2 Corinthian 13:11-14 (A Community of Love)

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2 Corinthian 13:11-14 (A Community of Love)

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But unfortunately, maybe you forgot it. I know as I go through it, I think, wow, I remember preaching that.

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I wish I could have lived it the way I preached it. And maybe that's true of you as well, that sometimes we look in the mirror and we forget what we look like.

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We should be looking in the mirror and fixing our hair or whatever it is, but instead we just immediately forget what we look like and go on living as if we never heard that word preached.

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So let's go through, and I'm gonna need to be careful right here at the beginning of my sermon because all 10 of these points on that paper are a sermon in and of themselves.

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So I'm gonna have to discipline myself to stay to about two minutes per so that we can get to the last four verses of 2

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Corinthians today. But I don't want us to forget what God has said. I want us to take this home and preach this to ourselves again and again so that we're living by it.

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The first one, the first big lesson from 2 Corinthians, and today is the last

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Sunday in 2 Corinthians. Some of you are saying amen. You're ready for me to move on.

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The first big message was maturity is suffering well. Anyone who says that because you're suffering, you must be on the wrong side of God or you must be doing something wrong,

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God is angry at you because look how you suffer. If someone says that to you, they might be just like Job's friends.

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But in truth, suffering is sometimes used of God for a purpose, to commend the gospel that in your weakness, his strength would be made strong.

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If you look on the scripture here, on the paper listing the scriptures, there are four lists in the book of 2

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Corinthians where Paul does not talk about the amazing things that he's done, although there were amazing things that he did in the spirit.

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Rather, he talks about his sufferings. In chapter one, about how he was at the point of death where he despaired even of life itself.

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In chapter four, he talks about himself being like a jar of clay, crumbly, weak, just a vessel, but it shows that the all surpassing power comes from God and not from him.

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He talks about in chapter six, more about how his suffering commends the gospel and then finally in chapter 11, he boasts not in his power, but in his weakness.

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Talks about the thorn in his flesh, but he also mentions the five times that he received the 40 lashes minus one and being beaten with rod three times, stoned and left for dead and all of the sufferings that marked his ministry.

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He appeals to those as evidence that he's a true apostle. So maturity is learning to suffer well, to recognize that a sovereign

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God brings difficult things into our lives and it's not necessarily because he's angry with us.

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To accept those afflictions, recognizing that God has a purpose in them and he's going to work even through the hardest thing that you're dealing with right now.

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Maturity is trusting him. So what does that actually look like? It looks like relying on God through prayer.

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Instead of becoming self -centered, relying on oneself to put your trust entirely in God, to rely on the strength of the

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Holy Spirit in the midst of your suffering, to learn to pray. These afflictions that you're going through are teaching you to pray.

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We see that in chapter one, verse 11. Sermon number two, sermonette number two. Let your yes be yes and your no, no.

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Paul talks about his traveling and his plans to come and see them and he says he doesn't make those plans lightly.

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When he says yes, he means yes. When he says no, he means no. And as Christians, we need to let our word be our bond.

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When we speak, there's times as a parent where my mind is distracted when my kids ask me something.

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They come up asking for Cheez -Its or something and I say yes, yes, and then I actually process what they asked after I've already said yes.

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And they always say, let your yes be yes. There's no changing it at that point. Let your yes be yes, you already said it.

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There was a funny movie that we were watching, I probably shouldn't even mention this, but it was called Echo. It was about a little alien that came from outer space and it was a funny scene in the movie where the parents are talking and the kid tries to sneak out and says, yeah,

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I'm going somewhere, but then he recognizes that the parents aren't really paying attention. So he just tells them what he's up to.

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He says, I'm gonna ride 25 miles out into the desert to go look at this little blip on my cell phone and trace it down.

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And the parents are like, yes, yes, go ahead, go ahead. Well, that's how we are sometimes.

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No? Yeah, sometimes. Sometimes we are. We don't think before we make a promise or before we say what we're gonna do.

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But what we learn from Paul is let your yes be yes and your no be no. We need to learn to be careful what we say and if we say something, as Christians, our word is our bond.

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Number three, 2 Corinthians teaches us that discipline by the majority implies congregationalism.

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Now, this is a little bit more of an abstruse kind of inside baseball point, but as churchmen, as people who are involved in the church, we need to recognize that congregationalism is biblical.

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The highest authority in the local church is the local church itself. In Matthew chapter 18, you see that the final disciplining authority is the majority, the church.

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And in 2 Corinthians chapter two, verse six, Paul says the decision reached by the majority is sufficient for them.

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Well, what does he mean by that? He means there's a countable majority, a body of believers that you know who they are that belong to that fellowship and the majority can be counted, which is a great argument for official church membership, especially in our day and age when people kind of move around from church to church.

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To join a church means you are countable. Like you can be counted, you're there, and we know who's who in order to operate as one body.

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So there was a smaller point, but number four, a big one. Ministry is loving well.

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All throughout the letter of 2 Corinthians, chapter two, verse 12 to 17, six, 11 to 13, seven, two to four, you see

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Paul interject with words of affection. His love for the

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Corinthians comes through. And ministry is all about loving well.

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That's what ministry is. Ministry is not about building the largest platform, getting the most likes on Facebook.

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Ministry is not even about building the biggest church, although we want to gather as many sheep into the fold as are willing to come, right?

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But ministry is about loving well. To minister means to serve. It means to love.

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And the greatest of these among us are the least, the one who's willing to serve and wash the feet of another.

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That's what ministry is really all about. You see it in Paul's letter. Number five, this is a powerful teaching.

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We are sanctified by unveiled looking at Christ. Turn with me to chapter three, verse 18.

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And we all with unveiled face. So that's where I get the unveiled looking.

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Moses had to wear a veil because the glory on his face was fading away.

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So he wore a veil, I think, because he would be ashamed to see that glory fading.

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The context there in 2 Corinthians is the boldness that we are to have, unlike Moses who would veil his face.

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But unveiled face means you now are able to behold and see

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Christ. And so we continue to look to Christ. There are many things in church and in the world that vie for our attention all the time.

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Facebook and television and sports and the busyness of our schedules, they vie for our attention all the time.

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But we will grow to be like Christ to the extent that we look at him. We behold his glory, it says in verse 17.

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In verse 18, with unveiled face, we behold the glory of the Lord. So what happens?

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We're transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. Sanctification, we become like the one we're looking at.

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When I was in Florida about a year ago, remember when we were going through the Psalms and we were in Psalm 34?

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Rick had told me about this song by Shane and Shane where they did Psalm 34. And when

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I heard that song, man, something about that just stuck in my head. I loved it so much. Remember that, magnify the

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Lord with me? Those who look to him are radiant. And I was singing this song all day long to the point that my kids were just like, whoa, sing something else,

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Dad, or sing it to yourself. But that idea, those who look to him are radiant.

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When you look at the one whose glory is unlike any other, when you set your eyes on Christ, the degree to which you're looking at him is the degree to which you become like him.

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Those who look to him are radiant. Sanctification happens by focusing our mind's attention through the word and in prayer on the

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Son of God. It's the one we're trying to be like. We need to look to him in the scriptures to become like him.

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So sanctification is that big theme there. But it's also connected with this idea, number six, Satan blinds, but God gives light to whom he will.

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The God of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers so they cannot see the light of the gospel, the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.

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Satan is blinding minds, keeping people from hearing the message, making them sleepy when the gospel is being heralded, keeping them away from Christians, holding them back.

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Now, we're in a season here at Christmastime where there's much talk about Santa Claus.

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Santa Claus has a list, doesn't he? He's gonna find out who's naughty or nice.

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What most people don't realize is that Nicholas, as would be the case with the true Santa, is a

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Calvinist. He's a Calvinist, and if he takes a list, guess what?

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On Santa's list, if he's judging by who's naughty or nice, all of us are naughty!

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The doctrine of total depravity. There's no one earning righteousness. He's gonna find out.

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If he looks at our deeds, we're all together, locked up under sin, blinded by Satan, by the devil.

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He's holding us in. Now, what's really imprisoning us? Is it the devil? Is he really our ultimate problem?

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Augustine said this, I was held before conversion, not with an iron chain, but with the obstinacy of my own will.

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Our own will is enslaved to sin. Our own desire is for self -glorification, not to worship the one true

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God. We're bound by sin. We're enslaved by sin, but God comes, and the great news that we learn in 2

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Corinthians 4, 6 and following is that God lets his light shine the way at creation.

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He said, let there be light. So he says, let there be light, which then comes and floods the soul of a naughty sinner like me.

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He lifts the veil. I was blinded. There was a veil over my face, and he lifted it, and I saw

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Christ for who he was. This is the message of 2 Corinthians 4, verses 4 to 7.

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An unveiled looking comes from the spirit who says, let there be light.

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It's a supernatural miracle, just to the degree that God said, let there be light, and the world was flooded with light, like that, through the speaking of his word.

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In the same way, he says, let there be light, and your dead heart comes to life, and that veil is removed, and you're born again, and so the sanctification process begins at salvation.

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Number seven, and I told you I'm gonna have to go fast, so I'm moving as quick as I can. Number seven, remember this lesson?

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Learn to have an eternal perspective. We're living in this world, and we're distracted by so many things, and then suffering hits, and the affliction of this life, whether it's some disease, or some loved one getting sick, or some trouble that comes into your life, it feels so heavy.

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It feels like it's everything. It's all consuming, but 2

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Corinthians 4, verse 17 says, these light and momentary afflictions are preparing for us an eternal weight of glory that's beyond comparison.

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It far outweighs the suffering. Think about that. We need to keep this perspective in mind, that even the heaviness of our afflictions have a purpose.

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They are preparing us for an eternal weight of glory that far surpasses them all.

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The suffering has a purpose, and we need to keep our mind on that purpose, on the eternal weight of glory.

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There's something eternal that God is accomplishing in our sufferings. Such an important lesson, and we learn about the resurrection of the body in chapter five, and we learn about the eternality that we need to be focused on because we become very distractible and get focused on the things of this earth.

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We need to keep that eternal perspective. That's a sermon to preach to yourself again and again, especially when affliction hits.

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Number eight, seems almost out of place because Paul changes the subject.

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In chapters eight and nine, giving is the Christian's privilege. He takes an offering for two chapters in the middle of 2

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Corinthians. Why? He's won their affection back, he feels. He's confident in them now, and he asks for their participation in the gospel.

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Giving is a privilege. I was moved by the story that we heard from Sharon and Jill about the prisoners who, having heard the gospel from the

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Saints Prison Ministry, took an offering and gave $500 to the ministry of Saints Prison Ministry, but recognized that in prison, they are making 17 cents per hour.

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It's like the widow's mite. $500 is more than the big number that one of us might be able to give, but what matters is the heart behind it, not the denomination of the bill.

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Giving is a privilege, and these women saw it as a privilege to give to the work of the

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Lord. It's a reminder of the widow who gave all she has with her two cents.

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Giving is the Christian's privilege. We learn that from 2 Corinthians 8 and 9, and we need to be reminded of that, because, guys, what we do with our finances is an indication of what's in our heart.

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It does indicate what's in our heart. What kind of priority do we place on the gospel of Jesus Christ?

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We have an opportunity to say, through our giving, we value this church that is the church of the living

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God. We value our God and the furtherance of the gospel to the ends of the earth.

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So we have that opportunity. It's something we should delight in doing and find joy in giving. Number nine, apologetics is necessary.

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A postmodern age that hates apologetics would disagree, but Paul says it's necessary, because some false apostles have come in and they're teaching doctrine contrary to what

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Paul himself had taught, and that's where he says the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but they're mighty for destroying arguments.

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We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought and make it obedient to Christ.

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So what's the concern? Paul says in chapter 11, verse three and four, my concern is that just as Eve was deceived by the serpent, your minds would be led astray from the simplicity and purity of your devotion to Christ, because someone's gonna come and preach what?

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Another Jesus and another spirit and another gospel, and you'll welcome it ready enough.

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But apologetics, Paul says, no, hold fast to the genuine, hold to the true, and he fights for their devotion to Christ.

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So apologetics is necessary, and that brings us now for the last half hour to the last four verses, turn with me, of 2

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Corinthians 13th chapter, verses 11 to 14.

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And here we see that the Trinity teaches us to love each other. Paul closes, his last verse is very

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Trinitarian. All three members of the Trinity are found there.

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But the emphasis is not just theological. He's not making a theological defense of the Trinity.

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He's assuming the Trinity here, and he speaks of it casually, but he's, in the context, calling the

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Corinthians to love like God loves. And the idea is that the

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God of love, the God of peace, is with you. He promises to be with you, but you now must act like him.

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So the Trinity becomes standard of love, and the love that's within himself is what we're to model ourselves after.

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You know what, before we read this, because we're doing a lot of other things first today, there is one more passage that fits perfectly with what we're saying, and I don't want us to miss this.

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It's the Lord Jesus in John 17, verse 20 to 26.

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The Bible tells us to be devoted to the public reading of Scripture, Paul tells Timothy. I'm just gonna read this to you.

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I want us to hear the words of the Lord Jesus Christ before we get into 2 Corinthians 11,

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I mean 13 .11. Verse 20 through 26. You can follow along or just listen.

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John 17, 20. I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may be one, just as you,

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Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.

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The glory that you have given me, I have given to them, that they may be one, even as we are one,

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I in them, and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them, even as you loved me.

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Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory, that you have given me, because you loved me before the foundation of the world.

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Oh, righteous Father, even though the world does not know you, I know you, and these know you, and these that you have sent me, these know that you have sent me.

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I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.

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Amen. Such a Trinitarian passage, the love that God had,

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Father for Son, before the foundation of the world. Now, he wants us to be caught up in that love, to know that love, and to display that love to the world, that the world may know.

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And so we come to 2 Corinthians 13, verse 11 to 14. Finally, brothers, rejoice.

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Aim for restoration, comfort one another, agree with one another, live in peace, and the

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God of love and peace will be with you. Greet one another with a holy kiss.

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All the saints greet you. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the

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Holy Spirit be with you all. So Paul, in verse 11, shows them the path here.

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The church becomes like him by obeying him in the Spirit. Now, I wanna emphasize, this is not just a rote obedience.

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This is not just willpower, where they are going to solve their own problems. But Paul has been explaining that where the

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Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. He's taught them to walk in the

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Spirit, to not quench the Spirit, or grieve the Spirit, but to be filled with the Spirit. And so, in this context, obeying

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God, controlling themselves, is being controlled by the Spirit. It's not something done on their own, but they're controlled by the

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Spirit, and so they should obey. It's not coming from them, it's coming from God. But notice, in verse 11, there are five imperatives.

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An imperative is a command. It's something that they must now apply. After all of this teaching that we've gone through, 13 chapters of 2

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Corinthians, now in the last verses, he gives five applications. This is what you're to go and do.

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I command you to do it. And in the Greek, often it's just one word that carries it, so kerate is rejoice.

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So the first one here, finally, brothers, rejoice. Isn't that an interesting first imperative?

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Guys remember when the Eagles won the Super Bowl? How the whole city rejoiced.

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And guys that would have hated each other on the street, standing next to each other in that stadium, all of a sudden were hugging and high -fiving, and the whole city was the city of brotherly love, if only for a day.

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Rejoice, there's something that joy does to bring us together. Paul says rejoice because he wants them to remember that we are together on the winning team.

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Read the book of Revelation, we win. And so in church, when people are fighting and bickering, and there's these other people trying to maneuver their way to take

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Paul's power away, and there's these power struggles and difficulty, Paul just says, rejoice, be glad.

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When we are glad in God, so many things in life smooth out.

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So many problems that we experience in life are for lack of joy. The delighted heart is not quick to complain.

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The joyful heart is not quick to stab a brother in the back. He's too happy to do that.

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Rejoice, caretay, be glad. Finally, that's the first. Number two, aim for restoration.

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Aim for restoration. This word aim for restoration in the

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Greek is just the word for complete, to be made whole or to integrate, to become one.

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Remember, the church is divided. There's some who are following the super apostles, and there's others who are sticking with Paul.

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They had a similar problem earlier in 1 Corinthians when some followed Apollos, some Cephas, and some

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Paul. And Paul says, look, it's all one body. That's what Paul's saying. Let's bring this together.

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Be restored one to another. I remember back in teen club, back in the years when we were missionaries in Philadelphia, there was one song that stuck in my mind.

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We would play hip hop instead of kind of like contemporary Christian music with the teens because that was more the cultural form.

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And this one rapper named Show Baraka had a song called My Life. He said, nice aim.

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They taught us to aim for nothing. And look, we hit it dead on the button. I always remember that line.

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They taught us to aim for nothing. And look, we hit it dead on the button. See, the culture doesn't aim for unity.

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And in the church, sadly, unity is hard to find. It's hard to find unity in the

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Christian church. But aim for it. Aim for it like it matters that you hit it.

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If you're not aiming for it, you're gonna hit nothing. The natural disposition, when you push a bunch of sinners together like us, a bunch of sinners come together in church, the natural thing to happen is people rubbing each other the wrong way.

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Because we're sinners. But if we aim for unity, if we aim for love, and we make that an objective that we are after and we're not gonna stop until we find it, guess what, we can hit that too.

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Aim for nothing, you're gonna hit that. But we're aiming for restoration. That's what Paul wants. He wants to bring this thing together.

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Third, third command, comfort one another. Perikalathos, similar word to the paraclete.

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You'll recognize in John 14 to 16, the paraclete is promise. The helper, the comforter.

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It comes from the roots of para, alongside, and kaleho, to call out. The picture here is you come alongside a brother or sister and you call out to them.

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You're gonna make it. You encourage them. You see your brother or sister struggling in their walk with Christ.

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And you call them on the phone and you say, hey man, how can I pray for you today? And they tell you what's going on and you call out to them.

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You comfort them. You give them words of encouragement. You're gonna make it. God is gonna see you through.

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This light and momentary affliction is preparing an eternal weight of glory that far surpasses it.

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It's gonna be okay. There's light at the end of this tunnel. We need to say these kind of things to one another.

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Comfort one another, it says. Fourth, the fourth command is agree with one another.

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Sometimes when we turn against each other, we just get into an arguing mode where the mode is to argue.

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And no matter what the other person says, we find a way to contradict what they're saying. And if we would just stop and think about it, we don't need to defend the point that we're making.

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It's not essential. Brothers and sisters, stay out of that argument mode.

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Agree with one another. The idea is to agree. And sometimes there's something that needs to be contended with, right?

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And so those things, we fight until we reach reconciliation through the scriptures. But stay out of that mode of argument.

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Agree with one another. Have an agreeableness about us. And finally, the fifth imperative is to live in peace.

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Live in peace. It's easy to say, right? Husbands and wives, it's easy for me to say, live in peace.

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But the go and do is hard at that particular point, isn't it? I found in marriage counseling recently, there's a verse that comes to mind very often.

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And it's Romans 12, 18. As far as it depends on you, live at peace.

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What ends up happening is a husband, a wife, or it could be a brother and a sister, or whatever the relationship is in the church, or especially though in marriage, each person is seeing where the other person is falling short.

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And so the first five minutes of the counseling session is one person telling what the other person is doing wrong.

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The next five minutes is this person saying what that person is doing wrong. And then my job, when

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I step in, is to say, I wanna tell each of you, live at peace with one another as far as it depends on you.

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In other words, turn your eyes off of the other person, turn them back on yourself, and say, what can

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I do different? Where am I falling short? Marriages often are run on the 50 -50 plan.

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And we're waiting for the other person to make up their 50 % of the bargain so we can meet them in the middle. And 50 -50, we're gonna make this thing happen.

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But the way to do marriage is 100 -100. Let me run 100 % of the way, and she will run 100 % of the way as each of us are chasing after Christ.

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And guess what? There is a beautiful overlap in the middle. When you're not trying to wait for the other person to do 50%, but you've committed,

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I'm doing 100 % as far as it depends on me, Romans 12, 18.

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And she's doing the same thing. It makes for a beautiful, beautiful marriage. And in the church, relationships are very much similar to that, to go the extra mile for a brother.

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If asked to do something, to take it the extra mile. Not to do the bare minimum, but to go the extra mile.

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So these are the imperatives that Paul is ending with. But in verse 11, he also gives a promise.

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He's not just telling us what to do. Do this, and then he says, and the God of love and peace will be with you.

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There's a promise attending this obedience. God with us.

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We're waiting on the second coming of Christ. But he's already here.

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And where do we experience God more than anywhere else in this world?

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Answer, the local church. In Revelation chapter one, the last time we see

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Jesus, by the way, is not in the gospels. He reappears to John in the 90s AD. In Revelation chapter one, there are seven lampstands.

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And out of the midst of the lampstands is this glorious appearing of Christ to the apostle

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John. What are the lampstands? The lampstands are the seven churches of Revelation two and three.

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They're local churches. Christ is in the midst of the local church.

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And so that next verse, I think this is verse 12. Paul says, greet one another with a holy kiss.

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And somebody just said, whoa, wait a minute. This just took a strange turn. A holy kiss, what is that?

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Well, it's a cultural form to greet one another with a kiss on the cheek. We live in a hyper -sexualized culture.

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And so it's probably good and wise for us not to practice the holy kiss in our particular culture because of the appearance of evil.

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It's not wrong to kiss someone on the cheek, by the way. But in the church, what we need to recognize is the principle that this is teaching, an intimate closeness in the church.

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And the promise in the previous verse is that when this happens, when we greet one another like this, when we're in the church this way, he is right here with us.

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He is right here with us. When the church was first founded, the day that it was founded, 3 ,000 baptized on a single day.

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That would have been a lot of work. All of the apostles and all of the 120 were busy baptizing people that day.

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But we're told at the end of Acts chapter two what the church originally looked like. And this is what it should look like in our day as well.

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This is the prototype. We don't have time to really go through point by point, but just remember it. What were they devoted to?

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The apostles' teaching and the fellowship, the breaking of bread and prayer. And great awe was on them all the time.

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So the apostles' teaching. Christ is with us in a very unique way right now.

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Not because of any of us, but because he has ordained the caruso, the preaching of his word.

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Preaching is not just giving suggestions for how to live your life. Preaching is the

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God -ordained method that on Sunday morning, the curia hamera, the Lord's day, his word would be broken like bread and offered.

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And it would come forth with authority because it's his word we're expounding.

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That's why the preacher's job is not just to tell stories all the time or jokes all the time or entertain.

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The preacher's job is to say, thus it is written. It's to exposit what's already in the text.

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That's why we look at words and phrases and how they fit together. Because the breaking of this bread, the preaching of God's word is where he meets us.

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He meets us in the apostles' teaching. Number two, in the fellowship.

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When someone puts their arm around a brother or sister here on a Sunday morning and says, hey,

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I'm with you and I'm praying for you. That's the fellowship, the koinonia. He meets us in the breaking of bread.

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And I think that picture is the breaking of communion bread. And the very previous verse in Acts 2 talked about the baptism of those 3 ,000.

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In the ordinances, in baptism, in communion, we meet God. He's here in the local church in prayer.

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Interesting, in verse four, in chapter four, when the apostles are told not to preach in that name on threat of being beaten or killed, what do they do?

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They go back to their friends and they pray. They pray the Bible back to God.

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They quote from the scriptures and they confess the sovereignty of God. Then they ask for strength and boldness to preach the word.

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Guys, when we join together and pray together, when you hear your brother or sister praying, they will say things in prayer that are addressed to God, but that God also uses horizontally into you.

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He meets us in those prayer meetings. Somebody will pray something that you needed to hear them pray.

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Christ is in the prayer meetings. When Mark comes and prays on Sunday mornings, he's in.

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Christ is in those prayers. Communicating with his people, he's with us, he's with us.

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He said he'd never leave us or forsake us. A few other points before we move on. He's in the offering.

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There were not a needy person among them because people who had belongings came and laid them at the apostles' feet.

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Another quick aside, I'm being careful here, but listen, the text said the things that belonged to them, no one considered that the things that belonged to them were their own.

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That means they had private property. They didn't consider it theirs because they considered it belonging to God and a stewardship of theirs.

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So there's no socialism, kind of Christian socialism taught there. There's private property. They bring offerings so generous that there's not a needy person among them.

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And that's why we have a benevolence fund here at church to help people when bills are just overwhelming or where there's a counseling need or things of this nature.

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We as a church are here so that all of us are cared for. That's a prototype of the early church.

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Well, the early church is the prototype and that's what we're following as a model. He's with us when we meet together at various times and places.

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Notice that when they were threatened, the apostles didn't just wait till Sunday until the next gathering, did they?

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It says they found their idios, their friends. They came together as friends and prayed the way they did.

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It was an informal church service. We need those in our houses to have people come over.

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You're hurting, go to a friend's house, call first or meet them at Dunkin' Donuts. But we need these get -togethers.

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He's in the singing, Acts 2 47, when the church comes together to worship and praise the

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Lord. He's here inhabiting the praise of his people. And he meets us as we go out, especially as we go out together.

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It says that they had favor with all the people and it says they spoke with boldness. So this is where Christ is.

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He's with the local church. That's what I'm trying to say. He is with us, the local church.

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Verse 13, all the saints greet you. He's also in the universal church.

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We have brothers and sisters in Saudi Arabia right now, worshiping and hiding, and some of them will be persecuted unto death.

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We have brothers and sisters in all of the 195 countries on earth. They're part of us.

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These are our fellowship, our koinonia. The local church is the expression where we devote ourselves but we're also connected to the larger universal body of Christ.

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All the saints greet you. Where are they? A couple hundred miles north in Macedonia. Paul's writing this letter and sending it ahead but he's with the local body there, the

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Philippian church. Now he's sending the letter down to Corinth but Corinth and Philippi are one.

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It's really only one body. And this morning as I'm preaching, my brother Mark, less than a mile from here, who

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I pray with on Wednesday morning, is preaching at fellowship. And Marty's preaching at the other fellowship.

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And Warren's over at Sovereign Grace. And Andrew's over at Hope. And we're all preaching

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Jesus Christ and him crucified. One church on Wednesday, I went and met up with my friend.

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I was at a church before coming here. I was a missionary in the city. And Fran Pultro, amazing pastor, loves the

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Lord God, called to the inner city of Philadelphia, the worst part of Philadelphia.

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So I went and we went to the Mayfair Diner and we're having dessert at eight o 'clock on a

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Wednesday evening. And there is a sweet koinonia, a fellowship. We're talking about family.

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We're talking about ministry. We hadn't seen each other for probably a year but it's like picking up exactly where we left off the last time.

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You guys know what that's like? We're connected to the body. And as we're enjoying that fellowship, we're reminded of the hate that exists in the world.

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See, the church has this love, this fellowship, but the world has hate. We're eating,

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I have an apple pie with ice cream. And I hear pop, pop, pop.

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We look out the window and there's a man shooting another. And the man who was shot comes running into the

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Mayfair Diner and the other guy ran around the corner. And Fran, without skipping a beat, caught him at the door, put pressure, helped him, got him a chair until the ambulance came, took care of him.

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The guy was gone. And then Fran sat back down and said, hey, did you miss the city? And I thought, no,

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I didn't miss the city, brother. But he continued as if nothing had just happened, just pouring into my life, ministering to me, iron sharpening iron, brother to brother, he was at peace, surrounded by angels,

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I think, because he's been there so long. Just a reminder to me, the hatred that's out there, men shooting men in the streets.

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And here we are, the body of Christ, the called out ones. We are called to love, to greet one another.

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And we are part of this large body, Fran in the city, the other churches in the suburbs, but brothers and sisters persecuted the world over.

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Greet them, remember them, remember what we're a part of and love the church, love the church, love the church.

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That's the point. And lastly, this all comes from the God that we know. Here it's not a theological exposition, so I won't take much time on the

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Trinity per se, but to recognize that his love within himself is what motivates us to love one another.

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He created the entire world because he is love. Verse 14, the grace of the

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Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God. Whenever you just see theos standing by itself, it generally refers to the

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Father and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.

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Can't prove the Trinity from this verse. There's no place in the New Testament where the

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Trinity is explained and expounded upon as a theological truth in and of itself, but I wanna tell you this.

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The word Bible is not in the Bible, neither is the word Trinity in the Bible, but all the concepts of the

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Trinity are clearly taught in scripture. There's only one God. Couldn't be a more evident truth in the scripture.

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Mark 12, 29, and all throughout, there's only one God. That's the first point. Second point, there are three persons who are

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God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. With distinct personhood, able to speak one to another with personal pronouns and love between one another, the love that they had before the foundation of the world, when

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Jesus is baptized, the voice of the Father in heaven says, this is my beloved

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Son, and the Spirit descends like a dove. Three persons, one being.

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And each of the persons of the Trinity, this is the third point, each of the persons of the Trinity are equal and eternal and fully

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God. One is not less Godness than another. Each is fully

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God. I want you to notice something in this verse that proves that particular point. Jesus is mentioned first.

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You see that? The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the

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Holy Spirit be with you all. There is an ordering in the Trinity, an economy of roles where the

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Father is greater than the Son is greater than the Spirit. That economy, what's called the economic

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Trinity, is a matter of the roles that each have taken on in their relationship to humanity.

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That the Son would be the one who came to die for us. The Father had the predestining plan. The Spirit is the one who applies that redemption to the elect.

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So there are differences in roles, but ontologically speaking, in terms of who

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God is, at his very being, his essence, ontologically speaking, there's no hierarchy between them.

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That's why Jesus can be listed first in a list that covers all three.

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Co -equal. Members of the Godhead. The grace of the

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Lord Jesus Christ. Now there's three words and we'll be done. Grace, love, and fellowship. Why is grace ascribed to Jesus Christ?

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He's the one who accomplishes redemption. Look back with me, we're almost done. Look back with me to chapter eight, verse nine.

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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.

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Grace is the characteristic of Jesus Christ in 2 Corinthians, highlighted.

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Secondly, the love of God the Father. If you'll look back at chapter 13, verse 11, just a couple of verses up.

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God of love and peace. Theos of Agape. Agape describes him.

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God of love and peace. And then finally, the spirit is associated with fellowship. Chapter three, verse 17.

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Now the Lord is the spirit and where the spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.

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The koinonia, the fellowship that we have is in the spirit. He's the one who abides with us until Christ comes and we're caught up with him.

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In glory. So the final point as we look at verse 14, the trinity.

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The love that describes God is intrinsic to who he is, right?

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First John 4 .8, God is love. Which means that God did not need to create in order to have something to love.

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Before there was a creation, in eternity past, before he ever said, let there be anything,

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God existed as trinity. The Father loved the Son, the Son loved the Spirit, the

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Spirit loved the Father. There was perfect love in the trinity so that he didn't need a creation in order to be love.

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He is love intrinsically as part of who he is. Then he made a world to display that love and to catch us up into that love that we would behold that glory forever.

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So church, if his very nature is love, how should we love one another?

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How should we care for one another and encourage? The applications were easy for this particular sermon because there were so many imperatives in the text.

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Rejoice, complete, comfort, agree, live in peace. I said, like God, love the church.

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I mean, as God does love the church. I don't mean imperative like God and love the church.

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I mean, you're to love God and like God loves, that's how you should love the church.

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Whatever came of Corinth, after all this drama, whatever came of Corinth, after receiving this letter, they enjoyed 30 years of peace.

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They received the correction. Their pastor was Apollos for 30 years.

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The letter worked. It brought them together. It brought back the unity and the joy. Let's be a community of love the way

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God is love. He is a community of love and that's how we should look out for each other to have each other's back while the world is shooting each other in the back, literally, we need to have each other's backs to cover up a multitude of sins, to protect one another, to care for one another.

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Let's pray. So Father, we are so thankful for the book of 2 Corinthians. It's hard for me to leave the book because I wanna make sure that we received all the truth that's packed in it, that's meant to change us.

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So I pray that you would send us out now, transformed by your word. Send us out with this word to continue to change us more and more into the image of Christ.

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Thank you for giving us your spirit, the freedom that comes in him.

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Lord, make us to love like you do, like you are, for God is love.