Bible Guys Classics: 2 Corinthians 3

Hey, everybody, we're the Bible 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. Well today it is out with the old and in with the new. This is going to be a great discussion, it is. I think it's going to be amazing. So he's Chris and I'm Jeff and we're the Bible guys. Well, I think I set the bar pretty high there. It's going to be amazing. Yeah, sure, yeah, I don't let us down. Chris, think it's something good to say. Man, oh on me. Okay. So here's what we like to do these segments sometimes that try to recall great your amazing ability to recall that. Yes, and so today here's what we thought we've done this before Psalm or pop song. Right, so we take phrases from the Book of Psalms or a phrase from a pop song. Well, today you know the most. And you're gonna read these to me. Yes, today may be the most surprising lyrics in the whole Bible are in the Book of Song as Solomon. Oh so, so I'm gonna it's song as Solomon or pop song. You have to tell me it's song of Solomon or pop song. Okay, I'm gonna botch this up. Okay, here you go. Ready, So here's the first one. I look and stairs so deep in your eyes. Oh, that could be either one, but I'll go with pop song. Yes, do you know who? No? Crazy in Love by Beyonce. Okay, let me see playing outside in the street kissing in plain view of everyone and no one thinking anything of it. Wow, gee whiz, I'm gonna say song of Solomon. Oh you're right, Chapter eight, verse one. All right, what's he talking about? Okay, here you go. The fire of love stops at nothing, it sweeps everything before it. Oh, that's definitely song Solomon. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Song of Solomon eight, verse seven. I look at my kingdom. I was finally there. Oh the heck you go either way. It sounds like Song of Solomon. But that's that's gonna be like a like a like a that's some bait there. You know what, I'm gonna go against my instinct. I'm gonna say, pop song. Dude, you're four for four. That's a fresh Prince of bel Air theme song. Oh that's hilarious. You know, there's a whole bunch of forty five fifty year old people going, oh, that's for Prince. Yes, Yeah, okay's hilarious. Well, dude, you went four for four. That's all I've got. Wow. Yeah, yeah, that's amazing. Well, I don't think anybody's ever done that on this show. Wow, look at that right. Yeah, I'm saying. This is what I'm saying. This is why we love it when you do these games. Yeah. Whatever, that's hilarious. That's so good. So Song of Solomon was as a kid was quite a shocking. I mean it's it's PG thirteen plus. Yeah. Well you know, so listen, I became a Christian, you know a little bit later in my teenage years, and then didn't decide to go into ministry until almost I was ready to go to college, and then went straight into college. And so as I was in college, people were like, my very first day of college, my Old Testament professor said, Okay, come prepared on Wednesday, just having memorized all sixty six books of the Bible. And out of the two hundred people in the class, everybody was like ha ha ha. And everybody had already memorized it. They laughed because they all grew up in church. I think I might have been among the small five percent that I was like, oh no, like I've got to memorize this, right, So I was hearing in Old Testament history the stories for the very first time in the Old Testament. Oh yeah, it was like it. Was like fascinating anyway, all that to say this because I was so new to the Bible. In Bible college. My wife had grown up in church. We were engaged to be married, right, and we would write letters because back then there's no FaceTime. There's letters. There's handwritten letters and written and she would she would use like sexy verses and like, and so it was like it was this way of like sort of being godly right, because you don't want to be like, you know, too like inappropriate in that right. Sure, she'd sort of like write a verse and I'm like, oh, this is like a flirting kind of a thing, right, and then I write it. Then I write went back. You know, all from the song is all from the song of so. So all that to say, we quoted the song of solov It back and forth to each other as a way to sort of, you know, you know, sort of prepare for our wedding night. But we did it biblically, right. So let's take a second on this, because a lot of people have grown up believing that you know, romance, are flirting or any of those things. Those are you know, somehow kind of bad. We shouldn't so they are certainly adult, right. But God made romance. God made the delights and the pleasures of that of the married relationship, right, and so as the closer you're getting to your wedding night, obviously the delight and the enthusiasms and the joys of that are perfect find and God made that that way, right, So then this is why he put you know, some of the biblical scholars and ancient times questioned whether that should be in the Bible, right, as if maybe romance and love are inappropriate for being in the Bible, and God's like, no, not only that, I'm going to push it right to the edge of public appropriateness in this love song between these the you know, the groom and the bride, and God delights in us expressing romance to the spouse that He's given us right, right, and it's it's a beautiful thing, not a non negative thing. So it is funny though when you compare some of those phrase is to you know, pop songs. Yeah that's very funny. Yeah, yeah, that's great. So anyways, let's pick up. We're going to start in second critne these chapter three, and this chapter really is to me, it's just a delight. It's such a good as opposed to all those undelightful chapters. Right like the Book of Numbers. Well, even Paul apologized for some of his previous writings, but this is a really good one here. So it's just so if you remember, he ended the last one saying that God watches us, right and knowing that God is watching over us, and so then he says, are we being beginning to praise ourselves again? Are we like others who need to bring you letters of recommendation or who ask you to write such letters on their behalf. Surely not The only letter of recommendation we need is you yourselves. Your lives are a letter written in our hearts. Everyone can read it and recognize our good work among you. Clearly, you are a letter from Christ showing the result of our ministry among you. This letter is written not with pen and ink, but with the spirit of the Living God, is carved not on tablets of stone, but on human hearts. We are confident of all this because of our great trust in God through Christ. It is not that we think we are qualified to do anything on our own. Our qualification comes from God. He was enabled He has enabled us to be ministers of His New Covenant. This is a covenant not of written laws, but of the spirit. The old written covenant ends in death, but under the New Covenant, the spirit gives life. The old Way, with laws etched in stone, led to death. Though it began with such glory that the people of Israel could not bear to look at Moses's face, for his face shone with the glory of God, even though the brightness was already fading away. Shouldn't we expect far greater glory under the New Way? Now that the Holy Spirit is giving life. If the old way which brings commendation was glorious, how much more glorious is the new way, which makes us right with God. In fact, that first glory was not glorious at all compared with the overwhelming glory of the new way. So if the old way which has been replaced was glorious, how much more glorious is the new which remains forever. Since this new gives us such confidence, we can be very bold. We're not like Moses, who put a veil over his face so the people of Israel would not see the glory, even though it was destined to fade away. But the people's minds were hardened, and to this day, whenever the Old Covenant is being read, the same veil covers their minds, so they cannot understand the truth. And this veil can be removed only by believing in Christ. Yes, even today, when they read Moses' writings, their hearts are covered with that veil, and they did not understand. But whenever someone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. For the Lord is the Spirit. Wherever the spirit of the Lord is there is freedom. So all of us who have had that veil removed, can see and reflect the glory of the Lord. And the Lord, who is the Spirit, makes us more and more like him as we are changed into his glorious image. So when you read verse seventeen, were you singing it? Yes, where the spirit of the Lord is there is free you. Such a good song. So there's a lot in here, oh boy. And the first is he talks about, hey, we don't need to write recommendations for ourselves, because you know, our power is with God, not in ourselves. And he's he's referring to the false teachers who actually claim, uh actually they were walking around with these false letters of recommendation to falsely verify or or you know, give validity to their claims of having, you know, being empowered. And so Paul wrote a couple of recommendations, one to Phoebe, one to Timothy. Uh So he actually wrote recommendations before. And what he's really saying here is he's saying like, hey, I don't I'm not like one of those guys that walks around and says, hey, if you don't believe me, here's here's this letter of recommendation. So he's written them before, but he's What he's really saying is he's saying like, hey, our power is evident through God, not in our you know of ourselves. And the proof of the effectiveness of our ministry is your changed lives. Right, Right. Have you ever sat the listening to a quote unquote expert. They wrote a book and they sold a bunch of copies and now they're getting trotted out on stage as the expert, and then you go, dude, you have like zero results. There's a particularly famous author that I think about every time for whatever reason, I've wound up being around them, and they're a theorist, but they talk like they're an expert. There's a big difference between being a theorist and being an expert. Right, So people are like, oh, we should all go do it, he. Says, and I'm like, he has no fruit. It's a neat idea. Somebody should try the idea. But you can't just suddenly overturn all of what you've been doing based on this idea because he's an expert, just because he has a PhD after his name or whatever. So what Paul is saying is, it's not about the recommendations. It's not about the paper I have hanging on the wall, or my degrees or all the commendations I can get. The proof of the fact that God is moving is your changed lives. And so I think one of the most important things, as we have so much information available to us, sometimes people just get big social media platforms or big promotional platforms and they've they suddenly come out of nowhere as some kind of expert. My question always is, whether it's in marriage, or it's in raising your kids or managing your finances, is what's the proof? Right? Where? Where is their results? I don't care what you're claiming. I want to see your results. You know. It reminds me so much of long A while back, somebody wanted to wanted me to hire somebody, and they kept on coming to me with this guy's resume, and they said, oh, this guy is going to be a great like number two for you, and he's he's just awesome, and here's here's here's why he's so awesome. And I and and I just like rebuttaled and and I just said, well, then how come nobody follows him? Just tell me that, right, because he looks good on paper, right. But the fact remains is that the fruit of his life is that his resumes may say one thing, but it's just not the case. He's a great leader. He just has no followers. He's a great leader of no one. So it's like, it's like and listen, it's just what it is, right. I'm sure, I'm sure like he has other things happening in his life, just not that particular job description, right, And that's fine because we all have different roles. But anyway, but that's what arises me because it's not about the resume. It's not about the letter of recommendation. It's about the you know, just like you said, it's got to be fruit. It's got to be you know, changed lives, it's got to be results. I got I got interested, you know, I do goofy things, get interested in weird things. And I was trading global currencies and I love the four X concepts and it's always interesting to me. But I was doing it on a trader account. It wasn't I wasn't using money. I was just practicing learning how to do it. And so I was doing tons of research and I'd read like five books on this and all this, and I came across this guy that I liked his ideas. Ideas were really really interesting. And he had this course that he's selling for you know, a thousand dollars or but right now, if I hurry right away, I can get it for two hundred dollars. And there's all this stuff. And then I was very interested in it. And then he set himself up as a world class expert, and he had this massive social media following. But when I got the digging into it, I discovered that, sure, he made a couple million dollars last year, but almost no money trading. When you finally found his trading numbers, he barely beat the norm, right, barely beat it. But he was making millions of dollars selling his course. Right. Well, dude, the fruit is so if I want to learn how to sell a course, I should take your course. Right. But that's hilarious. Right, And so he's kind of challenging this idea that, hey, we don't need any proof other than the actual results of God's changed you know, God changing your life. So then he gets into comparing the beauty and the glory of the law. And sometimes I think those of us that love the grace of God, we kind of shoot down and make negative the law right in such a horrible way. And he's talking about it was beautiful. It's just that grace is even more beautiful, right, And that's a real challenge for us to keep those two things in perspective. Well, I love his I love his comparison of the veil, you know. And it's great because he says, just like Moses when he comes down off the mountain, and he's referring to the story of Moses would actually meet with God and then when he came down off the mountain, his face would glow. Think about this, I mean, we read about it. You may know the story from you know, from you know, learning about it as a kid, but just think about like what that must have been like. And it says that he his face would glow because he talked with God so much they had to actually put a veil on his face. And so everybody who's listening to Paul, they know that story. And so he's talking about that veil and then he sort of uses that as a comparison and says like it's just like, you know, think about it. It's it's he's referring to a veil that that sort of hides God's glory. Now they did it because it was so bright. But but but still the purpose of that veil was to get in the way of the viewer to see the glory of God. And so he's using that as a veil. And he's saying like, hey, it's those people who hear the word of God and and and they reject the gospel. It's like there's a veil. And he says, and when when they when they trust Christ, that veil is removed, right, But but for now they just can't see it. They just can't see it. And some of these veils, if you think about it, they're self imposed, right, Like we can we can put up a you know, today I would say instead of a veil, I would say, people put up a wall, right, And it's just the wall of doubt or the wall of skepticism, or the wall of like being angry with God or you know, we built all sorts of kind of walls. Well, Paul is talking about veils, and uh, and I thought that was really cool. Yeah, So you know, Moses' proximity to God changed him. That's what it was. That he got so close to God and nobody else was that close. He got so close to God it it changed him. And so then he covered himself because people couldn't look at him. It was too shocking. But we do know that that glory faded over. Time because he said, naturally it was going to face. Yeah. Yeah, so he keeps he keeps this veil so people don't see the fading of this this radiance. And what he's referencing here is the beauty of the law. God gave the people of Israel the best way to live. That that that's what he did. So there are all the laws with regard to sacrifices, certainly, and that was a religious law, but he also gave them a ton of laws about social guidance, about health, about just how to manage, you know, the the business of life as well. And what he was saying was listen when you when I codified these things for you, if you will follow them, you're going to have a peaceful society. You're going to have an equitable society. You're going to have a society that works for the betterment of everybody, not just yourself. But you're going to be able to prosper because you're going to be free. But what happened was people then began to make the law the point. And then what he says now is instead this when the law became the point, suddenly everybody realizes there's no way I can keep this whole law. It's impossible. So then there's all this guilt, there's all this oppression. What was supposed to be beautiful became too heavy of a burden. And then he says, but the new way, through Christ his grace takes us to a whole other level. Now no longer is it about us trying to keep every letter of every rule. Instead it's about living every moment of our life to please God. Yeah. And he said that this brings us to a whole other level of glory. Yeah. And it's so interesting about the law because even today, if you walk around to a person and you know, if a person doesn't know how to get to heaven, and if a person is just you know, under the belief system that you know, at the end of our life, are good has to outweigh our bad, right, those people who don't realize that it's not in trusting in ourselves and our good behavior. The Bible goes out of its way to say that it's just about trusting in Jesus and the sacrifice that was done for us. So anyway, all that to say, those people have a tendency to say, well, you know, I've lived a good life and I've tried to keep the Ten Commandments, and they sort of keep the Ten Commandments as the bar. What's so interesting is is that over and over the Bible tells us that the law was actually given to us to show us that we're sinful. The law was actually given. It says the purpose of the law was to show us that we're sinners, that we can't make it to heaven by ourselves, that there's absolutely no way to keep the full law. That's the purpose of the law. And then it says that you know, it led to death. It actually talks about how the over and over he says the old law was death. And what he's meaning is not to your point, not not the beauty of the law. He's referring to. It leads to death, meaning you can't perform to get your way into heaven, and so you're going to leading to death means you're going to fail every single time. It's a it's a separation from God. It's it's it's. Not the answer, and so which wasn't a mistake on God's part. As a matter of fact, in the Book of Romans, Paul says God did that on purpose to show us how bad we needed God's grace, right right, He took it. He took a performance away from us. It's not possible for us to perform perfectly. He took that away from us so that we knew we needed God's grace. You know. It's also great about this veil thing, is that uh, those who were you know in the first century when Paul was writing, knew that that Herod's temple had a veil, and and and so you know there's you know, and by the way, we're going to get into next uh tomorrow, we're going to get into I think or tomorrow the next day where Paul talks about how our bodies are like earthly tents, right and and so so it's like a so there's like the law of there's the tent of the meeting place, which is what Moses was a part of. And then Solomon built uh, you know somewhere around in chronicles, I guess the tent was, you know, somewhere around uh Uh, you know, Leviticus or so, and then chronicles, they get instructions. They build. Solomon's temple lasts for about five hundred years. Uh, gets ransacked by Nebukid Nezar, and then Zerubabul comes along, right, and then he decides to sort of reconstruct one that wasn't as glorious at all, right, and that lasted for a little bit, but then that get trembled, you know, and then uh, and then five hundred years later Herrod builds this temple and in the inside the middle of the temple was the Holy holies, and the veil was the thing. And of those of us who know, and you read the New Testament, when Jesus was on the cross on the ninth houry cries out, he gives up the ghost. And then what happens is it says the veil was torn in two, and the veil represented the separation between God and man. So God existed as an as one place as you know. It's just he had an address. God had an address, right, and the veils ripped into meaning like God is now everywhere, you know, everybody has access to the Holy of Holies. Hebrews, I think nine talks all about that, And so think about just the absolute brilliance of Paul talking about this veil. Not only is it a veil that separates us from seeing God's glory according to Moses, but it's also a veil that separates us symbolically from going into God's presence as made possible by Jesus's death. Now we can do it. It's the veil Herod's veil. Isn't that cool? And so then the Holy Spirit leads us into God's presence, right, And that's what So that's why he says, where the spirit of the Lord is, there's freedom. This freedom isn't just freedom now to run amuck and do whatever you want to do. As a matter of fact, this freedom makes us more and more like Jesus as we are changed into his glorious image. God's goal as we're free from this law of death, his goal is now for us to become more and more and more like Jesus. And that's one of the benefits of spending time every day in God's words. Yeah, that's great. Well, I think that is a great place to end. And tomorrow we're going to be talking about jars of clay. It's going to be amazing. We'll see you then.