Bible Guys Classics: 2 Corinthians 13

Hey, everybody, we're the Bibble guys. And if you're just tuning in recently, just know that we are showing a little bit of reruns for a few months, and then we'll be back, bigger and better than ever on August thirty first, because behind the scenes, we're taking a hiatus to do some very important things. Yeah, we're building building out a new studio and we've got some new structure. Super excited about it. So August thirty first, brand new content. But in the meantime, enjoy some of our greatest hits. So, Jeff, have you ever seen The Princess Bride? Yes? Yes, it's a great movie, isn't it. I love it. There's a part in there where he goes. My father's final words were yes, yeah, okay, So that's today. This is Paul's final words to the Church Accord. That's one of my favorite movies. I think we have something in common. Yes. So he's Chris and I'm Jeff, and we're the Bible guys. Chris, Yes, So here's that segment everybody loves so much, and all of our listeners they already know what we're going to say. Yeah, what made Chris mad this week? Okay, So here's here's what makes here's what makes me really mad. My kids know this, why laughing. It's funny that I can ask that question and you don't even have to pause, you don't even go, well, none of that. I got another thing that makes me mad. Listen, none of that. But I didn't even find out what we were doing. What makes Chris mad till like one minute ago. So so listen the uh here's what makes me, I mean, it just upsets me so much. Is when you pull them through the drive through. It's up to the driver to order for the entire family, right and so and so here's what my kids will do. And I'm totally throwing them under the bus right now. Okay, I recognize this is not a flattering moment for me. It's probably necessary, though. Okay, so here's what happens. Okay, So the proper way to do this everybody is to go like this. Okay, like, for instance, if let's just pretend you're at McDonald's for some reason, which we don't go through McDonald's, but let's pretend, right, because everybody knows the menu, is to say I would like a number one and then say medium with a coke. That's great, So like, just tell me all of that so that I don't have to you know. So literally they'll say, give me a number one and then and I'll say, well, I'll ask these clarifying questions like do you want a medium? What do you want to drink? Right? And I get it. I got to just drawn how many times there's three pieces to your order? I'm agreeing with this one on you? Yeah? Right? So the number how. Many times do you have to go through a drive through and experience this really uncomfortable thing with dad? Yes, because dad just wants to know the complete order, that's right, And I'm kidding you, I'm not kidding you. Ninety nine times out of one hundred, they don't understand that you have to do those three things. It's like it's a brand new condundrum. Every time you walk through. There's a big mac, a quarter pounds, drive through nuggets yeah right, But people look at this menu like they've never seen it before. Yeah, what is this wonderful place? Right? Wow? What's on here? And then they order, they don't order the right way I want. I'll have a cheeseburger, okay, and fries as if there were options, what size fries? Right, what you're saying is it's very probable to know what you want before you get up to the menu. Yeah, it's not rocket science. Everybody knows what's on the menu at McDonald's. Listen. I'll even be fine if you don't know what you want, but just tell me before I talk to the guy, yes or the girl, because they'll say what would you like? And they'll say, give me number one, and then they'll pause, and I'm like, really, you're gonna pause. And then the server or the person over the thing they go, is that it is that? It is that which creates. A lot more pressure for you because you know there's four or five orders coming. And what you said was I need a number one? Uh? What size? Large? With the what size? Or what to drink with the coke? Is that it? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, you know. And so so then I'll say give me number one and then I'll turn They'll say what size? Then I have to turn around, what size? A medium? Medium? What the drink? Hang on? Hang on, hey, what's the drink toy? I would like h a sprite with a sprite? Yeah? And then there's that that you know, so it says that it's like every order has to take like five interactions. Yes, and it's not necessary. I'm with you on this, and it is your kid's fault. I absolutely can't figure out how the family does not figure this out. Yeah, I don't know. Maybe you didn't raise your children right. So the other day we went through uh was it was it Arby's through Arby's or something. I wasn't with you, and and uh, and I pulled through and I actually uh, I said, Tori, you can just order this yourself. And she was behind me on the on the same side. And so I rolled down her window from where I was and I pulled beyond the speaker to where she was there, and and then and she ordered. And she said to me, why did you Why did you make me order? Why didn't you disorder? I'm like, because I'm done. Yeah, I'm done. That's fair. I think that's reasonable. I am with you on that one, Chris, you and I are together awesome. So your family and my family need to get it right. Or maybe we should just quit eating at any place that hands food out of window to us so much. Maybe maybe that would be that would solve some problems massively. The better the better response. Yes, there you go. But for all you people who know what we're talking about, you feel our pain. I know. Yes, Okay, Well that was worth it is worth sharing that one. Thank you, Chris. You're welcome, Jafflin. So we're wrapping up Paul. Paul's writing to the Church at Corinth, and this is chapter thirteen. He's really taken a few swings. He's basically talked about three or four really big topics through through the thirteen chapters. Well, the first twelve chapters he talks about them like four times each, right, But now he's kind of wrapping things up, and he says, this is the third time I'm coming to visit you, and as the scriptures say, the facts of every case must be established by the testimonia two or three witnesses. He's kind of making a joke there. I've already warned those who had been sinning when I was there on my second visit, and now again I warn them and all others just as I did before that next time I will not spare them. I will give you all the proof of the proof you want that Christ speaks through me. Christ is not weak when he deals with you. He is powerful among you. Although he was crucified to weakness, he now lives by the power of God. We too are weak, just as Christ was, but when we deal with you, we will be alive with him and will have God's power. Examine yourselves to see if your faith is genuine. Test yourselves. Surely you know that Jesus Christ is among you. If not, you have failed to test of genuine faith. As you test yourselves, I hope you will recognize that we have not failed the test of apostolic authority. We pray to God that you will not do what is wrong by refusing our correction. I hope we won't need to demonstrate our authority when we arrive. Do the right thing before we come, even if that makes it look like we have failed to demonstrate our authority, for we cannot oppose the truth, but must always stand for the truth. We're glad to seem weak if it helps show that you are actually strong. We pray that you will become mature. I'm writing this to you before I come, hoping that I won't need to deal severely with you when I do come, for I want to use the authority the Lord has given me to strengthen you, not to tear you down. Dear brothers and sisters. I close my letter with these last words, be joyful, grow to maturity, encourage each other, live in harmony and peace. Then the God of love and peace will be with you. Greet each other with a sacred kiss. All of God's people here send you their greetings. May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. And done, done, and seem there you go. So you know, I can't get that mind of that line out of my mind. Love her as I loved her, and there will be joy. That's right. So it's the final words. So I just had to say it. It was itching to come out. So you know, Paul's final vice is connected to, you know, the spirit of his letters, so he sort of recaps that whole thing, you know, talking about his authority and dealing with them harshly. So a lot of it is sort of the same. But there's a couple of gems in here, and you know it's a challenge to the Church of Corinth, but it's a challenge to us. First number five, examine yourselves to see if your faith is genuine, test yourselves. Surely you know that Jesus Christ is among you. So you know, I've always thought about that, and I've always thought, gosh, that is such a wonderful thing. It reminds me of the Psalms. You know, it says, you know, search your heart, you know, and and creating me a clean heart, and search yourselves and test yourselves. I think that there's a lot of yeah, you know, wisdom, and you know, this is the new year for a lot of us, and a lot of us, you know, we always say, okay. Go, I think it's a new year for all of us. What did I say? A lot of us? What I was thinking about, what I was thinking in my mind is a lot of us set New Years res solutions. Oh but I didn't say that. That's not what you said. That's what I said, because I'm like, look, we got time travelers. We'll think to us now, Oh no, I've already been twenty twenty three. So a lot of us have these news resolutions, and we set them physically, but setting them spiritually is a really great thing to think about. So how do we want our twenty twenty three to be? So test ourselves examine to see if our faith is genuine. I really think that there's something to that. We need to just be honest with ourselves and just say, okay, you know, where is it in my life that I'm doing really well? Where is it that I'm not doing so well? And by the way, you don't really know until you ask somebody around you, right, because the Book of James tells us we can't see ourselves clearly in a mirror, right. It's hard to see it in ourselves, you know. We can't actually recognize things, which is why we need counselors in our lives. That's why we need godly counsel is the reason. Why we'll have blind spots. We all have blind spots. So when it says test yourselves, examine your faith, you really can't do that well. For the most part. You can't accurately do that by yourself. You could do it in somewhereas I guess, but ask others help, you know, get others around you, set up accountability, set up some goals. I do think that there is the one thing that you can test by yourself that nobody else can speak for you about is salvation. So the beginning of faith, you know, the foundation of faith, and everyone smiles. Somebody will come to me and go, you know, I've really been struggling with no one for sure whether or not I'm actually born again, whether I've really been saved. And then I've heard family members go, oh no, no, no, you are. I remember you are, and you're trying to convince them that they are because. I remember when you were five. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right. And I always go the opposite direction. I never want to encourage somebody that for sure they are saved, if they're struggling with whether or not they are. I always say, let's make today the day that you make sure right right, so test it. And if your test is I don't remember when, I don't remember where, I don't remember the circumstances, I don't really remember crossing when I cross the line of faith or the circumstances behind it, then that's a test that only you can test. And I've had conversations with family members, I've had conversations with friends before where others around them want to say, oh, yeah, I remember, like it's a shame on the family that you haven't been a Christian or whatever, or that's always a mistake. Never encourage somebody, Yes, for sure you are. If they're questioning it, I think that it's always wise for you to go and say, well, then let's make the day your day. There's no shame in this. If suddenly you're coming awake and you go, maybe I've been playing at this for the last five years, but I'm ready, I'm ready to go in. Then encourage them. Let's go all in. Don't try to convince them. And that's a test I think every one of us should test on a regular basis. Am I truly born again? Have I been saved? Did I cross that line of faith? If so, the answer should be readily available. If the answer is not ready available, then we either need to look at our lifestyle that we're not living it and so we're not convinced of it, or we never actually had that moment in time when we had that transaction with Christ. Yeah, and it's one thing. And just to be clear, so listeners don't miss hear what you're saying is. What you're saying is is if you can't resolve the time where the transaction has taken place, not not whether or not it worked. Right, because Obviously his grace is sufficient for you. Paul told a set in the last chapt so his part of it is sufficient. It's just whether or not the transaction actually happened, not whether that the transaction went through. It went through, Yes, it went through. That's right. Yeah. It's it's interesting too because you know, the Bible does say that if you know that, if you are truly a Christian, there will be fruit. So you know, so just think about, you know, the smallest measure of fruit. Sometimes people change radically overnight. Sometimes people make a gradual change. There's no formula to it, you know. But the but the important thing is whether it's gradual change or whether it's massive change overnight, both of those are fruit. So it's it's it's a thing in our lives where you know, if you I remember giving the Gospel to little children, right, and sometimes I do it with vacation Bible school And for years and years I ran these vacation Bible schools at my small church, you know which, by the way, side note, I remember one time we had six hundred people in our whole church was one hundred and eighty people, and they couldn't even fit in the auditorium. It was standing room onely and they had to bleed out into the But we had this huge fare, this carnival festival thing, and all these parents came out and everything else. We ended up having like five hundred and eighty people in this auditorium that holds like maybe three hundred. Right, those are always fun. It was fun. So so anyway, it was. It was a really cool time. But I remember sort of giving the gospel and saying like, Okay, you know, Jesus died for your sins and and you know, the Bible says that we can't get to Heaven by ourselves and we needed to trust him. And I was doing that. But in the room, I'm radically conscious, conscious of the fact that you can convince kids into doing anything. Sure, you could look at kids and go the moon is made of green cheese. Oh really, you don't want to go to hell? Do you know you want to go to having? Sure, kids have no idea what the what they're saying, right, And so it's like you, as a teacher, hold that responsibility. So you need to just make sure that you know you're not, you know, creating a problem for a family. That it's the same problem that you're referring to right down the road, Like, well, yeah, I remember when you were Christian. You were four years old and you raised. Your head, or you got baptized when you know, I had you baptized when you were a baby, right, and so anyway, all you went through confirmation, you must be a Christian. But for the kids who do know, my point in my story has a lot of points, but it says, uh, I just say, if you do your part, trust God that he'll do his part. That's sort of what I was thinking, which is which is like, hey, with childlike faith, you put your faith in trust in him, and it's God's job to do what he promised, which is to secure your salvation, to write your names down in the Lamb's Book of life. You know God's gonna do those things. It will always do his part always, That's right. So I guess the challenge is, don't risk eternity on maybe right, every major event in your life. You can remember every major event. You remember when you graduate from high school. You remember your first kiss, you remember when you graduated from college, you remember your first job, You remember when you had your first child. You remember all those all these major events. You remember asking your wife out on a first date, you remember proposing, you remember. So you're clearly talking to old people at this point. Yeah yeah, yeah, grown ups. Yeah yeah yeah yeah. But so with regard to the events in your life, you remember these important events. And if you're sitting here testing your faith, going, I just don't remember I cross thetlante of faith. There's no shame, right, and saying only the devil is speaking in your saying it's a shame that you don't remember. Instead, don't risk eternity on man, I have this vague feeling that I've just always believed or whatever. Instead, make today your day. That's why Paul said that just a few chapters ago, today is the day of salvation, right, And what he's saying is you don't wait, and you don't put it off, and you don't just guess or just hope. And here he's ending it saying, you should test yourself, test yourself, and if you can't define it, make today that day. And it's this simple. Everyone who calls them the name the Lord will be saved. So in Romans chapter ten, you have to believe that Jesus is the Lord that he rose from the dead. He paid the price for your sins. And if you will repent of your sins and come to faith in Christ, invite him into your life today, he will. Right. It's not a sinner's prayer that does it. It's the attitude. But there are some elements to it that are not that difficult to put into a prayer, to say, God, would you forgive me my sins? Jesus, would you become the king of my life? Would you take me to Heaven when I die? And you can be sure of it because God's end of the transaction is for sure completed when you repent of your sins and turn to Christ. Right, And that's it. And so this is I think part of what he's talking about. Examine yourself, think about it. This isn't a shame on you, or you stink or you're a horrible person. It's just another opportunity to make sure that things are right between you and God. That's a good thing. And I like the set of statements that are put in verse number eleven where he says, dear brothers and sisters, which let's remind ourselves he's talking to Christians. When he's saying that, yeah, brothers and sisters refers to not physical brothers or sisters like family lineage. He's talking about brothers and sisters in christyep, I close this letter with these words, and then he goes he does that famous Paul thing. Right. Yeah, yeah, here's. About twenty five other things I wish I could have talked about it. Right, So be joyful, and by the way, be joyful. You know, I'm under the belief that it actually doesn't take a lot of effort to just fake your way through being joyful. You know, sometimes we can actually you know, can you know? I always say, like, you know, uh, sing about it until you actually mean it. Right. That's why I like worship songs because sometimes it will say God is so good, and you're like, well, I'm singing because the worship guy's asking me to sing the lyrics on the screen, and the lyrics are on the screen, right, And sometimes by the end of the song you're. Like, ah, God is so good. I'm reminded that God is so good. Right. Think about just that one phrase, be joyful, be joyful. Well, I'm not joyful today. Well, here's here's a practice for us. Fake it until you believe it, right, so you can. You can or just do it? What what I'm faking it is? Okay, faking it's the wrong word. Here's what I mean. What I mean is respond joyfully when you don't feel like it. That's the faking part, right. You can choose joy even when you don't feel joyful. Yes, yes, that's what I mean. So yeah, just semantics there, but but fake it until you mean it, because what you can do is you can say, okay, I choose joy, and joy is actually something that can be chosen. You can say, okay, I'm choosing to live in the joy of the Lord and just and just say respond like you would joyfully. You're like, I don't feel like responding this way, you know, but you do it, and then before too long you're gonna go you know what, I should be joyful? Yeah, well response, a negative response and a positive response are both choices. Yeah, that's so I can choose. I can choose positivity, and as I choose to be a positive person instead of a negative person. You know, Jesus says, let your yes be yes and your no be no. Let your words be clear, be who be what you are, say what you mean. All those kinds of things, but you can choose a positive answer instead of a negative answer. That's the beginning towards being more positive. The more positive are, the more happy you're going to be. That more happier you are, the more joyful you're going to be. These things kind of go together. So you can choose one of all of these things. Be joyful to maturity, encourage each other, live their own choices. Encourage each other. When's the last time you have felt like at the end of the week, For instance, you're like, I get a really good job encouraging everybody. I rubb shoulders with right, And that's that's a That's a gift, isn't it. By the way, my love language is words of affirmation. So you need to encourage me often. Chris, Chris, you're amazing. Thank you. I don't mean that people love you. I mean specific specifics. Yeah, like, hey, you did a good job or whatever it is. You're doing a good job on this podcast. Dude. I'm just totally being serious. So what is your love What is your love language? What is my love language? Do what I tell you to do? Obedience? Okay, so the five love languages are words of affirmation, physical touch, acts of service, quality time, and then uh goodness, gracious gifts. Quality time is mine. So here's this qual time. Okay, So that's how people receive love, and in turn, we usually give love in the way that we have a tendency to receive love. Yeah, okay, all that's say this encouraging one another is usually done by somebody whose gifts are or is love. Language is acts of words of information. Yeah, wow, my brain, so it is amazing, Chris, thank. You, thank you, Jeff. My brain's all over the place. So anyway, all that to say, encouraging one another is just something that is just a snippet, but it is so valuable. And it can be clunky, right, So if you're not naturally gifted at encouraging other people, it can feel a little clunky. But you know what, when you're trying, the people who who need to be encouraged can sense, hey, he's not great at it, but he's trying, and that's an encouragement. Yeah. Right, So in all these things, all of these are a choice. He gives you, like ten little things to do, but every one of them you can choose. These things. Let me tell you what I'm not going to choose to not do it is greedy each other with a sacred kiss. Yeah, we'll pass on that one. How about a sacred slap on the back. How about that for a sacred fistbook? Yeah, that's so funny. Just the other day we were talking about the idea of shaking hands in church and Tim Wright said, he's like, oh, I think we should ask people to stand up and greet each other with a holy kiss. Well, back when I was in high school, I was hoping for that, right. That's right, that's right. That's so funny. Well, you know, as Paul winds this down, we're winding down this podcast, and so we're going to jump back, uh, you know, next week in the Book of Acts, because after all, that's the whole point of the series is to chronologically work through Acts, which includes all of Paul's letters. That's right. So I think it's gonna be fun. Yeah, we'll see you then on the Bibble guys,