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Let's do a bar of hearts in a word prayer.

Father, we just come before your throne.

We are grateful for the gifts you've given us,

the gift of your Son Jesus Christ.

We thank you too for the Holy Spirit.

We do pray, Father, that you just open our hearts and lives

to your word and your word to our hearts and lives,

that this would be profitable time for your kingdom.

We just do pray, Father, that the words of my mouth

and the meditations of our hearts would be acceptable

in your sight as we commit ourselves into your hands.

The name of Yeshua, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Amen.

Well, we are in our 19 of Learn the Bible in 24 Hours

in which we're going to attempt to summarize or review

what are called the Church Epistles,

or another way to put it, are the Pauline Epistles.

We took one of them in detail last time,

the book of Romans, but we have a dozen left to do.

But before we jump in, we'll get a glimpse, obviously,

of the early church through these things.

And I think it's important for us to realize

that these were real people, just like you and me,

real problems just like now.

And they were resolved by real people,

struggling to be effective pastors, leaders, deacons,

whatever, different styles, different personalities,

but just regular guys and gals.

Real people struggling against the powers of darkness.

This indeed is an adventure.

Now, as we look at the New Testament,

we obviously went through what I call the five Gospels.

Luke volume one and volume two makes it five,

the book of Acts being Luke's second volume.

We're now in the 13 Epistles of Paul.

I say 13 in the sense that I'm dismissing Hebrews

as a separate topic for later.

We went through Romans in detail,

but now we're going to go through first and second

Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians.

The Thessalonians letters will touch on,

but we'll review those next time for some special reasons.

First and second Timothy, Titus, and Philemon.

That's our agenda for the evening.

Now, it's interesting that Romans,

the first of the Pauline Epistles there,

and the Hebrews, the first that are listed

in the so-called Hebrew Christian Epistles,

are the major doctrinal epistles.

So we'll just as we focus on Romans,

and when we get to the next session,

we'll talk, we'll focus on Hebrews somewhat.

But there are seven churches that Paul wrote.

Now, those of you that have studied Matthew 13

and you're sensitive to the fact

that there were seven kingdom parables,

and you're also, by looking ahead,

know in Revelation, Jesus himself is going to address

seven churches in a very mystical way,

which we'll review time after next.

Paul also wrote letters to seven different churches.

That doesn't leap out at you,

because two of those, at least two went to Corinthians,

and two went to Thessalonians,

but there are actual seven churches

that have been gathered by the Holy Spirit

into our New Testament,

and that's gonna be significant to us,

I think, when we get to Revelation,

chapter two and three.

But those are the letters to churches.

You then have four letters,

two to Timothy and then two others,

that are pastors.

These letters are written,

their personal letters written to pastors

that were embraced by the early church

to be part of their literary treasures.

And there are also three Ephesians,

Philippians and Colossians

that were written during his first imprisonment at Rome.

They're not the only ones written in prison

because 2 Timothy was also written in his last imprisonment.

But the Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians

are typically called the prison epistles

because they were the result of that,

or a product, if you will, of his first imprisonment.

Our ultimate syllabus for this course in the epistles

is summarized in 1 Timothy 3 16.

Easy to remember,

because you all know John 3 16, 1 Timothy 3 16.

It's a very key verse.

All Scripture is given by inspiration of God.

That's quite a statement.

That's a broad statement.

All Scripture is given by the inspiration of God

and is profitable for three things,

for doctrine, for reproof, for correction,

and for instruction and righteousness.

And by reproof, we really mean wrong conduct

and correction implies wrong doctrine.

Both are corrective measures,

but one is in personal conduct

and one is doctrinal.

A slight subtle difference there might call your attention to it.

But if you look at the order of these epistles,

Romans was a major doctrinal epistle.

It's followed by first,

and the doctrine that Romans really focuses on

is that field of theology that would be called soteriology,

which is just a fancy word for the study of salvation.

Soteriology is that segment of theology

that focuses on salvation.

And the book of Romans is the pivotal doctrinal piece there.

But then it is followed by reproof and correction

of that doctrine, first and second Corinthians,

and the book of Galatians.

And so then we get to the epistle of Ephesians.

It also, while it's many things,

is also doctrinal in the field of ecclesiology,

the study of the church.

It's interesting that many of the controversies

in Bible prophecy are not really controversies

in the field of eschatology.

That's the fancy word for study of the last things.

Many people who argue about the,

does the church go through the tribulation or not?

Are confused, not about eschatology alone,

but they haven't done their homework.

And what is the church really?

How does the church distinguish,

how is it distinguished from other believers?

There are many believers in the history

of God's plan of redemption of people that are saved

that are not in the church.

People were saved before the church was born.

People will be saved after the church is gathered.

We need to understand that.

But this church is very distinctive.

The study of the church is ecclesiology.

One of its pivotal foundational doctrinal books

is of course the Epistle of Ephesians.

And then Philippians and Colossians being reproof

and correction of those doctrines, interestingly enough.

And then of course we get to Thessalonians,

first and second Thessalonians.

And there again, these are probably

the most important doctrinal epistles

when you study eschatology, the study of the last things.

So, soteriology, ecclesiology and eschatology

are simply fancy words for three of the many

major segments of theology as might be studied

in the seminary or in reading and that kind.

So that's a quick perspective of where we're headed.

Let's talk a little bit about Corinth.

Corinth, the Corinthian letters are a little confusing

because you have two in your Bible,

but we know there were at least four.

Also involving Corinth was at least three visits by Paul.

And so the occasion of 1 Corinthians,

the household of Chloe came to Paul when he was in Ephesus

and the church had written him a letter

and apparently was brought to Ephesus by Staphonus

and a group of others and who probably also added

their own comments.

And apparently the situation was very, very serious

and Paul responded to this group by sending a letter to Corinth

that we know as 1 Corinthians.

So they came and visited him across the sea.

He was in Ephesus, Corinth is on the other side of the gym.

And he was very, very concerned.

So his first visit of course was earlier

as when the church was first founded.

And he apparently had written them a previous letter.

There's an allusion to a previous letter.

We don't have that letter.

But the household of Chloe visit Paul in Ephesus

with a letter from Corinth expressing all these problems

and Paul's letter that we know as 1 Corinthians

was his response to these problems, which are very serious.

So 1 Corinthians is full of advice and counsel and concern.

And so then there was a visit that Paul undertook

because it got worse.

So he left Ephesus and he paid a hurried visit

to Corinth to try to straighten things out.

He makes references again in subsequent letters

to the sorrow there.

He writes after that painful visit,

he writes to them what he calls a severe letter.

This letter seems to have been lost,

but he was very apprehensive about how he was

but he was very apprehensive about how it was received.

And so this severe letter was very, very harsh,

obviously, in its tone.

And if it had not been successful,

it could have been very, very destructive.

And so as he was very concerned as to how it would be taken.

Now some scholars believe that portions of that letter

show up in what we call 2 Corinthians

because he sends Titus,

he agrees to meet Titus in Macedonia,

to see how it went.

When he gets to Macedonia, he misses Titus at first.

There's a big, he's very concerned

because he wants to know how it went and so forth.

But he does connect with Titus and fortunately,

he finds out that his report was received very well.

And in response to that, he writes his fourth letter really,

what we call 2 Corinthians.

Some scholars suspect that 2 Corinthians may include fragments

that were part of what was the severe letter.

There's scholars debate over some of these details.

But the main point is that as you read Paul's letters,

you need to realize that there are three different visits

because obviously after that,

the second point is a very encouraging, upbeat, joyous letter.

It's the favorite of many people.

But it may have included some of the segments of it,

some scholars suspect may be appended

from the lost severe letter.

But anyway, the point is, Paul obviously will visit them

subsequently in the third visit.

So there are three visits, four letters,

from those four letters we have in our Bibles two of those.

So what we call first Corinthians, you could,

if you want to confuse your neighborhood Bible study,

we've heard of second Corinthians and call second Corinthians,

fourth Corinthians just to keep everybody confused.

But anyway, so for what that's worth.

But let's take a look at this first pistol

that Paul writes because of the problems there.

One of the things he emphasizes in this is that schisms

or divisions in the church are wrong.

And he talks there about true wisdom

versus the foolishness of God.

And I love that phrase, foolishness of God.

That sounds like an oxymoron.

How can you talk about the foolishness of God?

But it is interesting to realize how God seems to go out

of his way to do things in strange ways.

You know, he decides to wipe out the whole world

and to save eight people out of barge.

And you can go right through the Old Testament.

The remedies God uses to accomplish his purposes

seem to indicate a very, very great willingness

to engage in very strange remedies.

The other thing, the other point that Paul makes

in his epistle Corinthians is that human teachers

are but stewards of God's truth.

And he then goes through a whole series

after the first half of a dozen chapters.

He then replies to the other problems.

He talks about marriage, meets, the Lord's table,

all kinds of problems that were being abused

in the Corinthian church.

But also in this letter is a trilogy of chapters

that are incredibly precious, chapters 12, 13, and 14.

Because he'd there, this is probably the definitive segment

of scripture on the spiritual gifts.

And he talks about them, we'll talk a little more about that.

Then also in this letter is what some people could argue

is the most important chapter of the New Testament.

Chapter 15 of 1 Corinthians.

And the reason they would say that is because Paul himself

argues that if we don't have what's in that chapter,

everything else is foolishness.

And that is the resurrection.

The resurrection chapter is arguably the most important

chapter in the Bible in some respects.

And that is chapter 15 of 1 Corinthians.

But one of the things that, just to give you some sampling

here in 1 Corinthians chapter 1, Paul says,

for ye see your calling brethren,

how that not many wise men after the flesh,

not many mighty, not many noble are called.

And he goes on to make a point.

And I think it was Queen Elizabeth that said,

she was saved by an M.

What does she mean by that?

Because she said in 1 Corinthians 1, she says,

for ye see your calm brother, how that not,

it doesn't say not any wise man after flesh,

not any mighty, not many.

And she feels that she crawled in under that M,

being obviously some of noble birth and yet saved.

So that was her little approach.

But then it goes on, he says, for God hath chosen

the foolish things of the world to confound the wise.

God hath chosen the weak things of the world

to confound the things which are mighty

and the base things of the world

and the things which are despised have God chosen.

Yea, the things which are not, to bring to not the things

that are, that no flesh should glory in his presence.

And so the foolishness of God, strange phrase,

Noah's Ark, what a strange way to try to save

a segment of the world.

The whole idea of putting blood on the doorposts in Egypt

in the Passover, those are fundamentally strange ideas.

God is making some points here.

And this whole idea of raising a brass serpent

to save these people from snake bite

makes no sense in the Old Testament.

You can read the Old Testament all the way up to Malachi.

And makes no sense until you get to John three

where Jesus explains, why did you God did that?

As an idiom in advance of Jesus Christ,

as Moses raised the serpent,

the wilderness so shall the Son of man be raised up.

And then you start to unravel it

and you find there's a whole profound lesson behind all that.

The trumpets around Jericho, can you imagine Joshua

briefing his staff on his battle plan for Jericho?

We're gonna march around the city once a day,

for seven days, keeping silent.

And then on the seventh day, we're gonna march around seven times.

Then we're gonna blow our horns and shout

and the wall drawing will fall down.

Really?

I would love to see a dramatization

of him selling that to his staff, you know.

But, and then of course, the creator of the universe

becoming a man and making his entrance, writing a donkey.

And the whole idea of having a group of unlettered fishermen

overturn the entire Roman Empire.

Astonishing, astonishing.

Foolishness of God.

And what's the ultimate foolishness of God?

Paul goes on in 1 Corinthians,

and says, for the preaching of the cross

is to them that perish foolishness.

But unto us, which are saved is the power of God.

Couple of ideas here, the preaching of the cross

does sound like it's the final capstone

of these apparently ostensibly foolish remedies.

But there's something else that occurs in this verse.

Do you notice that the entire world is

divided into two parts?

For the preaching of the cross is to them

that perish foolishness.

But unto us, which are saved is the power of God.

People are either saved or not saved.

And that's the astonishing dichotomy of all of mankind.

So Paul then hammers on stewardship.

And we need to talk about salvation versus rewards.

Fortunately, 1 Corinthians 3 deals with this.

There's so much emphasis on the fact

that salvation is by grace, not by works.

That's obviously the whole book of Romans,

the whole book of Galatians is gonna hammer that.

Because of that emphasis, we have a tendency

to ignore the other side of that coin.

The idea of rewards for faithful service.

Jesus may have saved you.

The question, if I often ask an audience,

how many of you are saved?

The various hands will go up,

and they'll say, great, what have you done with it?

What fruit is it born?

Has there changed life?

Has there been fruit for the kingdom?

So there's this whole issue of rewards

that Paul deals with.

See, there are two foundations that he highlights.

Gold, silver, precious stones, being one of them.

And another group called wood, hay stubble.

And you either are building on one or the other.

And fire is going to test this.

And what is burned up is lost,

and what remains is a reward.

He's not speaking of gold and silver in a literal sense.

He's using it here idiomatically.

Those of you who have been in my office,

there's two major walls.

One wall has all my trophy, a lot of,

but a handful of my trophies and certificates

from my corporate, 30 years of corporate mergers

and acquisitions and stuff.

The other wall has all our ministry products

and things on the wall.

And if you look at the top of the wall,

the top of the one says wood, hay stubble.

And the other one says gold, silver, precious stones.

And you can figure out which one is which, right?

Okay, all right.

Okay.

And it's to be tried by fire.

And the point that Paul makes

is even if you built on the wrong foundation,

if you're saved, you're still saved,

but you end up there getting there

as if having fled a fire.

Those that have built on a sound foundation

will have rewards, that's what he's really dealing with.

What he's really trying to point out is inheritances

are forfeitable, are forfeitable.

And I often think, you know, it's, it's, it's,

there are those of us, apparently,

according to Scripture, that would be reigning with Christ,

but that doesn't mean all believers are.

And you want to understand the differences.

The, the, you may be, the fact that you're saved

gives you access to heaven,

but doesn't give you permission

to rearrange the furniture.

Okay.

It was one way, one way of putting it.

The people that are going to be the main best beneficiaries

are the metacoy in the, in the Greek or the coinenos,

which are, these are the partakers of Christ's mission.

You can be saved, because Jesus is arranged that for you.

But are you a partaker?

Are you a partner?

That's a whole other issue.

Then we get to these three chapters on spiritual gifts.

And chapter 12 being the first of the three.

And one of the emphases in chapter 12

is that the Holy Spirit gives the gifts as He will.

Paul emphasizes the diversity of gifts but one spirit.

The diversity of members, but there's one body.

The diversity of service, but still one church.

He's using the term church here

in its mystical collective sense.

One of the great tragedies,

there's two kinds of mistakes

that you can make about spiritual gifts.

One of the mistakes that you can make

is to assume that they're over,

that they were only there for the first century.

There are people that teach, well,

they were just there until some event, they argue.

You can't justify that event from the scripture, by the way.

So the first, there are many very good Bible teachers,

very sound seminaries that nevertheless fail to recognize

that the spiritual gifts are still enduring.

That's the one mistake you can make is to deny them.

The other mistake you can make is to pick one

and say it's better than all the others.

And there are groups that take one particular gift

and say, unless you've got that,

you're really not with it.

You know, and I'm not trying to offend anyone,

but the main point that Paul makes in chapter 12

is there are many different kinds

and the Holy Spirit gives them as He chooses

in a great variety.

And I remember Walter Martin.

Had an experience when he was a very young minister,

he was in New Guinea and there was a girl

that was raised from the dead.

And it made the magazines and became a talking point.

It was part of his background.

But he used to trade on that occasionally.

When he would encounter someone that was sort of

on one of these points on spiritual gifts,

he would look at them with great seriousness,

and say, do you have the gift of raising the dead?

Oh, well, why no, no.

And Walter would look crestfallen.

Oh, we'll pray for you so that you might enter in

and would give him this, he would start giving him

this pattern as if one gift was really

the big one to have, you see.

And he was of course being, he suddenly became,

obviously he had to recognize

he was being facetious or sarcastic.

Because his point was that you make a mistake

picking any one gift and incidentally,

Paul tells you the one, if you're gonna pick any

of the highest, it would be the gift of prophecy.

He'll do that in chapter 14.

But anyway, that gets, that's chapter 14.

He mentions that the greatest of these gifts is prophecy.

Why?

Because it most edifies the church.

It convinces outsiders, many of these other gifts

are deniable.

This is one that generally does convince outsiders

if they're present in the meeting.

And it's you should be orderly.

That's Paul's mission.

But the main point I'm making here,

between these two chapters, chapters 12 and 14,

comes the climax.

This is one of those places where the climax

isn't at the end, it's right in the middle.

Right in the middle, he plunges chapter 13.

Because chapter 12 ends, I show you a more excellent way.

And he points out that all these gifts

are without value if they're without love.

So he emphasized the utter necessity of love,

the moral excellency of love,

and the abiding supremacy of love.

And so I think most of you are familiar with this passage.

1 Corinthians 13, though I speak with the tongues of men

and of angels, and have not love,

I have become a sounding brass or a tinkling symbol.

And though I have the gift of prophecy,

and understand all mysteries and all knowledge,

and though I have all faith so that I could remove mountains

and have not love, I am nothing.

And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor.

And though I give my body to be burned and have not love,

it profiteth me nothing.

Those are harsh words, those are strong words.

But for those that would make a big thing

of speaking in tongues or having a word of prophecy,

or whatever, they're eclipsed by love.

And he goes on to describe what he started by love

in verses 4 through 7, he says,

love severeth long and his kind.

Love envy if not, love, not itself is not puffed up.

Does not behave itself in seemingly,

seek if not her own, is not easily provoked.

Think of no evil.

Rejoice is not in iniquity, but rejoiceeth in truth.

Marathal things, believethal things,

hopethal things, and dirthal things, and goes on.

You know what's interesting about this passage

is you can substitute the name of Christ.

You say God is love, we use that a lot, right?

Let's see if it works.

Christ suffered long and his kind.

Christ envies not, Christ won't if not itself,

is not puffed up.

Does not be saved himself unseemly,

seek if not his own, is not easily provoked.

Think of no evil.

Rejoiceeth not iniquity, but rejoiceeth in truth.

He bears all things, believes all things,

hopethal things, it fits, doesn't it?

Now what we should do now to make the point is,

let's put your name in there.

Chuck suffered long and his kind.

Chuck envies not, Chuck won't if not himself

is not puffed up.

Boy, you don't have to go very far

because you can't help but smile,

because it's facetious.

Because the gap between Christ and ourselves

is so dramatized by trying to fit our name in here.

You follow me?

You follow me?

Now there are some people you could put in here

surprisingly comfortably.

Those are the ones that are like Christ.

I could put my wife in through here very comfortably.

And the interesting exercise, sobering exercise

as you put your own name, as I put my name in there,

it's embarrassing, but you get my point.

Another thing about first Corinthians

is it defines the gospel.

That's a term we use a lot, the gospel.

You've heard that term many, many times.

I ask you, what is the gospel?

Well, that's the good news.

That's evading the question.

What is the gospel?

It's astonishing to discover what the gospel really is.

First Corinthians 15, the first four verses,

Paul defines it.

He says, moreover brethren, I declare unto you

the gospel which I preach unto you,

which also you have received and where you stand

by which also you are saved if you keep in memory,

what I preach unto you, unless you have believed in vain.

That's the first three verses, we're to the fourth.

What's disturbing about that?

Can you believe in vain?

Ooh, that's a sobering thought for many.

I believe, I believe.

James is gonna tell you,

devils also believe in tremble.

Belief is not enough in itself.

But let's go on, what are you talking about the gospel?

He then defines it here.

For I delivered unto you, first of all,

that which I also received,

how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures,

that he was buried and that he rose again

the third day according to the scriptures.

Three parts, one that Christ died for our sins

according to the scriptures.

It doesn't seem to disappear, he didn't just die,

he died fulfilling hundreds of specifications.

He died for our sins according to the scriptures.

Every detail about Jesus Christ was laid down

in advance hundreds of years before.

That's one of the three parts.

Cyber, and he was buried.

It's strange that Paul wouldn't emphasize that.

He's the only one that does,

and I suspect this because he builds a case

on that regarding baptism as an idiom

of being buried and rose again.

And then of course, and that he rose again the third day

according to the scriptures.

And one of the exercises I typically give one of my students

is okay, where in the scriptures there means the Old Testament,

find the places in the Old Testament where it predicts

that he would be raised on the third day.

Well Jonah, yeah okay, Jesus is the point of that.

He gave you one of them, there's about three or four others.

So that's your challenge to dig those out.

But the point is, what's astonishing to me

about the gospel here is what Paul does not include.

Paul makes no mention of his teachings.

A lot of people in the world will grant

that Christ was a wonderful teacher.

I mean a lot of wonderful teachers,

maybe none like him, but still, he's a wonderful teacher.

Paul makes no mention of his example.

He will in the book of Philippians,

but that's not the gospel.

He makes no mention of his miracles.

None of these things are the gospel.

And it's astonishing to discover how many churches have pulpits,

which will talk about everything about Jesus Christ,

except these three points.

That he died for our sins according to the scriptures.

There's Barrie, they'd rose again the third day.

That's the gospel.

And it's the old fashioned,

covered by the blood, bit.

That's the gospel.

And Paul emphasized it.

But then of course, we get to the resurrection.

And Paul was standing here, I think he'd point to this

as the most important chapter in the entire Bible.

And the reason it is, is because if Christ was not resurrected,

we have nothing.

That was the validation of everything that went on.

For the book of Leviticus and all the offerings

that were anticipatory of Christ,

his death on the cross, all of that was validated,

marked acceptable, so to speak,

by the reality that he rose from the dead,

because he did we do.

And so that's Paul's whole point there.

Now this whole area of resurrection

is a interesting controversy.

A lot of people have trouble with the resurrection.

What happens when a cannibal eats out of the cannibal?

And some other cannibal eats that cannibal.

And where's the body?

How are you going to resurrect him?

Everybody gets sort of hard,

it's hard for us to visualize what we mean by resurrection.

And I think for us and our culture,

we have indebted Mr. Michael Crichton

for his piece of entertainment called Jurassic Park.

Just a piece of entertainment,

piece of science fiction entertainment

based on the premise that these creatures,

prehistoric creature dinosaurs were resurrected

if I can use that term from a piece of information.

As you may recall,

the his novel Jurassic Park that was made into a popular movie,

the idea was that a mosquito that had taken

some blood from a dinosaur that was captured in amber,

which is then preserved by fine,

because you can find amber and you can find mosquitoes in them.

That's the idea is to take that blood,

which will give you the DNA of the dinosaur.

And from that DNA, you can clone or resurrect,

that's the concept.

And obviously, there's some bridges here

that are pretty tough to cross,

but the basic technology is comfortable

to in a prognosis sense.

So that gives, of course,

the plot line to the Jurassic Park thing.

But the point is it makes an interesting point.

See all, see, you're the atoms that make up your body,

carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, and a bunch of others,

are fungible building blocks.

God doesn't have to have the carbon atoms

that made up you today to resurrect you 10 years from now,

or whatever, or the hydrogen.

Those are the building blocks.

What he needs, it would seem, is your DNA.

With your DNA, apparently that's a definition of you.

And so it helps us at least visualize that resurrection,

it's not the old bodies that we're interested in anyway.

And I'm not suggesting that our resurrection bodies

are gonna be made of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen atoms,

but if they were, they don't have to be the same ones.

They can be whichever ones he wants to use.

Do you understand what I'm saying?

So the whole idea of resurrection is a little more easily

visualizable.

Basic building blocks are fungible elements.

And the only requirement is the DNA,

and maybe a little bit more.

Now what kind of a body is involved in the resurrection?

Jesus is our source, of course.

His resurrection body is the model, if you will.

First of all, understand that it was tangible.

It wasn't like a ghost or a holographic image or something.

He challenged them that night when he appeared among them.

Handle me and see.

The spirit does not have flesh and bone as you see me have.

Remember, he's tangible.

You can handle him and feel him.

Now what's strange about this is they're in a room

with a floor and a ceiling and four walls, I assume.

Let's visualize it as a six-sided geometric figure,

and they're inside.

He was able to enter and leave that without passing through.

The walls or the floor and the ceiling.

And mathematically, he's in a hyperspace, obviously.

But the point that he's hyperdimensional,

that is spatially transcendent,

is something that we, if there's only two kinds of people

that can deal with that, of course,

as we mentioned in the very first,

one of the early sessions of this review,

and that's mathematicians in special training

or small children.

But there is a statement of physics in 1 John 3.2

that I think is far more revealing

than most people recognize without any background.

In his first letter, John says,

beloved, now are we the sons of God.

And if not yet appear what we shall be,

but we know that when he shall appear,

we shall be like him for we shall see him as he is.

Now, what's he saying here?

I believe what he's saying is we're going to enjoy

the same dimensionality he does.

If we're not gonna see a two-dimensional representation

of a three-dimensional being,

we call that a photograph.

A photograph is a two-dimensional representation,

a three-dimensional person or party or whatever, right?

It won't be a three-dimensional representation

of a four-dimensional being,

or a five-dimensional representation of a ten-dimensional being.

What he's saying is we shall be like him

because we shall see him as he is.

See, that implies to me that when he was among them

in the upper room, they saw him, they handled him,

but I suspect there was far more there

than they could apprehend.

That won't be our case when we're resurrected

because we shall be like him for we shall see him as he is.

So those peculiar properties of his resurrection body

are ones that we'll enjoy too.

Strange stuff, but it's amazing how often in the scripture

there are physics statements in effect.

But getting back to 1 Corinthians 15,

where Paul goes on, he says,

behold, I show you a mystery.

Now, the word mystery in the Greek is not like we use the term,

mystery is something I'm not understood.

The word misterion in the Greek from which they're translated

is actually something that's been a secret

up till now I'm revealing it to you.

The concept isn't so much hiding

as much as now revealing in the term.

I show you a mystery.

We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed

in a moment in the twinkling of an eye at the last drum.

For the trumpets shall sound and the dead shall be raised

incorruptible and we shall be changed.

For this corruptible must put on incorruption

and this mortal must put on immortality.

Quite a statement.

Couple of things about this is in a moment

in the twinkling of an eye, it doesn't say in a blink of an eye,

that's a long time.

The twinkling of the eye is the time it takes light

at the speed of light to transit your lens surface.

And if you go through the arithmetic of that,

it's pretty close to 10 to the minus 35 seconds,

which is the shortest measure of time possible.

There's a measurement of time,

that's what quantum physics is about.

Length, mass, energy, time, all are made up

of indivisible units in the smallest unit of time.

I suspect is what he's talking about here.

Not a, well, anyway, at the last trump.

Now a lot of people try to make this trumpet,

the last trump, the seventh of the revelation,

that's misunderstanding revelation,

we'll deal with that when we get there.

But in any case, there will be a final trumpet

as far as we're concerned, a made trumpet.

When it sounds, and there's gonna be more,

we'll find out there's more about this

that Paul will reveal to the Thessalonians when we get there.

But this is, of course, this strange time

when we show this instant.

See, there will be a time,

there will be a generation that won't die.

Many of us in this room may pass away

before that time comes,

but some of us in this room may very well be alive

at this instant when God gathers his church.

And Paul will deal with that in depth

in the Thessalonian letters.

But there are seven transitions involved.

We'll go from corruption and incorruptible,

from dishonor, this flesh, to glory,

from weakness to power,

from the physical world to the spiritual world.

Now, this is where we usually get it upside down.

We tend to think the physical world is the real world.

The spiritual world is sort of this fuzzy, ghostly,

we tend to look at it in secondary terms.

It's the other way around.

We know from particle physics that you and I live

in a simulated world, a digital virtual reality,

not a real reality.

We're bounded as something in a finite universe

in the one hand and part of,

in a digital simulation on the quantum side.

So we were in this strange interval.

No, the physical world is a subset of a larger reality.

The spiritual world is the embracing of the larger reality.

That's where we're transferred to.

We're going from earthly to heavenly,

from flesh and blood to the transcendent,

and from mortal to immortal.

Well, anyway, let's move on to secondary.

You've got a lot of these to cover.

Let's keep moving here.

So Titus, as I said, brings a disturbing port

because they're detractors that are attacking Paul's character.

His opponents are hindering it, counters and all this sort of thing.

They insinuate doubts about his credentials, all this.

So Paul is quite troubled by this.

So Paul is forced to respond for the health of the gospel

there and throughout the region.

And so he has an impassioned self-defense in second-cringes.

Wounded spirit to erring and ungrateful children

as one person described it.

A letter written with a quill dipped in tears

as one person described it from the apostle,

from his anguish of heart.

It contains more pathos than all his other letters.

The earlier letters written from Ephesus,

two corn from Ephesus, and he was compelled to flee

because there was some fanatical reactions

to the, from the silver merchants there and so forth.

The Dan-a-thing and all that.

And so in any case, he eventually gets of corn,

says there are three months, but at the interval

between leaving Ephesus and Corinth,

he wrote this letter probably from Philippi

on his way over there, deeply affected the circumstances.

So the second Epistle of Corinthians,

Christ is our comfort and mid-trial.

He starts, of course, by renouncing his critics,

by recounting his authority, his motive,

his message, and his background.

And then he appeals to his converts

about things spiritual and things material.

He deals with both those issues.

And he answers his critics and their pretensions.

And he underscores his credentials.

That second Corinthians has a great deal of his background

where Paul unabashedly lays it on the line.

And as I mentioned, there was three visits.

When it first founded, then the previous letter

that saluted to, and then the one that resulted

in first Corinthians, his response to Chloe's household,

then he has this painful visit where it was very tense,

to which he writes a very severe letter

that he's very apprehensive about Titus

is supposed to check it out.

And he finally do connect, and his report says they went well,

and that caused him to write second Corinthians

this passion thing, but he's still dealing

with some problems there.

And then there's a final visit.

So anyway, so much for the Corinthian letters.

Move on to Galatians.

Galatians is really a polemic

against the perversion of the gospel.

And that shouldn't surprise us that we see people today

perverting the gospel.

It's not a new problem, it's been there from the beginning,

and Paul deals with it head on.

See, Romans deals with what it means to be grounded in doctrine.

Corinthians, how to be guided in practice,

Galatians, how to be guarded against error.

There's three slightly different texts here.

Romans is grounded, Corinthians is guiding in practice,

and Galatians is in a sense, guarded with error.

Some people would call Galatians

sort of a short Romans in some respects.

And Paul had visited there prior to writing them.

His second visit was less reassuring than the first.

So he really nails them against errors.

And he speaks there of another gospel.

If anyone preached another gospel,

the one I preached let him be anathema, condemned to hell.

He really hits that pretty hard.

And he emphasized the liberation through the gospel.

He speaks of its authenticity,

it's genuine to its origin,

he argues to genuine as to its nature.

And he talks about the superiority of the gospel of Christ,

the new relation affects the privileges it releases.

And the true liberty we have in Christ,

this is perhaps its main underscore here.

Love service ends law bondage.

Galatians, just like the book of Romans,

deal with our freedom from the law.

We have a service of love rather than a bondage to the law.

And so there's a big tension

between the flesh and the spirit,

the flesh being bondage to the law

and the spirit being freed from the law.

And he emphasized that very hard.

And so there's a catalog of compromises.

Faith versus works is one of them.

Grace versus the law, it reflects that.

Spirit versus the flesh.

These are all echoes of the same kind of tension.

Truth versus error.

The church versus the state, we see that in this country.

Christianity versus paganism.

We live in a culture where our government schools

can calculate paganism on our children.

Christ versus the pseudo-Christ.

So again, there's this whole profile.

These are all echoes of somewhat the same tension, if you will.

Flesh versus spirit.

Abraham was 430 years before the law.

And the point that Paul makes in Galatians

is the promises of God preceded the law.

And the promises cannot be disanellaled by the law.

Because Abraham had the promises long before Moses,

long before the law was given.

And so on.

And Paul even makes this distinction between Ishmael.

He portrays Ishmael as the son of the flesh,

Isaac the fruit of the spirit.

And he speaks of these two sons,

idiomatically, if you will, as the flesh and the spirit.

Ishmael of the flesh, that is unbelief.

And he says, the son of the bond woman will not be heir.

And his point is not the person,

the point is what he represents.

Isaac is of the promise.

He was a response to faith.

It was Abraham's trusting God to resurrect Isaac that saved him.

See, the ultimate triumph of faith was the offering of Isaac.

And Paul hammers that home in Galatians 4.

So we've talked about the gifts of the spirit and Corinthians.

We are not called to be gift inspectors.

We've been called to be fruit inspectors.

So what are the fruits of the spirit?

Or I can call this little segment, how's your love life?

I'm not using it in the Hollywood sense.

See, fruits of the spirit, love, joy, peace,

long suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith,

meekness, self-control.

These are the gifts of the spirit.

There's nine of them, right?

It's interesting, the first three are fruits in the heart,

love, joy, peace.

The next three are fruits that affect your neighbor,

long suffering, gentleness, and goodness.

And the next three are those that

manifest your relationship to God,

faith, meekness, self-control.

It's interesting that the second and third of each triad here

is echoing the first.

Joy is love exalting,

and peace is love responding.

Gentleness is long suffering, it's passive,

and goodness is long suffering that's active.

See, these things are not just a list of words

that sound good, there's some deep structure behind this.

And meekness is faith toward God

and self-control, faith in your life.

So these are the nine gifts of the spirit.

And these are the ways that you can tell where you're at

in terms of your spiritual growth,

not by the gifts you manifest speaking in tongues or whatever.

No, what are the fruits of the spirit?

And that's what's the critical thing.

Now he also talks about fruit-bearing,

those are the nine fruits of the spirit.

There's also Paul emphasized burden-bearing,

bear one another's burdens.

And then he also talks about seed-bearing.

Whatsoever a man sows, that's what he shall read.

And finally, he talks about brand-bearing

or mark-bearing if you are.

I bear the marks of the Lord Jesus, he goes on.

Let's talk about brand-bearing, or mark-bearing if you will.

There are handful of places that you had brands.

Slaves had a brand.

That was a mark of ownership.

They were branded to say who owned them.

Soldiers had a mark on them, mark of allegiance.

What was their allegiance to?

Criminals had a mark on them, a mark of conviction.

You know, 2641 and lame as a rob, whatever.

Okay.

And the people that were abhorred

had a mark of reproach on them.

Devotees would have a mark of consecration.

Paul's body had all five.

Because he was enslaved to Christ.

He was a soldier for the gospel.

He was a criminal and since he was convicted indeed,

and he was abhorred by some, he had the marks to prove it.

And yet he had also mark of consecration.

So Paul actually had all five.

But the summary of the whole book of Galatians,

it can be in one verse.

Paul asked, are you so foolish having begun in the spirit,

are ye now made perfect in the flesh?

See, the Galatians were saved,

but they were all hung up with legalism, keeping the law.

He says, are you guys so foolish?

What God has begun in the spirit,

are you not gonna be made perfect or completed in the flesh?

Hardly.

And that's the undergirding logic throughout the whole puzzle.

Okay, well, let's take a look at one of the capstones

of the whole series, Ephesians.

Its doctrinal statement is on ecclesiology.

Most people have no idea what the church is.

And Ephesians is the secret to this, in a sense.

Our wealth in Christ, and Paul goes through

our praise for spiritual possession,

the prayer for spiritual perceptions,

our new condition in Christ, our new relation in Christ,

revealing the divine mystery and the divine influence.

And our walk in Christ.

So we have our wealth in Christ,

the first three chapters

and the walk in Christ in the last three.

So we've got the first three, our conceptual,

the last three, our practical.

The church corporately believes individually

and all the way through.

Climaxing in the armor of God.

We'll talk about when you get there.

But one of the things that,

one of the, when did God first start dealing with you?

And that's the explanation.

Ephesians chapter one verse one five,

Paul says, according as he hath chosen us in him when,

before the foundation of the world,

that we should be holy without blame before him in love.

That's astonishing to realize God had you on his mind

before the world is created.

Having predestinated us to the adoption of children

by the Jesus Christ to himself according

to the good pleasure of his will.

See the word, the word chosen by the way

and verse four there is in the error is tensed in the Greek.

That means once and for all.

It's also in the middle voice.

We have active voice and passive voice.

The Greek has a middle voice.

It adds a sense of choosing for one's own self.

In other words, you are a participant in his choosing.

And you're chosen out of the world once and for all

for God's own peculiar pleasure.

You were chosen to be holy because we were hurt,

not because we were holy, but in order for us to be holy.

That's why we were chosen.

Now the word adoption here is misleading

as we tend to use it in our culture.

They had a different concept.

You could be born of a father,

but you didn't accede to your rights as a son

until there was a formal public ceremony called adoption.

And the adoption meant the public attestation

of adult sonship.

And that's when you were conferred,

had conferred upon you, your privileges as a son.

Up till adoption, you were a son technically,

but you were treated as a slave of the house.

When you were adopted as a son,

you then acceded to the rights of maturity, if you will.

And we are already sons of God according to John 1

and other passages.

But he's predestined to us unto the adoption of children

by Jesus Christ to himself according

to the good pleasure of his will.

Very powerful point.

A sort of parallel, if you remember the story of Ben Hur,

when Cuntus Arius, a prominent Roman,

adopts Judah Ben Hur as a son.

He then has all the privileges as if he was his actual son.

But anyway, and verse seven, he says,

in whom we have redemption through his blood,

the forgiveness of sins according to the riches of his grace.

The word redemption simply means to be released by ransom.

We've been ransomed, we've been paid for.

In whom we have redemption through his blood,

the forgiveness of sins according to the riches of his grace.

And so, and ransom paid in respect of the eternal principles

of righteousness which govern the universe,

the holy laws of God which humans have outraged.

You say, gee, my sins don't seem that big,

that's because you don't understand how pure God is.

The problem isn't your sin alone.

The problem is the gap between you and a holy God.

That's what we can't grasp.

And that's the holiness that has been outraged by our behavior.

Then he has in this, in this principle,

the concept of sealing.

He says, in whom you also trusted after that,

he heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation,

in whom also after that he believed,

ye were sealed without Holy Spirit of promise,

which is the earnest of our inheritance

until the redemption of the purchase possession

unto the praise of his glory.

This was something that Paul had a hard time really grasping.

He was trained as a Pharisee,

was trained under a gamelea.

The concept that the Holy Spirit was,

had sealed us, was mind blowing them.

He could remember King Saul, Spirit went and came,

all through the Old Testament.

The Spirit would be there and then he wouldn't be.

In other words, it was, he had his own volition.

Here we're entering a period in which the Holy Spirit

is God's commitment.

There's a concept of irrevocability involved here,

which we were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise,

which is the earnest of our inheritance.

The earnest is like a down payment that seals the bargain

and a prepayment, if you will, to seal the bargain and so forth.

But then we have this incredible passage,

people who have not memorized other scriptures

generally have included this in their list.

How are we saved?

For by grace are ye saved through faith

and that not of yourselves?

It is a gift of God.

In other words, the faith itself is a gift.

For by grace are ye saved through faith

and that not of yourselves, it is a gift of God.

The faith itself by which you gain the grace

is a gift of God.

Why?

Not of works, why?

Less than any man should boast.

God did the whole job he wants full credit for.

To try to add to your salvation is blasphemy.

You're trying to add to something that God has completed.

He goes on, for we are his workmanship, his poema.

Same word from which we get poem.

We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus

unto good works, which God hath before ordained

that we should walk in them.

Now one of the questions you sooner or later

will ask yourself is why did God bother?

God knew before he created the universe

that Adam, given a chance, would blow it.

And he puts Adam with his own free will,

knowing he's gonna get himself in a predicament

that nothing less than the death of God

will avail to get him out of it.

Didn't God see this coming?

Of course he did.

All the sin, all the pain, all the suffering

in the world caused by sin.

Didn't God see this coming?

Why bother?

The answer is not in these few verses.

It's the verse that comes just ahead of this

that people overlook, not verse eight, but verse seven.

His ultimate purpose is disclosed here.

He says that in ages, in the ages to come,

he might show the exceeding riches of his grace

and his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus.

See how can God demonstrate infinite power?

Well, one way you get a glimpse of that,

is look through a telescope and try to understand

the universe.

The more you study it, the more astonishing it is.

Infinite power.

The concept of infinite knowledge,

we can probably begin to imagine, not early embrace,

but how do you demonstrate infinite love?

And I suggest to you that by putting man in the situation

in which to extricate him from that,

it would take nothing else but the death of God himself.

This whole panorama that started Eden

gets its peak at the cross at Galgathar

is a demonstration of infinite love.

As we will spend in the eternity trying to understand

what it caused him.

God's creation is phenomenal, but let's take a look at the,

in the Bible there's what, a couple of chapters?

A couple of chapters in Genesis,

a couple of chapters in Isaiah, Job, a few.

That's about it for creation.

How many, how much of the Bible is dedicated to redemption?

Well, the whole book of Genesis,

the whole thing of Jackson is,

I mean, as you study each book,

you realize each book is primarily focused

on God's plan of redemption,

all the way to Revelation, which is the climax.

Another way to measure importance

isn't just how much the Bible spends on it.

The other way is, let's talk about what it cost him.

What did the creation cost him?

Six days, he breathed it out of his nostrils.

The creation is manifest as it is.

He did in six days.

What did the redemption of you and me cost him?

The death of the son, the death of his,

I heard a recent presentation by Joe Fos

that really touched me,

where he described the last week of Christ

from the point of view of the Father.

Joe being a father or having had his son

go through an emergency, we had to get to emergency

and have deal with doctors that weren't really

on their toes and stuff.

The pain of the Father seeing a son abused

was vivid in his mind.

And he occurred to him,

can you imagine God the Father enduring the insults

and the abuse of his son?

Never done on me the pain, the agony.

From the Father's point of view,

we generally visualize it from Christ's point of view.

From the Father's point of view,

it's a whole other dimension.

Anyway, all this to demonstrate love.

Now, there's another mystery that's in the book of Ephesians

that we want to touch on.

In back in Matthew 11, Jesus made a strangely mark

about John the Baptist.

He says,

Verily I say unto you, among them that are born of women,

there have not risen a greater than John the Baptist.

Now, wait a minute, that's quite a statement.

Among all them that are born of women,

there's none greater than John, except of course Christ.

Let's set that aside.

Verily I say to you, among them that are born of women,

there have not risen a greater than John the Baptist.

That's quite a statement,

but before he finishes his sentence, look what he says,

notwithstanding he that is least in the kingdom of heaven

is greater than he.

What?

Does that mean John the Baptist wasn't saved?

No, no.

It's explained a few verses later.

Jesus says, for all the prophets and the law prophesied

until John, what he's saying is John

is the end of the Old Testament.

He says the same thing is recorded in Luke 16, 16.

See, we need to recognize that John the Baptist

is the closure of the Old Testament, not Malachi,

that happens to be the last book in our Bible,

but in our Bible in the Old Testament.

No, the Old Testament goes until John the Baptist.

Was John the Baptist saved?

Yes, but he was saved as an Old Testament saint.

Jesus is introducing something fresh

and it's Paul's privilege to reveal it more fully.

And he makes a big point of that.

A mystery reveal, this is in Ephesians 3,

the first dozen verses are very important.

You see, it was no secret that Christ was to come

and bear the sins of many, that's all through the Old Testament.

It was no secret that he would be a prince and a savior

to both Jews and Gentiles.

Isaiah talks a lot about that.

There's no secret that the Holy Spirit would be poured out.

Joel and others speak of that.

There was no secret that the remission of sins

was to be preached in the throne of David

and all these things are in the Old Testament,

but the church is not.

The church is not, well, what is the church then?

See, that's the key.

See, this is what Paul's privilege was.

In Ephesians 3, he says,

how that by revelation he made known unto me,

the mystery, Paul speaking,

which in other ages was not made known unto the sons of men

as it is now revealed unto his holy apostles

and the prophets by the Spirit.

What?

That the Gentiles should be fellow heirs

and of the same body and partakers of his promise

in Christ by the gospel.

The implications of that are staggering.

It doesn't mean just that Gentiles can be saved,

but they are going to enjoy a relationship,

a fellowship being joint heirs with Christ.

That's a whole nother thing.

And that's what's so astonishing

about what's available to you and I.

And many of us don't understand his epistles,

because we don't understand the answer,

because we don't understand the problem.

You need to understand, you won't really understand this

unless you really understand the Old Testament,

to realize what a unique benefit this is.

Anyway, the hope of his calling,

the resurrection and mortality,

our joint lane with Christ,

the eternal inheritance,

these are all emphases,

perfect transformation of the image of Christ,

all these things are his hope.

But there's another version of this,

but there's another verse just to show you,

the Ephesians is just an incredible epistle.

In verse 18 of chapter three,

he says that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith

that ye being grounded and rooted and grounded in love

may be able to comprehend with all saints,

what is the breadth and length and depth and height

and to know the love of Christ,

which passes knowledge that ye might be filled

with all the fullness of God.

Incredible passage except what did he say?

The breadth and length and depth and height,

how many dimensions are there?

Four.

You know the Bible is the only book on the planet earth

that transcends a three-dimensional universe.

In many, many ways, but here's just one example

where we see a four-dimensional,

and one of those words in the Greek represent time,

by the way, of that fourth dimension.

But then let's get to the final wrap up

in Ephesians, heresies in our cosmic warfare.

We wrestle not against flesh and blood,

but against principalities,

against powers, against the rulers of darkness

of this world,

against spiritual wickedness in high places.

We don't wrestle against flesh and blood, he says,

but what against?

And we have here a group of Greek words

that are actually ranks of angels.

These are the rulers of darkness of this world,

spiritual wickedness in high places,

and he's not just talking about, you know,

ranks as we might think in Washington,

he's talking about the dark world.

That's what we're up against.

So here's our imperative.

He says, put on the whole armor of God

that you may be able to stand against the wilds of the devil.

In other words, be completely armed,

put on the whole armor, not just your favorite pieces,

to do that you need to know what the whole armor is.

When do you do this?

Not during the battle, you do this,

you put the armor on before the battle begins,

but I got bad news for you.

We're already in it and we're on enemy turf.

Now many people think,

well, he's gonna get into the seven elements of the armor.

Most people assume, he mentions this

because he's chained to a Roman soldier.

He's chained to the Roman soldiers,

so the Roman soldier couldn't get away.

Can you imagine standing a full shift of duty?

Chain to Paul.

But, and many people assume he's taking these idioms

of the armor by looking at the soldier.

That's naive because he's drawing these idioms

from the Old Testament.

Isaiah 59, 17, he speaks of righteousness as a breastplate

and a helmet of salvation on his head,

and the garments and so on.

So these idioms are not unique to Paul's experience there,

but let's just look at it quickly.

To be girded with truth, what is truth,

Pilots cynically ask?

Well, that's a big issue.

And we obviously can't develop it here,

but I challenge you to find out what that really means.

What do you mean girded with truth?

And put on the breastplate of righteousness.

The breastplate protected your vitals,

the piercing of it usually was fatal.

You need to have a breastplate of righteousness,

and if you're relying on your own righteousness,

you're in deep trouble.

You've got to be Christ righteousness.

Your feet shot with preparation.

Those of you who have been hand to hand or boxing

or wrestling or whatever,

you know the importance of proper footwork.

Feet shot with preparation.

And we need to realize there's training

and preparation required.

How many of you, let me put it this way.

In one book of the Bible, seven different people

on 12 different occasions gave a Bible study

that always produced a lot of fruit for the kingdom,

and then we never do this today.

What Bible study was given by seven different people

in 12 different occasions that always was very fruitful,

and yet we never do it today?

And astonishing?

What is that Bible study?

Presenting Jesus Christ entirely from the Old Testament,

all through the book of Acts,

when they presented Christ from the Scriptures,

the Scriptures are talking about was the Old Testament.

They presented Christ from the Old Testament.

How many of you could present to a Jewish friend

the Messiah of Israel using just the Tanakh,

the Old Testament?

Not hard to do, takes a little training,

a little outline to follow, a little bit of tree,

but it takes preparation.

And the shield of faith, you know, the shield was something

that they repaired between battles.

You don't go into battle with a hole in your shield.

Are there holes in your faith?

Are there things that bother you

that you've never really had answers?

Chase them down, fix them now.

Otherwise they'll come back to haunt you.

The helmet of salvation, boy, that's a whole another subject.

Just owning one is not enough.

You better be wearing it.

You can tell the people who don't wear their helmets

by the bandages.

But the last one, not the last, the next the last one,

is the sword of the Spirit.

What is the sword of the Spirit?

The word of God.

We all, most people recognize that, idiom.

The sword of the Spirit.

In the history of military technology,

generally a long sword was an advantage

because you had more reach.

But the Romans did something very, very strange.

They developed a double edged short 24 inch

michayra.

And with that short sword, they conquered the world.

But there's some things you need to understand about the michayra.

The reason they did is because they had special training

on how to use it, and they practiced, practice, practice, practice,

practice.

The same thing's true with your sword that's in your lap right now.

You need to be trained to use it, and you need practice.

Sword of the Spirit.

The sword of the Spirit.

The sword of the Spirit.

But the seventh is your heavy artillery.

That's your action at a distance kind of weapon.

Prayer.

Right now there are troubled missionary opportunities

around the world.

And you can participate in those opportunities without an airline

ticket in your bedroom by getting on your knees

and holding those missionaries up in the middle of the road.

And then our final imperative, finding my brethren,

be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might.

This is the imperative mood.

That means it's a command.

It's not a suggestion.

Be strong.

Where, in the Lord?

It's in the present tense.

That means be continually strong.

Don't say, God, what is the purpose that we want to do?

We want to do the rest of the world.

We want to do the rest of the world.

We want to do the rest of the world.

We want to do the rest of the world.

We want to do the rest of the world.

that means be continually strong, not just not a once occasion kind of thing. And it's

in the passive voice, you receive the action. I remember I would be strong in the power

of His might. And just a picture of Ephesus to remind us that this was a real place. These

are elegant letters with very, very high concepts, but it was real people in real places having

real problems, just like you and I have. That's what it's all about. Well, let's zip through a

few more here and we'll wrap it up. Philippians rejoices through suffering, Christ in our life,

Christ in our mind, Christ in our goal, Christ our strength. Joy through suffering.

For me to live as Christ to die is gain. See what things were gained to me, those I counted

loss for Christ. I can do all things through Christ which strengthened with me. Boy, how many

athletes use Philippians 4, 13 on their signatures. That's interesting. Rejoice in the Lord all

way and again I say rejoice. Joy through suffering. That's the thing. There is a passage in here

called the kenosis, a very unusual passage in Ephesians, excuse me, Philippians 2. Let this mind

be in you which was also in Christ. This is sometimes called by some the mind of Christ. Let this mind

be in you which was in Christ. Who being in the form of God deemed it not to be selfishly conned to,

but emptied himself and took the form of a bondman. Becoming in the likeness of men,

he humbled himself and became obedient unto death even the death of the cross.

Ephesians 2, 5 and following it's called the kenosis or the mind of Christ. The most astonishing

example of humility possible in the universe. We got himself, Danes. There's seven elements here.

You can study it on your own. We better keep moving your collations. And then one other one

is incredible epistles. It's a response to the Gnostics. Gnostics comes from the Greek word meaning

to know. This means to, you know, secret knowledge, esoteric knowledge. Huxley coined the term agnostic

meaning without knowledge. You see people proudly say, well, I am an agnostic. That's the Greek

root. If you take the Latin root, the word is ignoramus. It doesn't go over so well at cocktail

parties. Well, I'm an ignoramus. It doesn't quite work, but you get the idea. Anyway,

the Gnostics claimed to have a special night. It was a mixture of mysticism,

Eastern speculation and Jewish legalism. It's fascinating that it says many forms and we see it

emerging today even in Hollywood. It was a big fascination with the kabbalah, which is a Hebrew

mysticism. The pattern is pretty straightforward. At first, if you reject God, you become materialistic.

And when you discover that materialism, which tends to be self-oriented,

is empty or vacuous, and you've already rejected God, the next natural place is to look to mysticism.

Is there anybody out there? And so mysticism comes up in many forms throughout history,

and collations is one of the rebuttals to that. Alexandria was a major headquarters for the Gnostics.

That's why the Alexandrian manuscripts by Westcott and Horn are there have come under some

suspicion in more recent place. Eastern speculations plus mysticism, man-made traditions and philosophy

in a sense, matter was considered evil. They even had a form of astrology thinking that stars are

really angelic beings, and they were somehow associated with heavenly bodies and so on.

They also mixed into this some Jewish legalism. Good and evil were derived from rules. I'll watch

out for that. Circumcision or Old Testament dietary laws were embraced by them strangely enough.

And so anyway, the collations is in effect corrections to these abuses. And so there's a

doctrinal, it's the fullness of Christ. Christ's preempt is preemptive overall things, and there's

a lot of practical issues that derive from that both individually and collectively, and then he

has a personal agenda. Colossians is a great book on Christology, the visit of Christ himself,

the visible form of the invisible God, the prior head of all creation, in him was the universe

created. He is before the universe, in him the universe coheres, in all he created, he holds it

together, the head of the body, the church. There are very, very high thoughts here in Colossians.

He's the firstborn from among the dead. And the key verse in Colossians 1, for by him Christ,

were all things created that are in heaven that are in the earth visible and invisible,

whether it be thrones or domains or principalities or powers, all things were created by him and for

him. For he is before all things and by him are all things held together. He is the head of the body,

the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn of the dead, in all things he might have preeminence,

for it pleased the Father that in him should all fullness dwell. And having made peace through

the blood of his cross by him to reconcile all things unto himself, by him I say, whether they

be things in earth or things in heaven. We have the Epistle to the Thessalonians, which is a culmination,

it's actually the earliest of the Epistles, but probably also in some respects the climax. We're

going to deal with that in the session after next, where he'll remind them of things Paul taught

them in the first few weeks of their Christian walk. We'll talk about the harpots of the rapture

and all of that. And in the next session we're going to talk about the review of eschatology,

the study of the last things. We'll talk about Amalen, the pre-millennial, what is the rapture,

pre-trib, post-trib, mid-trib, does the church go through, all these things will be done,

not in the next session, session 21, the session after next. So there we are. We have the four

pastoral epistles which are pretty straightforward. How many of you are in the full-time ministry?

Can I see a show of hands? Good for you. How many of you are saved?

Okay. How many of you are in the full-time ministry with you know what or not? Okay. You're

caught up with me. All right. Okay. So these pastoral epistles appear to apply to all of us.

And they talk about the diversity of gifts, the depth of commitment, the challenges that are

predictable. It anticipates the problems you are having today. These epistles are God's special

message. And so Timothy was Paul's protege and he gave him a lot of good counsel in terms of the

assembly and conduct and so forth. And the offices of deacons and elders are all spelled out there.

And the assembly in general and in particular groups that I deal with. The second epistle is

probably one of the most interesting ones because probably the last epistle he wrote he was in prison.

He was in prison facing death and he's encouraging Timothy. I love that. Something's backwards there.

He talked about true pastors under testings, the personal reaction and true pastoral reaction.

And he talks about end-time troubles that are coming. And he also includes warnings. Some have

turned aside, some have made a shipwreck, some fall away. In other words, the whole theme is

finishing well is the challenge. You've got a good start. How are you going to finish?

It's what some have missed the mark. Some have been led astray. See our challenge, you and I,

if we're saved, we're not saved, you've got other issues. But once you're saved,

then your next thing is can you finish well? And that's what these letters are all about.

All of a sudden I fought a good fight. I finished my course. I've kept the faith. Henceforth,

there's laid up for me a crown of righteousness which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give

me at that day, and not to me only, but unto all of them also that love his appearance.

He said, for this cause I suffer these things. I am not ashamed for I know whom I believe in

that and persuaded that he is able to keep that which I've committed unto him against that day.

He's the guardian of your real treasures. Titus is another letter. Titus would pause

troubleshooter, one of his most trusted workers. He'd come and call Barnabas on the difficult trip

to the Jewish council. He's sent on diplomatic missions to Corinth and in Macedonia and elsewhere,

Paul left him and often leaves him in authority. Paul, he's this clean up guy. And he has a great

pistol about keeping things in order and how to deal with members in general and so forth.

There's, every art gallery has room for one little small masterpiece. And this list of

crystals has one little gem at the end. A little letter to Philemon. He has a little

salutation, a praise of Philemon himself. Paul's writing him to him. And there's a guy by name

of Nessimus who's been a runaway slave from Philemon. He's met Paul. He's become, say, Paul is sending

him back to Philemon. He's telling Philemon to treat him. He says, you owe me, buddy. And whatever,

you put it on my credit card. That's really what he's saying. So Paul's pledge and assurance is

there. And you see, what's interesting, it's an example of intercession. Paul is interceding for

Nessimus to Philemon on the behalf of Nessimus. It's a beautiful gem because you and I are also

God's property and our fugitives. And our guilt is great. Our penalties are heavy, just like

Nessimus. And the law condemns us and consciences betrayed us. And yet Jesus says, as Paul did here,

put it all on my account. And so there's a benediction and a close on thing. So that's it.