it here, starting in verse 12. This is God's Word. 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 back, 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, Silvanus 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 it is through him that we utter our 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. read that far in God's word. In storybooks, nothing ever goes wrong with our hero. We get to see him negotiating various circumstances without any flaws, without any struggles. He seems to always know what to do and he wins and wins and wins. And as we turn to our Apostle Paul, we sort of want that. We expect or desire that our hero, the Apostle Paul, would always win and always do right and there wouldn't hardly be a struggle for him. Here, Paul encounters a struggle. It wasn't like our storybook hero for Paul. Paul promised to come visit the church in Corinth, but then Paul was delayed, didn't visit them at the time that he said he would like to visit them. And some in the church in Corinth instantly started doubting Paul's sincerity. Is he a man of his word? Does he have integrity? Can we trust him? So Paul's view of his life is that he had integrity, that he was behaving above reproach, but only by God's grace. And before his conversion, he had persecuted Christians. That was certainly true. They all knew his past. But after Paul's conversion, his life and his gospel ministry as an apostle all rested on the death and resurrection of Christ. His sins were washed away and he behaved according to Christ's power and Christ's standard. And that brings us to our main point of this sermon. Since we can trust Jesus fully, we can have confidence in those who live by his word and spirit. We'll see this in three areas, verses 12 through 14. The Paul and Corinth two-way trust bond will be validated when Jesus comes. The second point will be from verses 15 to 19, Paul's love for Corinth was genuine, arising from God's own trustworthiness. And then lastly, verses 20 to 22, our third point, God's promises are fulfilled in Jesus, and further confirmed by his word and spirit to God's glory. So first we look at this trust bond between Paul and the church in Corinth, the trust bond that had struggles in it now. Verse 12 is the first time we have this word boast or boasting appear, and it'll appear, as I said, 25 times in the letter. It's something of a mini-theme. For Paul, the way he uses this word is not our modern connotation of boasting as if we should never boast because that's saying something about yourself. Boasting, for Paul, is the same as declaring something confidently. For example, Paul here is saying he could look at his accusers in the eye and declare to them with confidence that their accusations about him were false, having to do with his traveling to Corinth, and he's about to explain that. Listen to verse 12 as he puts it again. 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." So if Paul said he was going to come and then he didn't come, would he be behaving like those worldly apostles and saying, I'll only come if it's advantageous? If you guys are giving me more money than other people gave me, that sort of thing. They were accusing him, they were suspecting him. Even though they knew Paul, he had been ministering in Corinth for 18 months and they got to know him. Now he's away doing missionary journeys and he decided to write this letter before his next visit to address some of these matters. So normally we think of a boastful approach, a boastful person as self-centered. But when Paul's speaking here about his own character, he uses the word boast because he's confident. And why is he confident? He attributes it to God's gracious actions towards Paul. In that way, his boasting is not self-centered. Rather, it's Christ-centered. He's confident in Christ about himself. See how he wrote here in verse 12 about his conscience? The conscience, as you know, is that part of us that evaluates whether we did right or wrong. Others were condemning Paul, doubting him, but Paul's conscience did not condemn Paul. Now, that does not mean that his conscience could never be wrong, just as your conscience or my conscience could be wrong. Paul also is only a limited human being and a fallen sinner still, even after his conversion and even after his call to be an apostle. But what Paul's clear conscience here in verse 12 meant was that to the extent that Paul's mind to the extent that Paul's heart had been educated by the word of God and then illuminated by the spirit of God, to that same extent, Paul was able to accurately know about himself whether or not he had acted in sincerity and full integrity. And he's reporting to them about that. So then in verses 13 and 14, he showed that because he operated on principle, they could expect that Paul would be consistent with what he said about his travels and about his preaching. And what Paul is writing now will match with what Paul wrote in his first letter. That's their concern, because in the end of his first letter in chapter 16, he said he would come to them, and now he's explaining why he didn't come to them. So which is it? You're going to come, but you didn't come, right? So what he's writing now will match up with what he wrote in his first letter, and they can expect that all to be confirmed at the end of the world when we all face Jesus and all the truth is laid out. Listen to how he wrote this in verses 13 and 14. He's saying if you only understood, you'd see how it all lines up. Paul's letters were straightforward, is what he's saying. I wrote to you that I was planning to come to you and I meant it, right? Chapter 16, these verses five and following about coming to him. His letters were not open to more than one interpretation. Maybe I said I would come or I was thinking about coming, but none of that. It's not open to more than one interpretation, just like his teaching about doctrine. about Jesus, about salvation, about redemption, about wisdom, all the topics he covered. He was straightforward and they're not open to other interpretations. If readers in Corinth failed to properly understand Paul, that fact would indicate more about them than it would indicate about Paul and his writings. All of Paul's preaching and all of Paul's writings was done in the light of that future second coming of the Lord Jesus when he will gather us all and we appear before his last judgment seat and he renders final verdict on all that has happened and done from the words we said, the thoughts we had, and everything in between. At that time, Paul mentions here in verse 14, the value of Paul's work and its validity would be tested. And to bear that in mind so constantly that he would include it here in verse 14, the second coming of Jesus and our standing before him in his judgment seat gave seriousness to the way in which Paul viewed it and was supposed to give seriousness to the way in which they viewed it. So that's our first point, that the Paul and Corinth two-way trust bond will be validated when Jesus comes. Then we move to our second point, Paul's love for Corinth was genuine, arriving from God's trustworthiness. They were starting to doubt Paul and doubt whether he actually loved them. If they were starting to have a squabble with Paul, and so therefore he changed his plans and wouldn't visit them, it's more than just they don't trust him, now they're wondering if he loves them. And so all that is in play here, and this is why he needed to explain the issue. So verses 15, 16, and 17 is Paul explaining why he had not visited them as he said he would. And we're reading this going, this was a squabble 2,000 years ago. It must have been extremely important to the church in Corinth when they received this letter, but we're struggling to see how we as modern readers could benefit from verses 15, 16, and 17 being included here 2,000 years later for us to read. Yes, that's an important question to raise because the value is incredible. These verses are a value to us because they reveal how Paul was a real person with real relationships with human beings. And Paul dealt with problems in those church relationships with sincerity and integrity in order to resolve them. That's foundationally important for him and the church then, and for all the churches from then till now these last 2,000 years. These verses are extremely instructive for us. Here Paul explained that he was not re-nigging on his promise to visit them. On the contrary, Paul doubled his plans to visit them. That's what he lists out here. So I'll read again verses 15, 16, and 17 together. Verse 15, 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? So he's raising the very issue that caused the mistrust between him and the church in Corinth. I said I would come to you, and I had a change of plans. I was actually going to visit you on my way out, and my way back was visiting you twice. That was my intention, that was the change. See, Paul always took his ministry at Corinth seriously. Even though he planted the church and then left on missionary journeys, he always saw Corinth as a location of strategic importance throughout the region. It was of strategic importance for business and for trade, and so also it would be of strategic importance for Christian ministry and missionary work in the coming years. So even though Paul was involved in very important pioneering missionary work, in which every city he went to needed its first church to be planted by him, very important work, he still always kept in mind the church back in Corinth. He had it on his mind, he had them in his prayers, he loved them deeply. And Paul carried a deep concern for the stability and for the growth of the Christians in Corinth. In verse 15, the reason he wanted to visit them twice and preach and teach again was that the grace of God might be given to them. That's not building himself up, that's just saying, He's an apostle whose job it is to preach and teach to them, and he wanted them to get more of that blessing. Then verse 16, he also wanted them to become partners with him in his missionary work to new cities. Now you might see that as, aha, dollar signs. See, he just wants their money. But that's not true. He wanted them to have the extra blessing of being involved in the missionary work that he was doing. If they got behind him and sent him and supported him with supplies, money, and prayers, then they too could rejoice in the fruit that was coming from his missionary work. Much like he had written just previously in verse 11, if they pray for him during his distress, they join in the giving thanks when he's comforted. and for a greater involvement of them within the spreading kingdom is growth for them. For Corinth to partner with Paul would be for Corinth to experience this new dimension of God's grace, for them to support and encourage his missionary work and the spread of the gospel to new places, and get them beyond thinking about themselves to think about the spread of the kingdom of Jesus. In verse 17, Paul says he has no waffling, back and forth as they might have thought, but rather he was always seeking the most gain for everyone, and God and his providence caused the circumstances to change. Paul wanted their prayer support, he wanted their heartfelt support, their financial support for the poor churches and the new churches, and he was straightforward about all of it. Then he goes to verses 18 and 19 where his argument is from the greater to the lesser, the greater matter to the lesser matter. Since Paul had maintained integrity and truthfulness in the greater matter of proclaiming the gospel to them, in person and in his first letter, then they should know that the lesser matter, this whole thing with regard to his travel arrangements having been changed, that they could trust his integrity on the smaller matters too. If they could trust his preaching and his writing, they could trust him to make decisions with his missionary travel. Just as surely as he had proclaimed the truth of Christ, he also was charged to live out the truth of Christ in all of his dealings in the world, especially his dealings with the church in Corinth. Listen to him say this in verses 18 and 19. 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, Silvanus and Timothy and I, was not yes and no, but in Him it is always yes. He sang that if I preach the truth about who the real God is for your salvation, Can you not also trust me then to tell you the truth about the change in plans for my travel arrangements? And just as God's promises were represented in Jesus, the Son of God, so also Jesus is represented by his own Apostle Paul. And just as God the Father is trustworthy to send Jesus as he surely did, so also Jesus is trustworthy to send his Apostle Paul whom he surely did. And so Paul is actually here repeating a teaching that our Lord Jesus had. You remember hearing this, Matthew 5, 37? Let what you say be simply yes or no. Anything more than this comes from evil. He's imitating and expanding on what his Savior, our Lord, taught as well. Paul's teaching is consistent with Jesus' teaching. Paul's life is consistent with that of a Christian apostle. We move on to our third and last point. You would think that Paul could end there, but as soon as he said, And at the end of verse 19, that in Jesus it's always yes, he knew that that was a very truncated statement and there would be great value if he expanded that statement. So he did. Thank God that he took verses 20, 21, and 22 to expand that statement. What does it mean that these are yes in Jesus? So it means this, in verse 20, Paul unpacked the beauty of God's trustworthiness by being shown through Jesus. Listen, for all the promises of God find their yes in Jesus Christ. That is why it is through Jesus Christ that we utter our amen to God for his glory. What does that have to do with Paul and his travel arrangements and his trust relationship with Corinth? Paul is saying his whole ministry his teaching and preaching for 18 months, and now his whole first letter for Corinthians, his entire ministry could be summed up with one word, amen. That's the word. That's all he was saying. Everything he spoke, everything he preached, everything he proclaimed, and everything he wrote is simply him saying amen to what God the Father promised and what God the Father came through with in giving his son the Lord Jesus Christ. He's like, the only thing that Paul was doing is announcing the trustworthiness of Jesus. Who cares about Paul? The issue became, can we trust Paul? Who cares about Paul? The better question to ask is, can we trust Jesus? That's the issue. Paul came to proclaim Jesus to the broken, dark city of Corinth, and people came to conversion, to came in faith in Jesus. Can they trust Jesus? They said yes. Did God promise us salvation in Christ and did God provide it? Since we can trust God fully, we can have confidence that God will also see to it to send people whom he calls to tell about his gospel, who will live by his word and live by his spirit and serve his church. We can trust that God will send apostles and after them to send ministers and elders and deacons to care for his church because God sent his son to die for us. And he victoriously caused him to rise again for us. He's not gonna just leave us hanging. Of course he will send the apostles that are needed. And all that other ministry is simply them saying amen. to what Jesus has done, to what Christ has done for us. What a distraction. The relationship between Corinth and Paul is a distraction from the beauty and the glory of the gospel of Jesus Christ. So then, Paul being a preacher, Paul being a writer of the Bible books, expands on that in four clear ways in verses 21 and 22. Establishes, Anointed, seal, and spirit. We'll cover these briefly. First, notice in verse 21, it is God who establishes us with you in Christ. God in the present tense now establishes. That means God continues to establish the ministry of Paul and Timothy to the ministry of the church in Corinth. God kept on providing them with missionary return visits And then in addition to that, pastors, elders, and deacons for the church there. Whatever God establishes in his church, God always establishes servants whose calling it is to serve and to shepherd his church. God himself remains currently involved in building up the bonds of ministry in his church. That's the encouraging power of verse 21. It is God who establishes. It is God who continues to establish. us with you. If there's a repair needed between the church in Corinth and Paul, it is God who establishes or reestablishes or repairs the relationship between Paul and the church in Corinth. It is God who establishes that. Because God has given his son for the church in Corinth, he needs that church in Corinth to trust Paul enough to get the value of the second letter of Corinthians, because it's God's word to them. God establishes. The second one, God anointed. Verse 21, it is God who has anointed us. The word anointed here in verse 21 reminds us of Old Testament kings and priests, anointed with oil. It also reminds us of New Testament word anointed, such as Luke 3, 21 to 22, when Jesus was baptized with water and then the Holy Spirit descended on Jesus while God the Father spoke audibly from heaven. That's a whole nother sermon, don't get me started. Later, in Acts 4.27, it was confirmed that it was God who had, listen for the word, it was God who had anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit. Anointing is associated with the receiving of the Spirit. Every believer in Corinth received this privilege of having the Spirit of God from the moment that they were converted. The Apostle John echoes this in 1 John 2.20, you have been anointed by the Holy One. Again, 1 John 2.27, the anointing that you received from him abides in you. That God is trustworthy enough to anoint us with his spirit. Third out of these four is the seal. Notice in verse 22, it is God who has put his seal on us. A seal is a mark of ownership. This action of placing a seal on us is the prerogative of God alone. If you work for a company and you wear a patch right here on your shirt, it says you work for that company. God declares that you belong to him, that you are in his kingdom. He declares that we are part of his family. God is trustworthy to give us the seal of that spirit. And the last one, the fourth one, the spirit as a guarantee. It is God, in verse 22, who has given us his spirit in our hearts as a guarantee. A guarantee here means down payment, indicating permanence. You don't temporarily receive the spirit for a little while, like you take out a library book that you can't keep. No, we receive the spirit as a permanent gift to us to keep. The down payment meant there's more blessings to come. First you get the Spirit, and then there's more blessings from God to us. The Spirit guarantees the rest of the package. The blessings, the fact that we're children of God, the fact that we're citizens of heaven. The fact that we're protected, we cannot be inhabited by a demon, because we have the Spirit in us. We have the comfort of knowing that we belong to Christ, we belong to our Father in Heaven. The gift of faith, the gift of repentance, the gift of eternal life, the gift of the Bible, the gift of the rest of God's promises yet to be fulfilled. God's trustworthiness is seen in all four of these. All four of these blessings that he just now listed out. Jesus is the yes to God's promises in what ways? He establishes our relationships within the church. He anointed, sealed, and gave his spirit as a guarantee. God's trustworthiness is seen in establishing his servants for ministry of his word by his spirit. He anointed, sealed, and guaranteed it to all of his people. God's not playing around with this. He established, sealed, and guarantees it to all of his people. Come what may, in the whole world and in any generation, this is what God will be about in his world for his church. He sent his son to guarantee it. And in this way, God made the Corinthians stand firm in Christ and repair their trust in Paul so they could receive in love the second letter of Corinthians. and that God made sure that Paul stood firm in Christ, that God did not let them waver or stumble. God granted perseverance through affliction and his comfort. God helped the church in Corinth to make right their relationship with Paul and helped Paul to live in simplicity and sincerity and integrity. Because the gift of the Holy Spirit was a down payment, the people in Corinth need not fear that the Holy Spirit would leave them or that the Holy Spirit would leave Paul. They need not fear because the Holy Spirit remains with each person as proof of the salvation received and proof of the blessings of heaven yet to come. Listen, without Christ, all the believers in Corinth would still be untrustworthy sinners and so would Paul called Saul. Without Christ, there's no church, there's no apostle, there's no salvation. But with Christ, Saul becomes Paul. The wicked, unbelieving people in Corinth become the church in Corinth. And if they gain a good reputation, and they have personal integrity, and Paul has personal integrity, it's on the basis of Jesus having come, Jesus having granted us undeserved mercy, unmerited grace to become children of God. God alone is holy. Christ alone is trustworthy. We as Christians only gain integrity by faith in him and his righteousness being granted to us as a gift. All this is what I call in the sermon title, standing on the promises. We stand on God's promises. What have we seen? Since we can trust Jesus fully, we can have confidence in those who live by his word and his spirit. Paul and Corinth with that two-way trust bond would be validated when Jesus comes. Secondly, Paul's love for Corinth was genuine arising out of God's own trustworthiness. Thirdly, God's promises are fulfilled in Jesus and further confirmed by his word and spirit to God's glory. What should we do if church relationships gets messed up? I have four application points to us, I think, of this important 2,000 year old teaching from God's word. What should we do if church relationships get messed up? Number one, remember the devil is the accuser. We learn from Paul that a lot of the accusations should be ignored. He says, Christ will sort it out on the last day. That's what he says in verse 12, verse 14. We all must answer to God. God knows. So in the final day, the day of our Lord Jesus Christ, we'll all know the truth about all of it. And some things just get chucked up forward to the end. Remember the devil's the accuser. Secondly, when we do answer an accusation, be straightforward. This is exactly how Paul dealt with it here. We speak our conscience, like Paul spoke his conscience, and we directly face the issues that are disrupting relationships. And one day, Paul would answer to God for everything he ever said, everything he ever did, everything he ever wrote, everything he ever taught, and everything he ever thought. And everything that Paul did wrong, we covered in the blood of Jesus Christ. Of course, Paul must answer to God. And sometimes, Paul had to answer to the church. When we answer an accusation, be straightforward. Third out of four closing points, we explain our actions. Again, this is also what Paul did. We learn from Paul that we live and speak in the light of the final judgment day in our minds. We explain with simplicity. We explain with sincerity. For those of us who are leaders, we can learn something a little extra from this passage about Paul in the role of a leader. When leaders fail, we might cause people to doubt the trustworthiness of God himself. That's the danger and caution about leadership. That's why it's so important that we as leaders explain how our actions miss the mark, but that Christ remains reliable. You need not have your faith in Christ rattled. We point people away from ourselves and to Christ. If we have any reliability, it's from him, If we have any wrongs, that's from us. Christ is utterly reliable. We explain our actions in order that people could keep understanding that. The fourth and last one, remember grace. You see it in verse 12, how Paul listed out grace. 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. Grace supremely so. We learn from Paul here in verse 12 to remember that we all stand in the grace of God. That God gives the grace of comfort and afflictions we've seen being misunderstood. Here comes another affliction from Paul to be misunderstood by the church that he loved in Corinth. That the God of all comfort provided comfort for Paul in this too. And there's room for us after we mess up to continue to serve. In the Old Testament, Moses and David killed people. and yet were restored and used by God through grace. In the New Testament, Paul persecuted the church, Peter denied our Lord, people messed up, and yet they were restored and used by God through grace. There's grace in the church of Jesus Christ. There's forgiveness in the church of Jesus Christ for people who mess up, whether it's prophets, kings, apostles, missionaries, pastors, elders, deacons, or every believer. Relationships between believers can be healed by grace. The entire church was built on God's grace from start to finish, top to bottom, inside and out, left to right. It's all about grace. He says this, verse 12, by the grace of God and supremely so toward you. For daily need, God gives us daily grace. For sudden need, God gives us sudden grace. For overwhelming need, God gives us overwhelming grace. The whole of the Christian life and the entirety of the church of Jesus Christ is a matter of grace from beginning to end. And God will continue to provide enough grace to last through all of our afflictions in this lifetime. What have we seen? Remember that the devil's the accuser. When we answer an accusation to be straightforward, we explain our actions and we remember grace. John 1.16, from Christ's fullness we have all received grace upon grace. That's great. Father, protect us.