Bible In A Year - 2 Corinthians

Lord, we come before you this morning thankful to be here, thankful to have this place to study, thankful for your word, thankful for the work of the

Apostle Paul in writing this letter to the Corinthian Church. Lord, we would just pray that you would bless this time that we might learn lessons from your spirit through the words that he moved the

Apostle Paul to write. We'll pray for this in Christ's name, amen. Well, the book of 2

Corinthians has in some cases been known as the fourth pastoral epistle, which would be the other three.

1 and 2 Timothy and Titus is correct. And this book is so intensely personal as he really has been working over time, as it were, with the

Corinthian Church. And we're going to note this morning that this is the fourth letter that Paul wrote to the

Corinthian Church. I wonder if somebody might get those doors for me and close them. The fourth letter that he wrote to the

Corinthian Church. And so the first question that came to my mind is, why isn't this called 4 Corinthians?

Why isn't it called 4 Corinthians? If you wrote four letters to the Corinthian Church? Well, it's the second one that we have here in the

Bible that's called 2 Corinthians, but he did write four letters. In fact, let's just look, we'll kind of recap this here for a second.

1 Corinthians 5, 1 Corinthians 5, 9. And Paul writes,

I wrote you in my letter not to associate with immoral people. Well, this is 1

Corinthians. So what can we infer here from what he writes in 1 Corinthians 5, 9?

That he started counting from zero. Zero, zero. So we should be looking for 0 .5

Corinthians or 0 Corinthians or something like that. There was a letter that preceded 1 Corinthians. And then we have 1

Corinthians. So 1 Corinthians was actually the second letter to the Corinthians. And then in between 1

Corinthians and 2 Corinthians, he wrote what's called the severe letter. And then we have this book of 2

Corinthians. Well, again, why isn't that letter in 1 Corinthians 5, 9, why isn't that in the scripture?

And why isn't the severe letter in the book of the Bible? Yeah. Okay, those are fine.

Why isn't the severe letter or the letter where he tells people not to associate with immoral people?

Why aren't those in the Bible? They don't exist. That's a very good reason. We don't have copies of them.

And God wanted it this way. That is exactly correct. We don't have copies of the original letters.

And if God wanted them in the Bible, we would have them. So we have exactly the books of the

Bible that God wanted. And here we are in 2 Corinthians. Just running through the sheet here.

This is the last letter. And it really conveys to us the heart of Paul. And it is

God's word to a struggling church. Paul defends the authenticity of his apostleship and his message to the

Corinthians. And this was necessary. His defense of himself was necessary because there was determined opposition within the church.

There were false apostles, people calling themselves apostles who were teaching false doctrines and were trying to cause a rebellion away from the truth and away from Paul.

So he has to defend himself, something that he did not want to do. As I said earlier, this letter is extremely personal and he uses intense and descriptive words like weakness.

He was with them in much weakness, grief, peril, tribulation, comfort, boasting, truth.

And he uses all these words because this is a very emotional and personal letter and appeal to people that he knew well.

If you look down in the key people in Corinthians, some of them are quite familiar to us, Paul, Timothy, and Titus.

And then the false apostles who were the false teachers, as I said, in the Corinthian church who had disguised themselves as believers.

We often think of 2 Peter and Jude talking about false teachers, which is true, but these false teachers in the

Corinthian church had basically set up shop. If you look down in the background and setting,

Paul had spent 18 months in Corinth planting and tending this church. That's a long time.

So it's small wonder that when they started going astray, he would write this intensely personal letter.

Why? If you're with somebody for 18 months, you care a lot about them. He had invested a lot of himself in this church and he was keenly interested in their spiritual development.

They had almost continuous spiritual struggles from internal and external problems. I mean, if you wanna, there's almost no situation that can arise in a church that isn't handled somewhere in 1

Corinthians or 2 Corinthians. The church at Corinth was problematic.

They were always having troubles. But in order for these false apostles, these false teachers to kind of get their own platform within the church, what did they do?

They had their own doctrines and they were different than what Paul taught. So what did they do? They attacked

Paul's character. They went straight after Paul. And this is typically done in, or this is done a lot of times with false teachers.

They attack the character of those who are teaching the truth. Why? Because when you can't attack the message, you attack the messenger.

But the situation was so critical that he intervened personally.

He refers to that episode as the painful visit. In other words, he didn't just spend 18 months and then write them a few letters.

He went and visited them. He was very concerned with this church. He left the city eventually, but he followed up that visit with what he called the severe letter.

That's where he really blasted them. And Titus took this letter to Corinth on Paul's behalf.

And later he traveled to meet Titus, we're told in 2 Corinthians 2 .13. And Titus gives

Paul the news that many of the Corinthians had stopped their rebellion and had actually repented.

And so we see in this letter, there is a note of rejoicing. He's happy that they have turned from the false teaching.

One of the issues with this book is whether or not it is organized properly.

There's some concern that chapters one through nine have one tone and then 10 through 13 have another tone.

And what MacArthur suggests is that the reason this division exists is because the first nine chapters are primarily focused on the people who had repented and 10 through 13 on those who had not.

Key doctrines in 2 Corinthians. We have the substitutionary atonement of Christ in 2

Corinthians 5 .17 through 21. The judgment of God on sin, the nature of Satan.

In fact, let's look at the nature of Satan. In 2 Corinthians 4 .4, and I will start in verse three.

And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing, in whose case the

God of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.

Just in those few verses there, how many doctrines do we have? Can anybody give me a doctrine?

Okay, no one. Depravity of man, the deity of Christ, exactly.

The sovereignty of God. We also see, as I mentioned before, the power of Satan.

What's he called here? The God of this world. Notice it's a small g.

What does that mean? That Satan has been given, he has authority in this world.

So I mean, right there we see the inability of man or the depravity of man. We have the sovereignty of Satan over the world's system.

He is able to blind the minds of the unbelieving so that they don't get the gospel. They hear it, but they don't receive it.

Why? Because Satan is at work. He so controls this world system that people for many reasons reject the gospel.

Yes. Okay. Daniel asks if I can clarify that with regard to the sovereignty of God and salvation, how is it that Satan is able to blind the minds of the unbelieving?

Is that your question? Okay, good question.

If we think back to Job, it was the most obvious example.

In fact, we're gonna see another example in 2 Corinthians here. But Martin Luther said that the devil is

God's devil. He does exactly what God wants him to do.

And so in this case, if some people are drawn to God, then what happens to those who are not drawn to God?

Well, until they are drawn to God, Satan is enabled to blind their minds.

They are submerged in the world system. They are confused. This is a restatement of what

Paul writes in 1 Corinthians. 1 Corinthians 1 .18, he says that, well, let's just look at it.

He says that the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing. Why?

Because they don't, well, let me just read it. 1 Corinthians 1 .18, for the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved is the power of God.

And he goes on in 2 .14 to say, but a natural man or an unsaved man does not accept the things of the spirit of God, for they are foolishness to them and he cannot understand them because they are spiritually appraised.

And so what we have here in 2 Corinthians 4 .4 is just basically a restatement of that and the introduction of Satan into the equation.

In other words, unsaved people cannot understand the word of God. They cannot understand the gospel and Satan is actively blinding their minds.

They come to the conclusion that it's foolishness and they do so in part because of the work of Satan.

Yes, Charlie. No, he doesn't mean that, but if we,

Charlie says, summarize kind of, basically that Satan's greatest work was to plunge the world into sin through the fall by deceiving

Eve, which is absolutely true. What did he do? He so twisted the words of God that when he repeated them to Eve, they really don't bear much.

There was some truth there, but a lot of error and she bought it and because of that, we have the fall of Eve and then

Adam. But does this mean that Satan is at work, blinding the minds of every single person?

Well, no, because what do we know about Satan? Satan cannot be in more than one place at a time.

Demons have better things to do than run around and confuse the minds of everybody, but Satan is so in control of the overall world system that there's a very real sense in which he is blinding the minds of people, that he is occupying them with things other than the things of God.

In fact, I'm convinced this is an example. The number one thing right now that I think

Satan uses to give people say a salve on their conscience to convince them that there is no

God is evolution. So I am absolutely positively convinced that evolution not only is biblically unsound, but eventually will be found to be scientifically unsound.

But I don't think scientists will discard it until they have something better in place. I don't know what it will be.

I have no idea. I'm not that smart. I can't figure it out. But until they have something better, they're not gonna throw it away and they'll defend it to the very end.

Why? Because again, it allows them to look at the gospel and say that's foolishness. It allows them to look at God and say he doesn't exist.

And this to an unbeliever who loves sin is the most important thing to them, that they have some kind of rational and intelligent way of discounting

God. So back to the original question, how does this play into the sovereignty of God?

Simply this, that the world system that Satan has created contributes to the blinding of what people submit to anyway.

People are born with a sinful nature. They don't love God. In fact, the Bible would tell us that they're enemies with God. And so Satan's system so works with that that they are blinded to the truth.

Now, what happens in salvation is that God strips away the blindfold.

God removes the things that prevent us from seeing Jesus Christ for who he is. And he doesn't force us to believe.

He removes the blindfold and we run to the cross because we understand our own sinfulness.

We understand the holiness of God. All the things that were foolishness to us are now truth.

And we don't grudgingly go to the cross. We run to the cross because we understand how in need of a savior we are.

So does that help? Okay. You know, apostles, it's interesting how the word here is used because we invest a lot of energy in it and it basically just means sent one.

So these false apostles are sent. You know, we could question who they're sent by, but they pass themselves off as apostles in order to undermine

Paul. We have an overview of the book there. I thought we might spend a little bit of time looking at a couple of issues.

One is biblical separation. I know I've talked about that in the past, but there always seems to be confusion on this about what is and is not biblical separation.

And Paul addresses that here in 2 Corinthians 6, verse 14.

He says, "'Do not be bound together with unbelievers, "'for what partnership have righteousness and lawlessness, "'or what fellowship has light with darkness, "'or what harmony has

Christ with Belial, "'or what has a believer in common with an unbeliever, "'or what agreement has the temple of God with idols?

"'For we are the temple of the living God. "'And then just as God said, "'I will dwell in them and walk among them, "'and

I will be their God and they shall be my people.

"'Therefore come out from their midst and be separate,' "'says the Lord.'" So what's the overarching message here in this little snippet of 2

Corinthians? Be separate, be holy, right?

Now, what applications might this have? Watch who you hang around with.

Now, does this mean that we shouldn't hang around with unbelievers? Okay, we hang around with them to witness to them.

Sometimes, I'll confess, I have unbelieving friends. God has been gracious to save some of them, which is the good thing.

You have unbelieving friends for a purpose, and that purpose isn't always to beat them about the head and shoulders with the gospel, but if you're hanging out with them, they should recognize that there is a difference between you and them.

If you're going out to the bars with them on Saturday night, then there's a problem. But his main point is here, when you're involved in a spiritual endeavor, you don't get involved with unsaved people for this spiritual endeavor.

His rhetorical questions. What fellowship has light with darkness? What is fellowship? Fellowship is of a spiritual nature.

What harmony has Christ with Belial? Well, what do God and demons have in common?

And ultimately, he says, what does a believer have in common with an unbeliever? Well, sinful nature, things like that, but that's not his point.

His point is, listen, and here's the most common application. Unbelieving person, believing person.

Dating, good idea or bad idea? Why? Different values.

Well, let's just break it down. What's the purpose of dating? You know, friendship?

No. I just happen to have this friend we hang out. It's courtship with an idea towards marriage, right?

I would hope that when people go out on dates, they just don't go out to, you know, well, hey, I like the person and this is what

I'm doing. If you're saved and you're dating an unsaved person, then what is the purpose of dating?

If the idea of dating is to work towards marriage, this passage, an application of this passage would be that if I'm going to be involved in a spiritual endeavor, which marriage is a spiritual endeavor,

I ought not to hook myself up, yoke myself, work together with an unbeliever.

Why? Because I'm gonna wind up quite miserable. This, the whole overarching thing here is be holy, be separate,

Becky said. What does it mean to be holy? It means to be a called out person, devoted, consecrated, as we looked at in Friday night in Bible study, consecrated for God's use, to be a holy vessel.

And if you enter into a spiritual endeavor, as again, marriage is a very spiritual endeavor.

If you enter into that with someone who is not saved, there are going to be issues because you don't have the same values, you don't have the same focus.

Another application of this, there are many crusades that are done and people tend to work cross denominationally with other churches.

Good thing or bad thing? Depends, that is exactly correct.

It depends. What does it depend on? It depends on if this other church, if this other denomination actually believe the gospel.

We're not going to, at this church, we're not gonna be involved with some churches because if you went there on Sunday morning, you could go for the rest of your life and never hear the gospel of Jesus Christ preached.

If they don't believe the gospel, if they don't believe the Bible, then why would you want to be involved in a spiritual endeavor with them?

And yet, many have done this over the decades. They've been involved in issues.

I remember famously watching, I actually watched this and it's been documented a number of occasions.

The owner of the Trinity Broadcasting Network said, he said, don't call me a

Protestant. I'm not protesting anything. I'm going, well, then what are you?

You know, I mean, what does that mean? If you're not a Protestant, then the logical consequence of, if you're thinking through it, would be you're a

Catholic. You can't be, there's a reason there was a reformation. They had the gospel wrong.

They had the gospel wrong. Now, this passage is also grossly abused.

Can you think of some abuses of this? That's right.

You can read that and go, well, if I'm not to have any association with the things of this world, then

I'm going to go move to the Himalayas, ignore the Buddhist monks that are already there. And I'm just going to shut the world out and be holy.

Well, because if we don't believe in the same gospel, then how can we possibly work together? What agreement has the temple of God with idols for we are the temple of living

God? I mean, it is just a question of how does someone who says, the way to get to heaven is by grace alone, through faith alone, by Christ alone.

And that's the Protestant side. And on the Catholic side, we have somebody who says, if you believe that salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, by Christ alone, you are condemned and going to hell.

And we are going to work together with those people. You can't do that. They say it's black.

We say it's white. And we go, well, you know what? You say black, we say white. What's the big deal?

It is a big deal. If we propose two different ways to heaven, then how can we work together on a spiritual endeavor?

The answer is we can't. We can't work together with the Muslims or the Mormons or the

Jehovah Witnesses. We can't do it. And I would say that's fine outside of the confines of the church.

The church is not going to be yoked together. If a bunch of Jehovah Witnesses sign the

Protection of Marriage Act or whatever is going on, and you go, well, I can't sign it. Look at all the

Jehovah Witnesses on that. Well, that wouldn't be right. Stop watch is right twice a day, and if they're right, they're right.

Yes. Well, and see, my thinking on that would be, if you say

I'm a Protestant, well, generally, that could be really bad. I mean, that could mean

PC, US, it could mean, you know, homosexual clergy, it could mean all kinds of stuff.

The question is, historically, you know, historically, there are some labels that I would gladly take.

I would gladly take, historically, the Protestant label. Why? Because it just means that I think

Rome has a false gospel, and I'm protesting against that. So I've left spiritually, although I was never part of the

Roman Catholic Church, I am separate from the Catholic Church. If you wanted to call me reformed,

I would take that label. Why? Because again, it denotes the breaking away from the Catholic Church and holding to certain principles, the solace of the

Reformation. If you want to say fundamentalist, well, historically, it's got a bad name now, but historically,

I would agree with it because it says here are the fundamentals of the faith, and it's the inerrancy of Scripture, the deity of Christ, and all those kind of, and I'm like,

I'm fine with all that, okay? The problem with labels, as you rightly said, is that people import whatever meaning they want to those things.

Louis? Yeah. I mean, there aren't too many words that have maintained meanings for very long.

I mean, hey, 30, 40 years ago, if you used the word gay, everybody just thought you were happy.

So, I mean, things have changed. I mean, this last election, I was fascinated. I won't really talk politics here, but there were

Democrats running who were pro -gun, pro -life, pro all this, and then there were

Republicans running who were pro -gay, pro, and I'm just like, what do those labels mean? They don't mean anything.

Just like, what does Protestant mean? You have to, Louis is exactly right. You have to define exactly what you mean.

I mean, the words have been so stretched as to become meaningless, but the other point

I wanted to make about this passage is that its fundamental misuse, in my mind, is that people use it not only to separate from people that they ought to separate from, but then there are second degrees of separation or third degrees of separation.

Well, I can't even associate with you because you once pulled into the parking lot of Robert Shuler's Crystal Cathedral, or, you know, so,

I mean, people have, people should, I mean, you laugh. You go look on the internet, and I'm telling you that if so -and -so played golf with such -and -such or they taught at so -and -so's conference where so -and -so was, you know, da -da -da -da, or they taught at somebody's wedding or whatever,

I mean, there are just a list of things that people just, well,

I can't associate with that guy because he's a false teacher. And it doesn't matter.

Subsequently, I was telling my wife this the other day, that there are people who, you know, held against John MacArthur certain doctrines that he taught, and then when he changed his position, that didn't matter.

You know, once you're, in their mind, once you're a heretic, that's it. You know, there is no grace.

Doesn't matter if you have the gospel right or anything else. What matters is getting all the fine points exactly the way they see them.

And so this is like a passage that fundamentalists, the current fundamentalists, not, you know, the

Steve fundamentalists, will go to and say, see, I have to define that, will go to and say, see, we can't have anything to do with him because he had something to do with so -and -so and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

So it can just get spin out of control because things are not done, you know, in love.

They're not done often in love, and that needs to be the overriding concern of Christians.

Any other questions or comments about separation or anything, Candice? Well, in talking about how

Jesus ate with the worst of the worst, you know, the biggest sinners of his day, that was a big deal, you know, because it wasn't just like the coolies having somebody over to their house and having a meal, because it doesn't have the same symbology that it did then.

When you sat down and you ate with somebody, those meals used to go on and on because we didn't have to rush right off and watch our favorite sitcom.

So they would go for quite some time, and it was a matter of basically integrating lives together.

This was seen as a very affirming thing to do. So for him to go and eat with the prostitutes, to eat with these people that were considered unclean was a shocking thing to do.

So how do we reach out to the community? And the emergent church,

I think the problem with the emergent church isn't that they want to reach out. I think the problem is this mindset that the church on Sunday exists to reach out to the community.

That's not what our church meetings are for. Our church meetings are to worship God, to put aside the cares of the world, to focus on him, to exalt

Christ, to teach, preach, listen to the word of God as inspired by the spirit of God and not to appeal to the downtrodden of the world.

If they come in, we want to give them hope. We want to give them the gospel. But we come here to equip the saints for the work of ministry.

That's what Ephesians 4 would tell us. And then we go out and we evangelize. We fulfill the great commission. So if people are uncomfortable here on Sunday morning and they're unsaved, that shouldn't be surprising because the purpose here is to equip the saints, is to edify the saints and to worship the triune

God of the universe, not to appeal to the outcasts of society. Now, how do we reach out to them?

Well, we reach out to them during the week. We can even, I think it's fine to invite people to church, but they shouldn't come to church and just think, well, this isn't so bad.

We don't want our message to be offensive to them because we insult them.

We don't want our message to be offensive because we don't love them or we don't show care for them.

We want our message to be offensive because the Bible says the gospel is offensive to them. And at some point, if God opens their eyes, it suddenly won't be offensive to them.

So that's fine. But the problem with the emergent church is that they've taken this idea of seeker sensitivity where we've seen that in Willow Creek and Saddleback, and they've taken it to kind of a whole new level where you come into church and church is just cool.

It's like going to Starbucks. You know, it's so engaging and conversant and so humble.

In fact, I think it's MacArthur who calls it the hermeneutic of humility where the emergent church just looks at the

Bible and says, well, you know, we don't really know what the Bible means.

How do you preach that? You know, and the answer is you don't. There's one leader who wants to hold a moratorium on saying anything about homosexuality.

While we talk to psychiatrists and psychologists and all these experts in the field, sociologists, and you know, maybe five years from now, maybe the church can come to a consensus on what to do about homosexuality.

I don't see what the big confusion would be. I think the Bible's very clear on that. So I think the emergent church is, there are parts of it that might be useful in some ways, but overall,

I don't think it's a very healthy movement, not a good one for the church because it basically says we can't know.

I mean, it's postmodern to a fault. It says we can't really know anything. So, okay, well, let's look at chapters eight and nine for just a moment here.

This is just something that we tend to gloss over.

Of course, at this time of the year also, you can get your giving envelopes from Fred, but giving, giving, giving envelopes is something that I just often think we just have a really wrong view.

I've mentioned this before, but I knew a guy who actually left the church we were at in California, and he was gone for quite a while, and I had really no idea what had happened to him.

And he came back and he said, well, one of the reasons I left was

I always felt like people were looking at my checkbook. And I said,

I have absolutely no idea what you mean. I mean, I was in a church where once a year, you had to go in and meet with a pastor.

He wasn't a pastor, he was called the bishop, but you had to go in and meet with the bishop and tell them whether you paid a full 10 % tithe or not.

It was a big deal. You couldn't get to the higher rungs of the church ladder unless you certified, yes,

I paid 10%. So for me to go to a church where I never had a single person ever ask me you know, what

I was giving, whether it was 10 % or whether or not it was even sacrificial I just thought,

I don't even get, I've been in legalism and I don't even know where you're coming from, you know. But some of the principles that are covered here in chapters eight and nine verses nine or chapter nine, verses six to 15.

Now this I say, he who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly and he who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully.

Each one must do just as he has purposed in his heart not grudgingly or under compulsion for God loves a cheerful giver.

Now let's just pause right there for a second. Each one must do just as he has purposed in his heart.

What's the concept there? What is the idea? That it should be planned, that you should have forethought.

I think maybe the most typical thing I've seen in my whole life and you know what? When I first got saved, this is exactly what

I do. I go to church on Sunday morning and because my background, it wouldn't even click with me.

We didn't even have pass the plate and stuff. It was like an envelope and a box and all that stuff but they would never do a collection.

And so when the collection plate came around, it's like, what do you do? Well, whatever's in your wallet that isn't gonna hurt too much at the moment, that's what goes in there.

So I think, you know, is that what the passage is telling us to do though? The answer is no.

As we purpose, as we plan, as we have thought through. And then notice again, not grudgingly or under compulsion.

You know, if you're sitting down and you make a plan and you're writing down that check and you don't wanna do it, well then just don't do it.

Don't do it. Nobody's forcing you. Nobody is compelling you. Nobody's going to call you in and say you're not a 10 % giver, get thee hence.

That's not the purpose but it does give us a promise right there. It says,

God loves a cheerful giver. Well, I want God to love me. I like that part.

I think it's great when he looks at us and he rejoices in our understanding of things.

Why? Because what we have is not something that we give grudgingly or under compulsion.

It's not because we have to. It's not a fact that we don't want to but we're willing to submit if that's the way it has to be.

No, we understand that everything God has given us is a stewardship. God has given us bountifully more than we need and he wants us to rejoice in that and to give back sacrificially.

Other principles down here, we are to give out of our poverty. That means you give to your poor.

No, that's not what it means. That's not what it means. But we ought to give regardless of our circumstances, we should give something.

We should give generously, willingly, proportionately. I've said, you know, we'll keep praying for this.

If Bill Gates got saved and he gave 10%, in my mind, there'd be something wrong with that because, you know, 10 % of however many billions of dollars he makes every year, that would be pretty cheap.

I mean, that's a lot of money, more money than anybody could possibly need to live on.

Some other things that, any questions about giving? Of course, nobody has any questions about giving.

It's like, yes, Nancy. Well, I think that's, well, you know, let's back up for a second.

Tithing really isn't a biblical, a New Testament concept. The 10 % really isn't found in the

New Testament. People use that as a guideline. Now, what is tithing? Tithing means a 10th.

We all know that. If we went to, I mean, even me, you know, going to a wrong church when I was a kid, we all know that tithing means a 10th.

But what we don't know, and we won't go through the whole thing this morning, but in the

Old Testament, the tithe was, it was Jewish income tax. And they didn't give 10%, they gave 10 % of this and 10 % of that and 10 % of this and 10 % of that.

And so it ranged on up to maybe about 32 to 37%.

Well, that's a good point because to just fill in a little gap, they were under a theocracy, which meant that when they gave their tithes, they were paying their taxes.

That was how they ran the government. That's how they took care of the poor. That's how they funded the army. That's how they did all this kind of thing.

So that was what they paid there. And then they brought their offerings to the Lord on top of that. So that is, the principle for us would be, we pay our taxes to the government and then we bring our offering to the

Lord. So like I said, I mean, it could be a situation where you're offering is seemingly almost the widow's might.

It seems almost pathetic to even give it. Well, give it anyway. And you plan and you do the best you can and you give, but it should be your first priority and not your last.

I think the other tendency is to figure out your bills, to figure out your food, to figure out your movie and your other budget items, and then subtract it all and whatever's left, well, that's what

God gets. And that's really not the biblical principle. It's that it should be sacrificial, that it should be something that indicates that you really understand and are grateful for all that God has done on your behalf.

So could service count for that? Service is service.

As believers, we're all supposed to serve the body. We're all supposed to give too.

Now, the question is, let's say you make $100 a week and you're barely making it. Well, I would agree that for somebody who's making $100 a week, they probably should not give 10%, but they should give something, some kind of financial thing.

So whatever, and it needs to be proportionate. If you're making $100 ,000 a week and you're giving 10 ,000, then there's something probably wrong because you're living well, my friend.

Fire a couple of those servants and give a little more to the church. So any other questions or comments

I'm giving? All right. Since we're out of time,

I'll just launch into a new category. There's just a lot here. We haven't even talked about one of my favorite passages, which is 2

Corinthians 5, 14 to 17, talks about the extent of the atonement, 17 to 21, talking about being a new creation in Christ, 521, of course, being the doctrine or substitutionary atonement that Christ died for our sins.

In fact, let's just close on that. Let's look at 2 Corinthians 5, 21, because anything we say about 2

Corinthians, and don't mention this, is just a travesty. Talking about God the

Father, 2 Corinthians 5, 21 says, He made Him, talking about Jesus Christ, who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

The greatest truth in all the Bible, that God put all of the sin that we would ever commit on Jesus Christ of the cross so that when

He looked at Jesus Christ, He had to turn His back on Him because He hates sin so much. So Jesus says, my

God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Because He senses that gap, that difference that's never been there, that separation between the

Father and the Son. And so He looks at Jesus Christ that way, and then He looks at us as if we have committed no sin.

He transfers the righteousness of God to us. The righteousness that only could belong to God, to us, is accounted to us on our behalf.

So we come to God sinful, God transforms us through the work of His Son, Jesus Christ, and looks at us as holy and righteous.

And that is the doctrine of substitutionary atonement. And it's only because of that that we can be found right in Him, and it's through the resurrection of His Son, Jesus Christ, that we have our hope.

Anyway, 2 Corinthians, let's pray. Lord, we thank You for this brief time we've had in 2

Corinthians this morning, for the opportunity we had to look at so many doctrines, so many great truths,

Lord, so many things that are so impactful for our lives, even as we think about separation and substitutionary atonement and giving.

And Lord, just being a new creation in Christ, what a blessing that is. Father, I would pray for every person here that we would be encouraged to think of ourselves as we are new creatures in Christ and that You would fill us with a hope fixed in heaven awaiting for us.

Lord, if there are any here who don't know You, I pray that they would have the scales removed from their eyes, as it were, that they might see