2 Corinthians - Lesson 3A

• This morning, turn with me if you will to 2 Corinthians and follow along as we venture into the 3rd Chapter of Paul’s Epistle.

  • Last week we began our teaching with Paul making a shift from Chapter 2:13 into verse 14. With that shift, Paul began what will be the longest coherent (unified and reasoned) section in all of 2 Corinthians.

  • Paul’s narrative begins with verse 14 of Chapter 2 and continues all the way through verse 4 of Chapter 7. This section will also represent what is arguably the centerpiece of the entire letter. As a matter of fact, scholar’s call it a lengthy digression on Paul’s part, caused by a contrast inside Paul’s own mind.

    • A contrast between an ongoing battle of anxious worry mixed with joy. Specifically, worry and joy over his present sense of relief, and rejoicing over hearing how the church at Corinth responded to the severe letter he wrote to them.

• As we move forward in Paul’s writings, we will see how one thought will lead to another in an outpouring of spiritual wealth, unsurpassed in any of his other epistles. And as I said, this will all be brought about by Paul's recollection of his happy reunion, where he met up with Titus in Macedonia, paired with the good news that his friend brought to him from Corinth.

  • As we ended Chapter 2 this past week, we did so with Paul writing the following in 2 Corinthians 2:17:

2 Cor. 2:17 For we are not like the many, peddling the word of God, but as from sincerity, but as from God, we speak of Christ in the sight of God.

• Remember, one of Paul’s goal’s in writing this letter was to re-establish his authority within this church, along with who he was, which was a man called by the will of God. To do that, he had to win back his integrity among these people, along with reestablishing his Apostolic Authority in the minds of this church.

  • In verse 17 Paul said something that rings true even today, and that was, that he and the other Apostles were not men who “peddled the word of God”. The KJV version says,

2 Cor. 2:17 (KJV) For we are not as many, which corrupt the word of God: but as of sincerity, but as of God, in the sight of God speak we in Christ.

• Whereas the NASB says “peddling”. The Greek says peddling as well, but both words carry the same meaning. In the Greek - kapēleúō -  it means properly, to act as an unscrupulous merchant, i.e. "a huckster" who profits by "peddling the Word of God" for personal gain. Kapēleúō ("peddler") is only used in 2 Cor 2:17, and it specifically speaks of people "marketing the ministry" (the Word of God) for fast gain.

  • In those days, “peddling the word of God” was done in a very different manner than it is today. But having said that, peddling is peddling no matter how you do it. The problem with today’s peddling lies in the degree of danger involved.

  • Christians today are in graver danger of being deceived by false teaching than the Christians were in Paul’s day. And why? Primarily because most of the false teaching in Paul’s day revolved around the Jews (some which were saved - we call them Messianic Jews).

    • You see, the Messianic Jews of Paul’s day were desperately trying to hang on to the Law, and their cultural customs. Therefore, they came up with a hybrid version of Christianity. A version that blended Christianity and Judaism, but obviously there was no such thing,

    • Then you had the non-Christ professing Jews. They were trying to get the believing Jews to abandon Jesus altogether. These two groups made up what were most of the false teachers present in that day. But having said that, there were others. Ancient Greek Mysticism ran rampant along with many other Pagan religions.

    • And yes, both were bad, and both had the power to cause the believer to stumble. But for the church of today, we face an entirely different type of false teaching. One that takes peddling the word of God to a whole new level, and different level.

  • One that finds its roots in pragmatism and logic, paired with “easy belief-ism”, married with this concept of prosperity. One that says that somehow, God wants us to prosper here on earth. Now, I won’t re-hash all this, but as I said last week, God does want us to prosper.

• But His prosperity is spiritual not temporal. His prosperity revolves around the peace you receive when you live for Him. More specifically, when you bring Him Glory in everything you do. You see, when you understand God’s concept of prosperity, and you begin to think in this manner, and live this way, you can tap into a comfort and a peace only available through “The Spirit of God”. A comfort and peace that God has reserved for his Children.

  • And by the way, it’s better than any material possession you could ever obtain on this earth.

• Now, with that thought and concept fresh on your mind, let’s delve into Chapter 3, where Paul continues to defend who he and the other Apostles are.

  • The NASB calls this section, ‘Ministers of a New Covenant’.

2 Cor. 3:1 Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Or do we need, as some, letters of commendation to you or from you?
2 Cor. 3:2 You are our letter, written in our hearts, known and read by all people,
2 Cor. 3:3 revealing yourselves, that you are a letter of Christ, delivered by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.
2 Cor. 3:4 Such is the confidence we have toward God through Christ. 

• Paul starts verse 1 by saying, “Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Or do we need some letters of commendation to you or from you? In this verse you get a real sense of the frustration in Paul’s writings. I would call it a hint of sarcasm mixed with aggravation.

  • Paul is saying, ‘People do we need to start over? Do we need to prove ourselves to you again, or send you letters of commendation? Commendation meaning, do we need to gather letters from other churches, proving who we are, so that you guys will believe in us again?

    • Remember guys, Paul started this church, which is why he is fighting so hard with his words. As I said, he is trying to re-establish his authority. And what a ridiculous thing for him to have to do. Think about it, the Apostle Paul established this church by himself. He put leaders in place, set them on the right path, then leaves and heads to the next area to do the same thing. Now he must start all over re-establishing himself.

    • All because there are those in this fellowship who have sowed doubt in the minds of these believers, specifically about the validity of who Paul is. You can kind of see why his writings seem sarcastic. Mine would be too.

• I find it interesting how easy it is for us (as humans) to wander and get off track. How easy it is to mess things up with our thoughts and ideas. What easy pickings we are for the enemy. Honestly, if you leave most of us alone for more than a week, we will begin wandering off course, which tells us something.

  • It tells us that we must recognize this fundamental weakness that lies inside each one of us. In other words, we must admit to ourselves that we all are susceptible to wander. To slowly drift off track. And therefore, it’s imperative we heed what 1 Peter tells us, and that is that we must be sober, alert, and vigilant.

    • All because “the enemy prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking who he may devour”. And how does he do it? Through our minds, and our psyche. And so, if we know this to be the case, that we are all prone to wander, we must all agree that it’s incumbent of each of us to protect ourselves against this very thing that lives within us.

  • But how do we protect ourselves from this “wandering disease”? By adhering to the spiritual disciplines set forth by God, through His Word. It’s through His Word that we find our protection, our defense against our wandering minds. And what are the protections found in God’s Word? Well, first of all we must adhere to Paul’s words found in Romans 12:1-2:

Romans 12:1 Therefore I urge you, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship.
Romans 12:2  And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.

• Look at what it says one more time. Romans 12:2 - Do not be conformed. Another way to say it is “resist”. Don’t allow the world to creep in on you. More importantly, be aware that the world is always working to creep in on you. And I am not just talking about bad things, as we would consider it bad.

  • The world has a way of creeping in on you and distracting you when you don’t even realize it. Even when it’s not bad things. Meaning, in things you may passionately believe in, but things that are not particularly bad. Something like a conservative political stance or something financial or cultural.

  • Whatever it is, if you aren’t careful, those things, even if they are not ‘per se’ bad things, have a way of pressing in on you, consuming your time and making you busy and preoccupied. As I said, it may be a certain political stance or cause that you believe in.

    • If you aren’t careful, you will find yourself spending more time on that than you do in God’s Word. Maybe it’s health. That’s a good thing, but it can still be worldly, especially if it fills up your time and prevents you from “renewing your mind” through God’s Word. Then it’s not a good thing. You get the point. God’s requirements and disciplines are first. Everything else comes second.

• Next, we have a Biblical Defense Mechanism against wandering. Hebrews 10:23-25:

Hebrews 10:23 Let’s hold firmly to the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful;
Hebrews 10:24 and let’s consider how to encourage one another in love and good deeds,
Hebrews 10:25 not abandoning our own meeting together, as is the habit of some people, but encouraging one another; and all the more as you see the day drawing near.

• Your second line of defense for your wandering mind is to stay close to the flock, to God’s people, and do not forsake the assembling of your Christian brothers and sisters. It’s simple. The deterioration of the Christian’s life always begins the same way; by skipping church.

  • Going to church is one of the most important disciplines that a Christian must embrace. If we don’t, we will begin to wander, and when the wandering begins everything in your Christian Life slowly begins to deteriorate. Life; Marriage; Finances; Health; Relationships, etc. Just fill in the blanks. Whatever it is will begin to deteriorate.

    • You see, gaining spiritual stability in your life is the only way to defend against wandering. Now let me lament for a minute. I am no one’s judge, first because God told me specifically that is not my job, and second of all because I don’t need anyone judging me.

• But, let me say, I am blown away at how clueless we are at recognizing the enemy’s schemes, especially the scheme of robbing us of our time, and then how that translates into a deficiency of prayer, study time, and church attendance in our life, which are three primary defense mechanisms against our spiritual deterioration.

  • Church and church attendance in the 21st Century are on the decline, which was accelerated and reinforced by the pandemic. Christians are forsaking the assembling of the believers at an alarming rate, and the result is ‘wanderings’.

  • It’s simple. Don’t pray, don’t study, and don’t attend church, and you will wander. There is no way around it and there is no replacement for it.

    • I had a guy tell me a couple weeks ago that he and his first wife used to attend church on a regular basis. But they got away from church and eventually grew apart and divorced. I thought to myself, he now knows what to do to stay married to his second wife. But I was wrong and evidently that wasn’t the case.

    • Because when I asked him where they currently attended church, he said we don’t. For me, my church takes place when I get up on Sunday mornings and ride my bike some 150 miles. That’s when I feel closer to God, he said.

• I want you to remember that anything, including your thoughts, insights, emotions, or revelations; anything that is contrary to “The Word of God”, isn’t from God. It makes no difference how you feel. God never causes us to feel a way that is contrary to His Word!

  • His words are clear on forsaking the assembly of the believers. I am sure you have got the point by now. Paul says in verse 1, paraphrasing here, do we need to begin all over again by commending ourselves, or do we need to bring you letters of commendation?

    • And then in verses 2-4:

2 Cor. 3:2 You are our letter, written in our hearts, known and read by all people, 
2 Cor. 3:3 revealing yourselves, that you are a letter of Christ, delivered by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.
2 Cor. 3:4 Such is the confidence we have toward God through Christ. 

• Simply put, Paul says you are our letter, our proof of Christ, who He is, and what He has done. You are our letter, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God. What Paul is saying, is our service is God working through us, rather than our independent service of Him.

  • Paul was contrasting God-confidence with self-confidence. Dr. Thomas Constable says, "Christianity is not the natural life lived on a higher plane. It is a divine life manifested in the energy of the Holy Spirit."

  • In other words, Paul said if you doubt us, look around. How do you think you got where you are? Was it on your own? Did this church establish itself? Did you do it? Did we do it? No, God did it. It was by and through the work of God.

    • You know what is interesting is, we all go through moments of doubt in our lives, where we question things in life. Is God with me, or is His hand on my situation? Did I make the right decision? Maybe, sometimes, we even doubt our faith. In those moments, if you pause and think about what Paul is saying here, you will find great comfort in your own moments of doubt.

• Paul is saying, stop and look around you. Examine where you were, and where you used to be. If you do, you will see how God’s hand is firmly on your situation. As a matter of fact, your enlightenment, and your salvation, is living proof of this very fact.

  • In other words, there is no way you would have come as far as you have without Him, and He didn’t bring you this far to abandon you. You are the living proof of all that He is: His Hand, His Presence, and His Divine Sovereignty. It is everywhere, all you must do is pause and look around. Do not doubt, even in times when He doesn’t seem to be near. Because of His Word, you can gain confidence knowing that He is with you, and as Paul tells us in Philippians 1:6:

Phil. 1:6 For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work among you (Greek says in you) will complete it by the day of Christ Jesus. 

• So, when you’re down, distressed, worried, or depressed, pause for a moment, look around, and think about all that God has done for you. Be thankful and give Him praise. For this, as Paul says in verse 4, “For this is the confidence you have toward God through Christ”.

  • In other words, if you want a level set in your life, if you want to quit wandering in the desert, simply reflect on all the many blessings He has bestowed upon your life, specifically, where you are and where you could be if it weren’t for those blessings. Make sense?

• Let’s continue in the chapter:

2 Cor. 3:5 Not that we are adequate in ourselves so as to consider anything as having come from ourselves, but our adequacy is from God,
2 Cor. 3:6 who also made us adequate as servants of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.
2 Cor. 3:7 But if the ministry of death, engraved in letters on stones, came with glory so that the sons of Israel could not look intently at the face of Moses because of the glory of his face, fading as it was,
2 Cor. 3:8  how will the ministry of the Spirit fail to be even more with glory?
2 Cor. 3:9  For if the ministry of condemnation has glory, much more does the ministry of righteousness excel in glory.
2 Cor. 3:10 For indeed what had glory in this case has no glory, because of the glory that surpasses it. 
2 Cor. 3:11 For if that which fades away was with glory, much more that which remains is in glory.

• What Paul is saying or doing in these verses is contrasting the difference between the Mosaic Law and The Spirit of God. Or the difference between man’s effort and God’s effort. Specifically, the difference between what man must do to be right with God (The Law).

  • What the Spirit can do through you to make you right with God, through your yielding and obedience to the Spirit of God. In other words, if man wants to be made right with God by following the Law, under his own effort, then good luck because he will never obtain it.

• As you should all know by now, prior to Jesus, God gave the Jews the Law of Moses. A law that gave them direction. A law that established boundaries and rules for them to live by. Another way to say it is a law that kept them on track. They could depend on it and find great comfort in it.

  • Just like all of us find great comfort in knowing where we are going and what we are supposed to do, whether it be in our job or in our life. And let’s be honest, there is great comfort in knowing the parameters or rules by which we should live, and that is exactly what the Law represented to the Jews.

  • It was their ‘Rule Book’, saying do this or do that and you will be right with God. Sounds great, but the problem was no one could keep the rules. And so, that begs the question, why did God create the rules in the first place? Why issue a set of rules and guidelines if He knew they couldn’t keep them?

  • To show them exactly what it would take for them to be right with God and to enter Heaven. Perfection was the standard. But still, why show them what it would take to be right with God? Why show them perfection? Why did they need to know that?

    • So that once that revelation set in, that they were unable to do the impossible, it would set them up to receive their Messiah. Meaning, if you lived under the law, and tried desperately to achieve it, but you failed every day, never even coming close to reaching the level required to become righteous in the sight of God, then when God provided an alternative solution through a Messiah, one that would make a once and for all  ultimate sacrifice on their behalf, all so that they could be free from the burden of guilt, brought about by the sin that lived inside of them.

  • When that Messiah arrived, you would think they would jump at the new and improved solution that God provided. All they had to do was accept Him and accept the work He would perform on their behalf. If they did that, then they would be made right with God, without them needing to keep the rules perfectly ever again.

  • You would think they would rejoice and immediately do away with the Old Covenant and the Law, and immediately accept in its place the New Covenant (through Jesus Christ). I mean, one is hard and burdensome and heavy and weighty, the other easy and light. One brings relief, the other stress!

    • But that wasn’t the case. Man in his own wisdom struggled. His emotions, his mind, his feelings always gravitated back towards what he knew, what he felt comfortable with, what he could see and touch, the tangible for the non-tangible.

    • The church and the people would say, I hear you Paul, I hear you Peter, Titus, John, Apollos. I know I can feel it tugging at me like gravity. I know I should trust in Jesus. But I just can’t do it, I need more. Something of substance, more concrete. Something more visible, even though I know I can’t achieve it. I find comfort in it.

• You see, in verses 5-11, Paul is trying to show them, and by extension us, something here today. And that is, ‘trust in the Spirit of God’. When you don’t know what to do, trust the Spirit of God, which is made manifest through the Word of God.

  • This church lost its way. The church of today has lost its way. They wandered off track, and the church of today has wandered off track, and it all began with them questioning if Paul and the other Apostles were who they proclaimed to be?

  • And that sort of thing always begins the same way, by listening to the nay sayers. Those who would say, ‘look at the hard evidence’. It’s easy to see. Paul promised to come visit you, but he never came. He didn’t keep his word. He’s not an Apostle. He has no Apostolic Authority. Trust in what you can see. I mean after all; would an Apostle not keep His word?

  • Here’s the application for us sitting here today. Listen closely. You cannot trust what you can see and feel. You can only trust what God wrote. One more time, you cannot trust in what you can see and feel, you can only trust in what God wrote.

    • Another way to say it is, when things seem to be one way, to make sense, you cannot trust it. The only thing you can trust is what God promised. What He spoke through the men he chose to speak it through. And so, what does that mean?

    • It means your knowledge, your intellect, your logic, your feelings, your good advice; either advice you receive or advice you give, is of no value if it’s not grounded in God’s word. And why? Because God’s Word is God in Word Form, and it’s in God’s Word we find the truth! For He is truth.

    • John 17:15-17 says it this way:

John 17:15 I am not asking You to take them out of the world, but to keep them away from the evil one.
John 17:16 They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world.
John 17:17 Sanctify them in the truth; Your word is truth. 

• Summing it all up, Paul is telling them to listen to God through the Spirit of God. They must put away what they can feel and touch, and in its place stop and look around and see all that God has done.

  • They are confused because they are trying to make a decision in the flesh. They are trying to lean into the law. What they can feel and touch. Paul is saying, listen to the Spirit who speaks through God’s Men and through His Word.

  • The same still holds true for you and I today. Every day, we encounter decisions that we must make, and almost always, we try and process those decisions in our flesh, by and through the tangible information made available to us through our environment and through our experiences.

    • This gives way to us applying deductive reasoning using our intellect. When we do this, we are just like those Jews in the church of Corinth, reaching back to the Law and grabbing on to what makes sense. This is not the way you and I are to make decisions, that is the way the world makes decisions.

• Remember, God does not move us contrary to His Word, so how imperative is it for you to know His Word? Pretty imperative isn’t it.

  • The lesson for us here today is what does God say? Then do it.

  • He said, do not forsake the assembling of the believers. He didn’t say if you feel closer to God by being outdoors then that is good enough. God said we are to rightly divide the word of truth. He didn’t say let someone else tell you what you believe.

  • God said love thy neighbor as thyself, He didn’t say unless you don’t like them, or they get on your nerves, or they encroach on your boundary line. God said I have forgiven you, therefore you are to forgive others. He didn’t say unless they don’t deserve forgiveness.

    • Paul is trying to get them to make decisions based on the Spirt of God, not on the emotions and intellect of man. And the same is true for us!