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Reading 2 Corinthians 1:1-2, Paul's greeting and a basic overview, looking at the structure of this next letter to the church in Corinth. Visit wwutt.com for all our videos!
If there is a central theme that we see in the book of 2 Corinthians, it is that we endure joyfully in the midst of affliction, for the God of all comforts is with us when we understand the text.
Many of the Bible stories and verses we think we know, we don't. When we understand the text is committed to teaching sound doctrine and rebuking those who contradict it. Visit our website at www .utt .com.
Here once again is Pastor Gabe.
Thank you, Becky. Well, we come to a brand new study this week, a new study in an old book, a book that goes back 2 ,000 years, but we've not yet covered 2 Corinthians on this podcast, and that is where we are today.
If you want to open up your Bible and join with me there, I'm going to begin by reading from the Legacy Standard Bible, 2 Corinthians 1, verses 1 -14. This is the word of the Lord, through the Apostle Paul, writing to the church in Corinth.
Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy our brother, to the church of God which is at Corinth, with all the saints who are throughout Achaia, grace to you, and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we will be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.
For just as the sufferings of Christ abound to us, so also our comfort abounds through Christ. But whether we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation, or whether we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which is working in your perseverance in the same sufferings which we also suffer.
And our hope for you is firmly grounded, knowing that as you are sharers of our sufferings, so also you are sharers of our comfort. For we do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of our affliction which came to us in Asia, that we were burdened excessively beyond our strength, so that we despaired even to live.
Indeed, we had the sentence of death within ourselves, so that we would not have confidence in ourselves, but in God, who raises the dead, who rescued us from so great a peril of death, and will rescue us, he on whom we have set our hope.
And he will yet rescue us. You also joining and helping us through your prayers on our behalf, so that thanks may be given on our behalf by many persons for the gracious gift bestowed on us through the prayers of many.
For our boasting is this, the testimony of our conscience, that in holiness and godly sincerity, not in fleshly wisdom, but in the grace of God, we have conducted ourselves in the world, and especially toward you.
For we write nothing else to you than what you read and understand, and I hope you will understand until the end, just as you also partially did understand us, that we are your reason for boasting, as you also are ours, in the day of our Lord Jesus.
What are some of the themes you noticed there as we went through just those opening verses? You heard a lot about comfort and affliction, comfort in the midst of affliction, right? Just consider the way that Paul refers to God in verse three, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction.
And that's really going to be the theme of this letter. We'll hear a lot about Paul's afflictions, and he will encourage the Corinthians to endure in the midst of affliction, whether that affliction is persecution or it is just hardship, going through difficult trials and continuing to hold fast to Christ in the midst of all of that, knowing that it is in Christ that we endure to the very end.
He who raises the dead, who will deliver us into his eternal imperishable kingdom. If we were to give like a purpose statement to the book of Second Corinthians, if it came with a subtitle, the subtitle of Second Corinthians would probably be this, joyful, enduring ministry in the midst of affliction.
I didn't come up with that on my own. I took that from Mike Riccardi, who has preached through Second Corinthians before. I had the chance to visit with him just a few days ago with Shepcon going on, the Shepherd's Conference at Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California.
I told him, I'm about to start Second Corinthians on the podcast. What would be kind of a good theme? How would you summarize the central proposition of Second Corinthians? What he said to me was something like that, joyful, enduring ministry in the midst of affliction.
We have divine strength displayed in the midst of human weakness. We're reminded of our weaknesses, but the strength of God. Again, he who raises the dead, looking at verse 9, indeed, we had the sentence of death within ourselves so that we would not have confidence in ourselves, but in God who raises the dead.
As we go through this letter together, I hope that's the encouragement that you're going to receive, to continue to rely on the Lord, knowing he is the one who will bring us through these trials. He is the one who will raise us from the dead.
Indeed, we are already guaranteed this inheritance. We who have put our faith and trust in Christ, we've talked about that as we've been going through First Corinthians, as we were going through chapter 15, talking about the inheritance that we have in him who was risen from the dead.
And here we have that guarantee in he who raises the dead, talked about right at the end of this particular letter. Now, even though it is called Second Corinthians, this is actually technically Fourth Corinthians.
I've mentioned this before, First Corinthians is not the first letter that Paul wrote to the Corinthians. It's the second, at least the second that we know about, because even within that letter, he said, you know, I previously wrote to you about this.
When you when you go to chapter five, he says, I previously wrote to you not to associate with immoral people. So that was a letter that he had written prior to First Corinthians. We might jokingly refer to it as Zero Corinthians, right?
We call these letters that we have in canon First and Second Corinthians, because that's the order in which they appear in canon. That doesn't necessarily mean that Paul only wrote two letters to the Corinthians.
First Corinthians is the first one, and then this would be the second one. We call them First and Second Corinthians because that's the order in which they appear in the Bible, just like First and Second Timothy, First and Second Thessalonians.
Those names don't those names are not granted because those were the only letters that Paul had written to Timothy or to the Thessalonians. That's just the order in which they appear in canon. Now, let's say those letters were to show up.
Say somebody were to discover Zero Corinthians or 1 .5 Corinthians, you know, that that letter in the middle, the tearful letter. That's what Paul calls it. It's in Second Corinthians, two, three through four.
He mentions the tearful, severe letter. So just as in First Corinthians, he talked about a previous letter here in Second Corinthians. He talks about a previous letter and that that previous letter was not First Corinthians.
We'll talk about that some more as we go. But let's say those letters were to show up. What if we find the two missing letters that Paul wrote to the Corinthians? Would we then make them part of canon?
My response to that would actually be no. First of all, I don't think the letters are ever going to show up. I think if we were going to discover them, we probably would have discovered them by now. Who knows?
But I just highly doubt it. There was clearly no effort to preserve those particular letters. They did not survive time. We have these two letters, but we didn't get the other two letters Paul wrote to the Corinthians.
So it was not intended by the Holy Spirit for those letters to be preserved. Therefore, even if they were to show up today, we would not include them in canon because the Holy Spirit does not mean for them to be here.
If he had intended those letters to be part of the canon that makes up the New Testament, then we would have had them a long time ago. But because we have no recollection of those letters, no one in history has made a reference to those letters ever having existed in their archive or in their preservation.
The Corinthians just did not copy that letter down and distribute it so that the churches had it. We have it that way with 1st and 2nd Corinthians, but not those other two letters. Because those letters were not copied, it was not the Holy Spirit's intention for them to be part of the New Testament.
So even if they were to show up today, we would not include them in canon. Same with the letter that Paul wrote to the Laodiceans. He mentions it at the end of his letter to the Colossians. He says, take this letter to the church at Laodicea, let them read it, and then you also read the letter that I wrote to the Laodiceans.
But somewhere in that process, the Colossians didn't copy the letter and then have it in their church or it didn't get distributed around to the other churches. It was not the Holy Spirit's intention for that letter to be copied and distributed.
And so that's another one that's been lost to us. And I don't think we'll ever recover it. At the end of 2nd Timothy, Paul asks Timothy to bring to him his writing tools. Now 2nd Timothy is the very last letter that we have from Paul.
No other letters were written after that, at least of the letters from Paul that we have. But he told Timothy to bring his writing tools to him while he was in prison. And we would understand that the intention there would be so he could write more letters before he's going to die.
He's got the chance to write some more letters that would be distributed to the churches. We don't have any record of any of those letters. So there are other occasions in the New Testament where there are references to other writings that were not preserved.
We don't have them. And it wasn't the Holy Spirit's intention for us to have them, including these two mysterious letters that were written to the Corinthians. But we only have mentions of them. We don't have any quotes from them.
And there's nothing in church history that even talks about having had those letters and taught them to the saints. So this letter, 2nd Corinthians, again, this is the fourth letter that Paul wrote to the church in Corinth.
And I know that when we were in 1st Corinthians, I mentioned that when Paul was confronting the man who was in incest, who was committing adultery, he was committing incest, sleeping with his father's wife, which would have been his stepmother.
Paul confronts that in 1st Corinthians, chapter five. It was somewhere in there that I mentioned we read about what happened to that man when we get to 2nd Corinthians, because then Paul talks about forgiving him and restoring him.
I have had my mind changed on that. I know that when we were in 1st Corinthians, chapter five, I said that and I've taught that before, but my mind's since been changed on that because I've taught through 2nd Corinthians.
I've been with other teachers who have taught through 2nd Corinthians and they kind of helped me to see my error there. So let me pick this up in 2nd Corinthians, chapter two, beginning in verse five, Paul says, but if any has caused sorrow, he has caused sorrow, not to me, but in some degree, in order not to say too much to all of you.
Sufficient for such a one is this punishment, which was inflicted by the majority. So in other words, he was voted out of the membership of the church because of the sin that he had committed. Verse seven, so that on the contrary, you should rather graciously forgive and comfort him.
There's that reference to comfort again, lest such a one be swallowed up by excessive sorrow. Therefore, I encourage you to reaffirm your love for him. For to this end, also I wrote so that I might know your proven character, whether you are obedient in all things, but one whom you graciously forgive anything I graciously forgive also for indeed what I have graciously forgiven.
If I have graciously forgiven anything, I did it for your sakes in the presence of Christ so that no advantage would be taken of us by Satan, for we are not ignorant of his schemes. Now in context, in context there, it appears as if this man was saying something about the apostle Paul, which is why in verse five, he says, if any, if any has caused sorrow, he has caused sorrow, not to me, but in some degree, in order not to say too much to all of you.
And he says, I've forgiven him also. Whatever sin this was, was not something that was like the sexually immoral sin we read about in first Corinthians chapter five, but was rather something that this man had done opposing the apostle Paul.
And if you oppose an apostle, you're opposing the word of Christ. So he was removed for that reason. Paul talks about this with the Thessalonians. If you go to second Thessalonians chapter three, he says, if anybody will not do obey what we say in this letter, take note of that person and have nothing to do with him.
Do not regard him as an enemy, but warn him as a brother. So if you were going to dismiss a letter that was written by the apostles and say, nah, that's not important for me. I serve Apollos or I serve Christ, you know, remember those division issues that we considered at the beginning of first Corinthians.
If somebody was going to say something like that, well, it would be the same as if they were rejecting Christ himself. You could not say, well, I love Jesus teaching. I'm not so crazy about Paul and Peter and Apollos, because to do that would be to divide Christ, since Christ is the one who appointed Paul and Peter to this work as apostles going out with the message of the gospel to the world.
And whatever they taught was the teaching of Christ. It was not the teaching of men. So therefore, to reject whatever it was an apostle said was to reject Christ himself. So apparently this man had done that with the apostle Paul and the church had disciplined to him and removed him.
And Paul says, I've forgiven him. So you also must forgive and restore him. Once again, this is not in reference to the man who was guilty of incest in first Corinthians chapter five. I've taught that before.
It's a common teaching. You'll hear many pastors that will do that, who will say that this man in second Corinthians to this is the restoration of the guy that had to be removed in first Corinthians five.
No, on the contrary, the way that Paul talks about that guy in first Corinthians five leads us to believe that he was completely unrepentant and that he had to be removed because he was evil. That was first Corinthians five, 12 and 13.
For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Are you not to judge those who are within the church, but those who are outside God will judge, remove the wicked man from among yourselves just as the evil person would be stoned to death in Israel.
So in the church, we're not dragging people out of the parking lot and stoning them, but we would remove them from our midst. There would be some kind of a spiritual death there with a person who would not repent, but persist in this sin.
That is a, that is a disqualifying sin that would remove you from the body of Christ. Should you persist in something like that? So again, we'll talk about that as we get to that chapter when we get to chapter two, but I just wanted to mention as we get into second Corinthians here, because this is not a direct followup to first Corinthians, we don't get to see exact parallels to some of the things that Paul said in the previous letter that we then see being fulfilled in the next letter.
There will be some connections there. It's just not a direct one to one. So some of the things that we read in first Corinthians, we will bring back up in second Corinthians, but in many ways, this is its own letter.
Just like first and second Timothy are its own letter. The theme of first Timothy is not the theme of second Timothy. In first Timothy, it's knowing how one ought to behave in the household of God, as it says in first Timothy three 15.
But in second Timothy, it's enduring in your ministry, even in the midst of suffering. We have that similar kind of a theme here in second Corinthians also. Again, it's joyful, enduring ministry in the midst of affliction and knowing that our strength, the strength that we have to endure comes from Christ.
It is not from man. God is strong. We are weak. Paul comes to that in second Corinthians chapter 12, one of the most famous verses in second Corinthians. In fact, if you have a red letter Bible, you'll see red letters there in second Corinthians chapter 12, verse nine.
He has said to me, my grace is sufficient for you for power is perfected in weakness. Most gladly, therefore, Paul says, I will boast in my weaknesses so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore, I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions and hardships for the sake of Christ.
For when I am weak, then I am strong. That section there in second Corinthians chapter 12, verses one through 10, that is to second Corinthians. What chapter 13 is to first Corinthians here in this letter in second Corinthians is a little bit shorter than the previous letter.
First Corinthians was a little over 9000 words. Second Corinthians is about 6000 words. It's about two thirds of first Corinthians. We had 16 chapters in the previous letter. We have 13 chapters here.
The outline for second Corinthians breaks down like this. You can really break it down into three clear sections. Chapters one through seven is Paul reaffirming his love for the Corinthians, more specifically to the repentant majority, because there are some in the church that still are not convinced that Paul is a genuine apostle.
They're still in the whole thing of I follow Cephas and I follow Apollos or I follow these super apostles. That's what's going to be confronted when we get to chapter 11. That's a fun chapter. But Paul is affirming his love for those who are genuine converts in Christ Jesus who heed the words of the apostle, knowing they are the words of Christ and they don't just listen to what has been said and taught.
They do what has been said and taught. So we have that reaffirmation of love in chapters one through seven. Then Paul encourages them to stand, continue to stand steadfastly, to be an encouragement to one another.
That's in chapters eight and nine. And it's also in those couple of chapters where Paul talks about giving and supporting and encouraging other saints, not just within your congregation, but in other churches as well.
And then finally, the last section in chapters 10 to 13, that's going to be a refutation against those false apostles. To win the unrepentant minority. That's one of the reasons why Paul does that. So you have two main sections.
You have chapters one through seven and 10 to 13. One to seven is an affirmation of love for the repentant majority. And then 10 to 13 is a refutation of false apostles in order to win the unrepentant minority.
And in between those two sections, you have chapters eight and nine, encouraging the Corinthians to stand strong, to continue in faithful giving, and to affirm their love for one another and for all the saints in this particular way.
The offering that's being taken up and the provision given to those saints that are in need. So there you go. There's our outline of Second Corinthians. The simple outline. That's how the book is going to break down.
And we're going to come back to this opening section of Second Corinthians chapter one tomorrow. Talking about being comforted by the father of mercies and God of all comfort in the midst of all of our afflictions.
And as we embark on this study, which is going to be most of the rest of 2022, I hope this would be an encouragement to you with all the crazy stuff that is going on in the world. As we read these words together, you will be comforted in the promise of God that is given to us in Christ Jesus, our Lord, heavenly father, you are the father of mercies and the God of all comfort who comforts us in all our afflictions.
And so as we partake in this study, as we're going to go through Second Corinthians together, I pray that you would bring to our minds the promises that you have given to us by faith in Jesus Christ. And we find comfort in those things, no matter how crazy the world gets, no matter what direction things are going to go next.
We do not lose our way because we have our eyes firmly fixed on Christ in whose sufferings we share and in whose comfort we will share abundantly. It's in Jesus' name that we pray, amen.
Thank you for listening to When We Understand the Text with Pastor Gabe Hughes. If you'd like to support this ministry, visit our website www .wutt .com and click on the Give tab in the top right corner of the page.
Join us again tomorrow as we continue our Bible study when we understand the text.