportunity to share the gospel with them again. Okay? Because the whole point is more people, more success, more outcomes. And Jesus says, no, I'm just gonna preach the gospel. Oh, they were trying to make him king. He could have taken one of the kingdoms of the earth without dying at that moment. Unseated Herod, he had enough of a following. 25,000 people is nothing to snuff that when you're talking Galilee. It was a legitimate attempt. Let's make him king. And he leaves from them. He says, the only reason you want to follow me is because you had your fill of the bread. The ministry of glory of the Spirit of God and the person of Christ has nothing to do with success and self-glorification. Nothing has to do with glorifying God and Christ and a great deal of suffering, probably poverty, difficulty, but freedom that you will never have known elsewise. Because here's the thing, James, who I'll continue to reference until we get there, James makes reference also of the transformation of even the law in our minds. You know what James calls the law to the Christian's heart? It's not chains that can condemn us. It's not something that comes up and goes, hey, you didn't do this exactly right, I condemn you. No, he calls it the law of liberty. He looks at the law and says, here I get to see a picture of real life and what God loves. and I get to pursue it as a law already fulfilled that holds no threat or condemnation on me. What a marvelous thing to be able to pursue love of God and love of neighbor without fear. That is the freedom that the Spirit of God has brought to Christians' hearts. And we will throw it away so quickly so that we could make our churches and our leaders successful. And that's what Paul is writing to the church in Corinth here in 2 Corinthians and going, you're missing everything. You would rather go back to that because you think you can control the outcome, but the reality is the outcome is no freedom and sorrow and death. It is a ministry of death. It is a ministry of condemnation. We have a ministry of life and a ministry of freedom. It is so much better to follow Christ than to follow yourself. It is so much better to follow Christ than to follow a pastor. I promise you, I've known many pastors, some great ones, some rotten ones. None of them are worth following over Christ. Me least of all. I would love to go forward, but I'm gonna stop there at the end of 2 Corinthians 3. If there's any question about this, it'd be a great time for it. By the way, Annette, it is already 10 o'clock. I don't know how that actually happened. Any questions or clarifications to be made? Otherwise, I think we're gonna have to end right there. It's in the middle of his thinking, but such as it is. Sure, what do you got? 2 Corinthians 8 verse 9. It's something that they quote in the Bible Project video. They actually have a bit in it. For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich. Yes. I have never truly known the context of, and I'm sure I've even seen that Bible Project video and didn't put it in my heart. I've heard Oh, yes. Preached on a very letter that was there to condemn them. Correct. And I've never I've never known the severe juxtaposition there. I've only known that, no, clearly Paul is using, you know, their length, like speaking to them in metaphors, obviously. Right. That's not Jesus' goal to make us rich in this life. But I've never really known the context of 2 Corinthians to know that, no, he was telling people who bowed you these things that rich is using that terminology. Rich has a completely different purpose there in chapter eight, yes. Has nothing to do with monetary anything. Has everything to do with the glories and the majesties of salvation and righteousness in him. He who had all glory and majesty before the incarnation made himself poor. And here's the remarkable thing. If Jesus came and was born as a wealthy sultan, That still would have been humility. But this is one of the great things that Philippians 2 points out is he was born in meager status and when he found himself born as a human, he humbled himself further and became obedient, which is the chief goal of such humility, even to the point of death. And exaltation takes place after that. And it's the same thing he points out there in chapter eight, verse nine, is that reality, he did this for our sake, that through his poverty, we might become rich. We might join him in the glories. It's the carrying away of many brothers to glory. A remarkable promise for sure. And you're right. Usually, one of the easiest, oh, this is a great segue for this here at the end. One of the greatest tests of a false teacher is that they take scripture out of context to back them up. Satan does it to Jesus in the temptations. Recently somebody called me a false teacher, and they used 2 Timothy 3 to do that, which is great, while still trying to call me a Christian, but a false teacher, even though 2 Timothy 3 applies to fallen people that are not Christians, whatever the case may be. People love all sorts of stuff. When something like that is said, and it's pulled out of context, and it's used as a hammer, or it's used to support an unbiblical teaching like the prosperity gospel. You can be almost certain that you're listening to a false teacher. And to use something like anything in 2 Corinthians to prop up prosperity is so paradoxically insane. It would be like the Judaizers quoting Galatians to say, yes, the law, you all actually have to be circumcised. It's so, I do not pay attention to the context. I know nothing about the book, but here's a verse that I could use to convince you that I'm right. What? So it's just remarkable. Happens all the time. And this is why we focus on the scripture so much. Why? Because then we'll be able to weed out that nonsense. So when somebody comes up and says, boo, you know, John 3 16, I've heard somebody use it to support that God will save every single person in the entire world. You don't have to believe on Jesus. There's universality because God loves the world. If you read any portion of the book of John, you would know that that's nonsense. But if you just know John 3.16, you can just use it. It's like when people say, oh, Jesus says do not judge. So you can't tell me I'm doing sinful things. No. He also says judge with righteous judgment. And oh, by the way, he says that my responsibility is to teach you the commands of Christ. But she says, don't do this. You know, I mean, it's straight up stuff. That's not the only thing anyone ever said at any point. Calling somebody out for building their house on sand is not actually an unloving thing to do. That is a loving thing to do. That's going to collapse. Well, there's no storm here. There's no flood here. Why are you, why are you, you know, you know, why are you mellowing down? I'm really excited about this cool house. It's going to fall. in so many people's lives. Okay, let's end there. We'll come back to 2 Corinthians next week. Chapter three is awesome, but as you just pointed out, there's a few other references here that we'll get into next week. We'll end it there, all right.