SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the podcast of Christ Methodist Church in Memphis, Tennessee.
SPEAKER_00: Join us as we dive into this week's sermon that challenges our hearts and minds to grow closer to Christ.
SPEAKER_00: We pray that your heart is inspired and transformed by God's Word.
SPEAKER_01: And I do welcome you to worship at Christ Methodist Church.
SPEAKER_01: If you have your Bibles with you, I invite you to go ahead and open them up to 2 Corinthians chapter 13.
SPEAKER_01: 2 Corinthians chapter 13.
SPEAKER_01: If you don't have a Bible with you, it's printed in your worship guide right here.
SPEAKER_01: I just invite you to keep that out and follow along with us as we examine this final chapter in 2nd Corinthians.
SPEAKER_01: Okay, today's a big morning for us, Christ Mothers.
SPEAKER_01: We have finally reached the end of 1 and 2 Corinthians.
SPEAKER_01: We uh we began this series last year, and now today we're in the final chapter of 2 Corinthians.
SPEAKER_01: I have the honor of closing this series out while Pastor Paul is away.
SPEAKER_01: In baseball, there's a position on the team, there's a pitcher, and his job is to be the closer.
SPEAKER_01: Uh the closer's job is, you see, after the main pitcher has pitched most of the innings, gotten a lead, the the closer's job is to get the final three outs.
SPEAKER_01: It's it's to get the win.
SPEAKER_01: It's he's usually the fastest thrower on the team, he's coolest under pressure.
SPEAKER_01: When he comes in, the other team, you're already laughing at that.
SPEAKER_01: Wait a minute.
SPEAKER_01: They didn't laugh at 8:30.
SPEAKER_01: There's this mo though when he comes in and the hammer is laid.
SPEAKER_01: And just no, I'm here to lay the hammer.
SPEAKER_01: No, I'm kidding.
SPEAKER_01: I'm not going to lay the hammer.
SPEAKER_01: That's not what Pastor Paul asked me to do.
SPEAKER_01: Fun fact though, I actually was the closer for my little league baseball team.
SPEAKER_01: I know.
SPEAKER_01: See, there we go.
SPEAKER_01: The only problem with that, though, is that we had a pitcher that was incredibly talented.
SPEAKER_01: He threw so hard.
SPEAKER_01: He actually ended up playing professionally.
SPEAKER_01: His only problem is he ended up at the Cubs.
SPEAKER_01: And so he he pitched great.
SPEAKER_01: And then I came and pitched afterwards in the last inning and closed it down and threw so slowly that they couldn't keep up.
SPEAKER_01: Like it was like going from driving on the interstate to a school zone.
SPEAKER_01: We won every game.
SPEAKER_01: It was awesome.
SPEAKER_01: But that's what we're doing today.
SPEAKER_01: So we're, we're, we're slowing down at the very end of 2 Corinthians.
SPEAKER_01: So whether you have been with us through these two books or whether you're visiting here for the very first time, you just have a picture of what Paul is trying to tell these two churches in Corinth.
SPEAKER_01: If you are visiting, if you're unfamiliar with Corinth, uh, there's one bit of context in the two letters that's incredibly important.
SPEAKER_01: It's like the key that unlocks all of Paul's arguments to them.
SPEAKER_01: And that's that the church was a mess.
SPEAKER_01: Like 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, these are not Paul's letters like congratulating them, warm with affection.
SPEAKER_01: You guys are crushing it.
SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of rebuke in there.
SPEAKER_01: 1 Corinthians, he kind of lays out each problem that exists within the church and reminds them of the gospel.
SPEAKER_01: 2 Corinthians, they've clearly continued in these problems and they've added in this like added element of following the wrong leaders.
SPEAKER_01: They have leaders that are outwardly impressive and polished and calls them super apostles that are doing everything right, apparently, and he's correcting them that that's not what gospel authority looks like.
SPEAKER_01: The church is a mess.
SPEAKER_01: And so as he has walked through these letters, as he's made this argument over and over again, he's given them some hard words.
SPEAKER_01: And so when you look at the passage in front of us in 2 Corinthians 13, he's making his conclusion to his letter, he's making his conclusion to his visits, and he continues to have more hard words with them.
SPEAKER_01: But there's a lot of beauty and a lot of truth for us to discover as we finish 2 Corinthians together.
SPEAKER_01: So let's do so.
SPEAKER_01: Beginning in verse 1, we'll look at that first kind of block of text first.
SPEAKER_01: Beginning in verse 1, this is the third time I'm coming to you.
SPEAKER_01: Every charge must be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses.
SPEAKER_01: I warned those who sinned before and all the others, and I warned them now while absent, as I did when present on my second visit, that if I come again, I will not spare them.
SPEAKER_01: Since you seek proof that Christ is speaking in me, he is not weak in dealing with you, but is powerful among you, for he was crucified in weakness, but lives by the power of God, for we also are weak in him, but in dealing with you we will live with him by the power of God.
SPEAKER_01: So what Paul is doing first is acknowledging that there are people in the church that have not been listening to him, that he has been making this argument to turn back in faith, and there are people in the church that have not listened at all.
SPEAKER_01: He quotes a verse from the Old Testament, Deuteronomy 19, saying that for a charge to be established there has to be three witnesses, and he's telling them that there has been three witnesses.
SPEAKER_01: He's visited them three times, he's written these two letters now, and he's warning them that for those that don't listen, for those that continue to step aside the truth that he's sharing, that continue in division and fighting and ignoring of Paul's teaching, that the reality of a rebuke of judgment falls on them.
SPEAKER_01: He says that you want proof of Paul's authority and that Christ speaks through him, and he stands ready to remind them of God's power that's manifest and present in judgment on sin.
SPEAKER_01: That word judgment makes some of you want to hit the brakes already, right?
SPEAKER_01: Like, okay, we began in judgment.
SPEAKER_01: Culturally, we're so confused about the idea of justice and judgment.
SPEAKER_01: We're obsessed with justice, but we're averse to judgment.
SPEAKER_01: We long for justice in response to the brokenness we see around us.
SPEAKER_01: Like we look around at the world and we see that things don't work the way that they should.
SPEAKER_01: There's brokenness, whether you're a follower of Jesus or not.
SPEAKER_01: We can point to things that are wrong and say that's not it.
SPEAKER_01: And here's the thing: wanting justice to come to these things is a good thing.
SPEAKER_01: It's a it's how we know that there really is righteousness, that there's something in us that that cries out at these things.
SPEAKER_01: To quote the late Timothy Keller, in the face of wrongdoing, brokenness, oppression, war, suffering, loss, uh, without judgment and justice, what hope is there for this world?
SPEAKER_01: The problem with it arises, though, in our insistence in defining and just justice and judgment on our own terms, with our own feelings, our own thoughts, our own opinions, following our own hearts and happiness and definitions of right, we develop this like blindness where no one has the right to judge me, but I have to be vocal in bringing judgment towards others.
SPEAKER_01: And the results of this, I mean just to put it bluntly, is to create a confusing mess around this topic.
SPEAKER_01: Some people want to abandon the whole idea of judgment and justice and just toss it all aside.
SPEAKER_01: Others, it becomes their whole identity, and they kind of feel that they have to be the one that hammers everything down.
SPEAKER_01: Their worldview is they're a hammer and then it turns everyone else into nails.
SPEAKER_01: It's a mess.
SPEAKER_01: The Bible, though, cuts through this confusion and informs Paul's sternness here in 2 Corinthians 13.
SPEAKER_01: In the scriptures, we don't define justice and judgment on our terms.
SPEAKER_01: And furthermore, when it comes to following our hearts, the scriptures are clear that they're not reliable guides.
SPEAKER_01: Instead, we see that the reliable guide that we truly need is God Himself, and He is the one that designed this world.
SPEAKER_01: He created everyone and everything to flourish when living in His design.
SPEAKER_01: We are created to run on Him, to flourish living in His design, kind of like a car is created specifically to run the way that it's designed in the owner's manual.
SPEAKER_01: Car runs on oil and gasoline.
SPEAKER_01: You have to give the car oil and gasoline.
SPEAKER_01: If you do that, it runs well.
SPEAKER_01: That's how we are designed in God, that we are designed and we will flourish when we live in His design.
SPEAKER_01: The problem is that we depart from God's design.
SPEAKER_01: We depart, they departed in Corinth, we still do depart today, and the scriptures are clear.
SPEAKER_01: Sin leads to brokenness, which leads to death.
SPEAKER_01: Same with your car.
SPEAKER_01: You never change your oil, you never maintain it, the car is going to break down.
SPEAKER_01: The reality built into this world is that God must bring justice and judgment to right all that is wrong.
SPEAKER_01: And here's the thing: if if brokenness and sin only exist out there, that it's something else, it's something that we can point at, it's way over there, this is a good thing.
SPEAKER_01: Without justice, correcting all those wrongs, what hope is there for the world?
SPEAKER_01: But we know that isn't true.
SPEAKER_01: Like we know we don't live in a black and white world, that things aren't split between good and bad evenly.
SPEAKER_01: To quote one author, the line runs through every human heart.
SPEAKER_01: Or to quote Harry Potter, Sirius Black tells Harry once that the world isn't separated between good people and death eaters?
SPEAKER_01: From my Harry Potter.
SPEAKER_01: Some giggle.
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
SPEAKER_01: To quote Timothy Queller earlier, maybe a little bit more polished than Harry Potter, without justice, what hope is there for the world?
SPEAKER_01: But there's a second part to this quote, with judgment and justice, what hope is there for me?
SPEAKER_01: That without it, what hope is there for the world?
SPEAKER_01: With it, what hope is there for me?
SPEAKER_01: A holy God cannot be in relationship with sinful creation.
SPEAKER_01: So we ask, reading these four verses, what hope is there for the Corinthians hearing Paul's message?
SPEAKER_01: For those that we've read about for all these chapters that are prideful, divisive, arrogant, and sinful?
SPEAKER_01: What hope is there for us who continue to do these same things two thousand years later?
SPEAKER_01: Reminded here that our hope and our trust is in the name of the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: The Lord Jesus Christ, who Paul reminds us, verse four, was crucified in weakness, but lives in the power of God.
SPEAKER_01: This letter has reminded us already in 2 Corinthians chapter 5, verse 21, the reality of this, that proves to be one of kind of the defining marks of Paul's argument to the church in Corinth, 2 Corinthians 5, 21.
SPEAKER_01: For our sake, that is, because he loves us and wants our good, he made him to be sin who knew no sin.
SPEAKER_01: So God himself, in the person of Jesus, entered into this world, even though he lived a perfect life in God's design, didn't live a life of sin, he takes on all of our sin that earns God's judgment on himself on the cross, he dies the death that we deserve, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God, that because Jesus Christ didn't stay dead, but rose three days later in the power of God, he gave us the offer that in him, by faith and by repentance, we can be saved from our sins and become truly righteous in God's sight now and forever.
SPEAKER_01: When we read these verses, when we read the first four verses of 2 Corinthians 13 and ask what hope is there for us?
SPEAKER_01: The hope is Jesus Christ, our only hope in life and death.
SPEAKER_01: And Paul is ending this letter with a message and a calling for all of us that might have ignored it, to stop ignoring it, ignoring the gospel, and to pay attention.
SPEAKER_01: That it's a call for us to pay attention, to turn from our sins, to turn to Christ, to see that on our own we're worse off that we want to admit, and will not be spared the righteous judgment of God.
SPEAKER_01: But in Christ we are better than we could ever hope, and really are righteous in his sight.
SPEAKER_01: And in view of this great exchange, in view of this great transfer, and all that Paul has shared about Jesus in his letters and his visits, he then tells them this in verses five through ten.
SPEAKER_01: He says, Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith.
SPEAKER_01: Test yourselves, or do you not realize this about yourselves that Jesus Christ is in you, unless indeed you fail to meet the test.
SPEAKER_01: I hope you will find out that we have not failed the test, but we pray to God that you may not do wrong, not that we may appear to have met the test, but that you may do what is right, that we may have seemed to have failed.
SPEAKER_01: For we cannot do anything against the truth, but only for the truth.
SPEAKER_01: For we are glad when we are weak and you are strong.
SPEAKER_01: Your restoration is what we pray for.
SPEAKER_01: For this reason I write these things while I am away from you, that when I come I may not have to be severe in my use of authority that the Lord has given me for building up and not for tearing down.
SPEAKER_01: So that for those that have listened, Paul is saying, Okay, I have been forced to defend myself and defend my authority this whole letter.
SPEAKER_01: And now he's kind of turning the mirror around on them and asking them that in view of all this and in view of all these things, I'm calling you to examine yourself, to test yourselves, to see if you pass or fail.
SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna see this.
SPEAKER_01: Have you ever failed a test before?
SPEAKER_01: Like it's it's rough.
SPEAKER_01: So confession, I've already quoted Harry Potter, so you're not surprised.
SPEAKER_01: Like I never failed a test in school.
SPEAKER_01: Like I, like elementary, middle, high school, college, seminary, no failed tests.
SPEAKER_01: My final class before graduating seminary, though, was elementary Hebrew.
SPEAKER_01: I needed to graduate.
SPEAKER_01: And the first test, I took it and I got an eight.
SPEAKER_01: And so I thought, well, eight, eight out of ten, exactly.
SPEAKER_01: Eight out of ten's not bad.
SPEAKER_01: I can live with a B.
SPEAKER_01: And then I looked closer and it was eight out of a hundred.
SPEAKER_01: And so I was just like, oh, okay.
SPEAKER_01: So what I was like, I misspelled a word in one of my translations, and then I just kept repeating that mistake over and over again.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, 92 times apparently.
SPEAKER_01: Here's the thing, I I don't know this grader, and I'm sure my brother in Christ is a great man.
SPEAKER_01: He's clearly a fair and just grader, but I was furious.
SPEAKER_01: I was so mad.
SPEAKER_01: And I had this picture in my mind when I realized I really did get an eight on this exam of this guy who's just sitting there exing, X, X, X, this fool spelled it wrong again.
SPEAKER_01: X, like just laughing maniacally at my eight.
SPEAKER_01: And here's the thing sometimes I think when we approach this idea, or even maybe when you read these verses, like we think that that's God's picture of us when we stand before him.
SPEAKER_01: That the image we get in our heads when we think about being examined or tested in view of God is that God is there far off, distantly away from us, and he is eager to judge.
SPEAKER_01: He has his arms crossed, he's frowning and scowling at us, or maybe laughing coldly, that there's something in God that's that's eager to judge and condemn.
SPEAKER_01: And when this happens, we live our life in Christ, filled with ancient swarry, filled with with crippling shame.
SPEAKER_01: We feel ourselves constantly on this treadmill of good enough.
SPEAKER_01: Whatever good enough might be, undefined, changing each day.
SPEAKER_01: We find ourselves hoping and wondering, is this good enough?
SPEAKER_01: Is this considered passing?
SPEAKER_01: Do I need to do more?
SPEAKER_01: Do I need to try harder?
SPEAKER_01: But the scriptures show us repeatedly that this is not God's character.
SPEAKER_01: That God's character is not this way, that his posture is not this way.
SPEAKER_01: From start to finish, we see a God who is love, who overflows with mercy and with blessing.
SPEAKER_01: As we've already discussed, yes, judgment is there as well, but Lamentations 3, Isaiah 28, they show us that that Jesus Christ, that God, that he doesn't afflict from his heart.
SPEAKER_01: In discussing this verse, the the Puritan Thomas Goodwin went as far to describe judgment as God's strange work and his desire to restore as his natural work.
SPEAKER_01: It's a reminder that God's deepest desire isn't punishment, it's mercy.
SPEAKER_01: God's desire for us is not that of a mean teacher looking to shamefully punish, but it's a loving father desiring to restore.
SPEAKER_01: That's why in verse 10 of this passage, Paul says that I have no desire to tear down, I have authority to build up.
SPEAKER_01: In God's mercy, we see the test and exam laid before us and laid before God in this passage, and we see that it doesn't rest on our own merits, but it rests on the all-sufficient merit of another.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 5, examine yourself to see whether you're in the face.
SPEAKER_01: Test yourselves, or do you not realize this about yourself?
SPEAKER_01: That Jesus Christ is in you.
SPEAKER_01: The test is to see if Christ is in you.
SPEAKER_01: And here's the good news of the gospel that if Christ is in you, there's no more judgment.
SPEAKER_01: There's no more condemnation, there's no more wrath, there's no more XXX over your life.
SPEAKER_01: He looks at us and sees us even in our mess and even in the ways that we continually sin, and even though we won't be good enough, he looks at us and he sees Jesus Christ clean and perfect and grades us on his righteousness.
SPEAKER_01: The message of 1st and 2nd Corinthians calls us to take this test right now and ask, Is Christ in me?
SPEAKER_01: Is this where my peace is found?
SPEAKER_01: Is this where my rest is found?
SPEAKER_01: Is this where my security is found?
SPEAKER_01: Am I relying in myself or in God?
SPEAKER_01: Am I relying on my own efforts and abilities or in God?
SPEAKER_01: It causes us to live in view of the gospel and ask these difficult questions.
SPEAKER_01: And as we ask and answer these questions, we don't do so with a spirit of fear hoping to earn God's favor, but with a spirit of peace resting and responding out of it.
SPEAKER_01: Here's the truth, we we won't always answer these questions well.
SPEAKER_01: Like sin has no authority over us to keep us in guilt, sin has no power over us to continue to doom us to ongoing sin over and over again.
SPEAKER_01: But sin does remain.
SPEAKER_01: Which means that at times you will feel like the rain clouds of sin will just be hanging over you, that things will seem dark, whether by your sins or sins of another, that you just feel like kind of you're just walking around in darkness.
SPEAKER_01: But with rain clouds, this is true outside, this is true spiritually, like with rain clouds, rain clouds do not take away the reality that the sun is shining behind them.
SPEAKER_01: Whether there's clouds or no clouds, the sun keeps shining either way.
SPEAKER_01: Dane Ortland, talking about this idea, says this in his book Gentle and Lowly says the sweep of the New Testament teaching is that it is the Son of Christ's heart, not the clouds of my sins that now define me.
SPEAKER_01: The gospel is the invitation to let the heart of Christ calm us into joy, for we've already been discovered, included, and brought in.
SPEAKER_01: We can bring our up and down moral performance into subjection to the settled fixedness of what Jesus feels about us.
SPEAKER_01: This is a letter calling us to examine and test ourselves.
SPEAKER_01: And when we do so, when we look inwardly, we see Christ and rest securely in the settled fixedness of his love for us.
SPEAKER_01: There's one catch though, and it's important, it's that we can't do this on our own.
SPEAKER_01: It's been said many times that faith is personal, it's not private, you can be saved on an island, but you can't grow spiritually there.
SPEAKER_01: Here's the thing: I'm a professional at convincing myself that there are no clouds in my life, that they're not a big deal.
SPEAKER_01: Like the inner lawyer kicks in, that there's not a big deal, there's a good reason for them.
SPEAKER_01: Going back to that Hebrew test, I can I can make excuses today and get mad about it of why I don't think I should have gotten an eight.
SPEAKER_01: Like we're we're incredible at defending ourselves and pretending that these sins are not there.
SPEAKER_01: Scriptures say it clearly.
SPEAKER_01: Prov Psalm 36, we flatter ourselves in our own eyes.
SPEAKER_01: Proverbs 16, we think all that our ways are pure.
SPEAKER_01: Hebrews 3, our hearts can grow hard.
SPEAKER_01: We need each other to see what we cannot see or will not see on our own.
SPEAKER_01: In acknowledgement of this, Methodist Christians for 200 years have created discipleship communities that have existed just for this purpose.
SPEAKER_01: They're called discipleship bands, small groups of three to five believers of the same gender that meet weekly for a season of intentional spiritual growth.
SPEAKER_01: Then they multiply to launch another one, who then multiply and launch another one, and it keeps repeating and multiplying out.
SPEAKER_01: Here's the thing, I'm I'm in a band with a few other young dads in our church.
SPEAKER_01: We we get up early before our families wake up, we meet up at Chick-fil-A and after talking about what we've read in the scriptures this week, we answer a question that Methodists have been answering for 200 years.
SPEAKER_01: How is it with your soul?
SPEAKER_01: Or in short, how are you really doing?
SPEAKER_01: Or in the language of this passage, examine and test yourself.
SPEAKER_01: And in that space, each of us have a chance to name, acknowledge, confess, and share the clouds of sin and suffering in our life.
SPEAKER_01: But then we have the opportunity to hear a reminder that the Sun of God's grace and love and affection is still shining.
SPEAKER_01: More about discipleship bands programmatically are on the horizon here at Christ Methodist.
SPEAKER_01: You're gonna be hearing more and more in the coming kind of school year about them.
SPEAKER_01: So file away that for for later.
SPEAKER_01: But like for now, like I think a good question for us on this is just asking the question of like, am I living in an authentic friendship with one another?
SPEAKER_01: Like, are there friends in my life that fully know everything about me and still choose to love me?
SPEAKER_01: As you do, like here, here are a couple questions to consider.
SPEAKER_01: Like, who knows your sin and reminds you of God's grace?
SPEAKER_01: Who are you investing in spiritually?
SPEAKER_01: Like these are questions to ask and acknowledge.
SPEAKER_01: Like, I have friends, I have acquaintances, but do I have authentic friends where I've kind of committed myself and I've gone to that level and say, hey, I don't want there to be any secrets between us.
SPEAKER_01: I want you to know everything, and I'm trusting that when you know everything, it's going to be a safe place for us to talk about the gospel together.
SPEAKER_01: You know my sin, you remind me of God's grace.
SPEAKER_01: You know the clouds, you remind me of the sun.
SPEAKER_01: We can invest each other spiritually, we can read the Bible together, we can pray together, we can witness to the loss together.
SPEAKER_01: Like I want to do that with you.
SPEAKER_01: And the the good news is we have a picture of what it looks like when a church does that.
SPEAKER_01: Verses eleven through through fourteen, Paul gives us a picture and a grounding of what happens when a church really does live this way.
SPEAKER_01: When we really do understand the gospel and don't live by fear and judgment, but live in the peace and security of the message of God's love.
SPEAKER_01: When we really do examine ourselves and see that Christ is in us, when we really do live in authentic friendship with one another, it leads to this, verse 11.
SPEAKER_01: Finally, brothers and sisters, rejoice, aim for restoration, comfort one another, agree with one another, live in peace, and the God of love and peace will be with you.
SPEAKER_01: Greet one another with a holy kiss.
SPEAKER_01: All the saints greet you.
SPEAKER_01: The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.
SPEAKER_01: As Paul's concluding this letter, these are not like throwaway niceties just to conclude the letter.
SPEAKER_01: Like it's it's his final charge of if you stop living in division, if you stop living in pride and in conflict, and start to live by the message of the gospel, this is what it looks like in the church.
SPEAKER_01: The church is no longer a mess and chaotic and dysfunctional.
SPEAKER_01: It starts to look like these things.
SPEAKER_01: So he gives them six exhortations and he gives them two kind of grounding realities of how they can continue to do this.
SPEAKER_01: The six exhortations, he says, verse 11, starting with that, he says, rejoice.
SPEAKER_01: He says that you're not to live a life that's marked by situational cheerfulness, but you're also not to live a life that's frowning curmudgeony, walking around in anger, but you're to live by grounding lasting joy.
SPEAKER_01: That since the joy of the Lord is our strength, since we're promised that at his right hand are pleasures forevermore, that that we will be joyful people.
SPEAKER_01: Second, he says that we're to aim for restoration, to live a life that's not marked by on marked by tearing others down and marked by conflict, but we're to restore one another and build each other up.
SPEAKER_01: That since Jesus Christ restored us and since Jesus Christ is restoring everything wrong in this broken world back to wholeness, that we are to be sent out of agents of restoration and reconciliation to a world that needs it.
SPEAKER_01: We're to comfort one another, to live a life that isn't blind to the needs of others or to the pains of others, but brings the love of Christ to others in the areas that they need it most, to bring wes rest to the weary, hope to the suffering, healing to the sick.
SPEAKER_01: This is what Paul began 2 Corinthians with.
SPEAKER_01: He tells them that we are to comfort one another out of the comfort that we have received in Christ.
SPEAKER_01: We're to agree with one another, to live a life that isn't divisive and fighting like the rest of the world, but lives in agreement together and in unity in the body.
SPEAKER_01: And to be clear, like to find unity in the body, we don't look side to side and try to all align ourselves with the person to the left and right of us.
SPEAKER_01: We all look vertically towards the cross.
SPEAKER_01: And as we all look vertically towards the cross, we find ourselves living in alignment together.
SPEAKER_01: Like think about if you are, think if you're in a wedding and you're a bridesmaid or a groomsman.
SPEAKER_01: You don't figure out what you're wearing for the wedding by looking and kind of huddling up as groomsman, and we're like, are we wearing gray or are we wearing black or are we wearing navy?
SPEAKER_01: The bride and groom say, This is what you're wearing.
SPEAKER_01: And then you conform yourself to kind of that vertical truth there.
SPEAKER_01: If we went to a Grizzlies game, we wouldn't all call each other, 19,000 people in a group message, and say, Are you wearing a grizzly shirt to the game?
SPEAKER_01: We conform ourselves to the reality of the truth, and then in result, we find ourselves living in kind of horizontal agreement together.
SPEAKER_01: This is the picture we have here too, that our vertical alignment and agreement in the truths of the gospel and the message of the gospel and the reality of the gospel, what that does is it then creates horizontal agreement and unity in the church.
SPEAKER_01: We find ourselves as part of a body that's bigger than ourselves, working together to accomplish something that's bigger than ourselves and that we can't do on our own.
SPEAKER_01: It's through our agreement in the gospel and agreement with one another.
SPEAKER_01: We live in peace, picking back up is a to live a life that isn't in acceptance of the brokenness and chaos around us and within us, but is in peace.
SPEAKER_01: There's wholeness, rest, united at the soul with God, united with each other relationally, seeking peace again in our cities and in our nations, that since Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace, brought peace into our restless souls, we are to be, as the Beatitudes call us in Matthew 5, peacemakers in the world.
SPEAKER_01: And lastly, we're to greet one another with a holy kiss, to live a life that isn't relationally detached from one another, kind of keeping people at arm's length or treating church and what we're doing here as like this spiritual nonprofit where it's my job to dispense truth to you, you're to understand it at the head level and move on with like, okay, I learned something new.
SPEAKER_01: Like the Christian life is to be something where like that truth then shapes the relationships that we have with one another.
SPEAKER_01: We embrace each other, we love each other, we're involved in each other's lives, we greet each other.
SPEAKER_01: We do is one of my favorite verses, Romans 15, 7, we welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you for the glory of God.
SPEAKER_01: We trust that God is glorified by the way that we take the welcome that we have in the gospel and then extend that welcome to those that feel lonely and lost and suffering.
SPEAKER_01: How do we do this?
SPEAKER_01: We do it with the final grounding in in the book.
SPEAKER_01: It's the reason they can pursue these things and the practical but incredible result of what happens when we do.
SPEAKER_01: He says, verse verse 11, verse 14, that the God of love and peace will be with you, that the grace of the Lord Jesus, the love of God, the fellowship of the Holy Spirit will be with you.
SPEAKER_01: Like we're promised that when we believe the gospel, when we start doing these things, when we develop community where these things happen, God will be present.
SPEAKER_01: Like he won't be far off, that God will be with us, that he'll be present in our communities, present in our life, present in this church.
SPEAKER_01: Like I think it's so cool and interesting that Paul has written two letters to these churches all about their problems and all about their problems that specifically are connected to disunity and conflict within the body, and he ends it with the greatest picture of unity that we have, the reason that we can have unity in the body and diversity at the same time, and that's that's the doctrine of the Trinity.
SPEAKER_01: Like in the Trinity, we confess and believe that we worship one God and three persons.
SPEAKER_01: Like our denomination's catechism defines it this way: that the mystery of the Trinity is that God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, distinct and inseparable, eternally one in essence and power.
SPEAKER_01: All illustrations of the Trinity or metaphors fall short in one way or another.
SPEAKER_01: It's why it's acknowledged to be a mystery.
SPEAKER_01: But my favorites is the one that C.S.
SPEAKER_01: Lewis gives, and he describes it kind of like a dance.
SPEAKER_01: Lewis in Mere Christianity says that in Christianity, God is not a static thing, but a dynamic, pulsating activity, a life almost a kind of drama.
SPEAKER_01: Almost, if you will not think me irreverent, a kind of dance.
SPEAKER_01: And you might ask, why does it all matter?
SPEAKER_01: But it matters more than anything else in the world.
SPEAKER_01: The whole dance or drama or pattern of this three-personal life is to be played out in each one of us.
SPEAKER_01: And that is how Paul is wanting them to live, to see that this dance in the Godhead of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, three and one, each glorifying the other, each deferring to the other, each mutually giving the other and self-giving love, that this dance is the fabric behind everything in the universe, that everything we know, everything we trust, everything we see, baked into this is this picture of this dance.
SPEAKER_01: And the greatest reality of all is that we are invited into it.
SPEAKER_01: Not again, not based on our dancing abilities, not by ourselves, not in the call to stand up and and figure it out on our own.
SPEAKER_01: But Jesus Christ, in his grace, God in his love, the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, give us this invitation to enter into this dance, to enter into this activity, and to see that there's a really is a better way to live than conflict and fighting and division.
SPEAKER_01: We pray that this would be true of you in your own life personally, but ultimately, as we have studied First Corinthians and 2nd Corinthians, we pray that it would be true of us as a church.
SPEAKER_01: We would believe the gospel and rest in it, that we would settle our hearts on the fixed love of Christ, that we would live and serve together in community in a way where we live into these things, doing all with the rest, uh, that this dynamic dance of the universe is happening and we get to be called into it.
SPEAKER_01: Let's pray together.
SPEAKER_01: Father, we praise you and thank you for just the message of the gospel that when it comes to the design of this world, when it comes to the truth of the universe, that we don't have to figure it out on our own, that we don't have to be self-defined or self-discovering or self-anything.
SPEAKER_01: We thank you that you have created us with love and intentionality and purpose, and that walking in that love, we find true peace and rest and flourishing.
SPEAKER_01: We pray that if the message of the gospel is new, if it's familiar, we've we've grown up around it, we've heard it a million times, but there's nothing in our life that's in agreement to it.
SPEAKER_01: Like Corinth, we may have the letters, but we've been ignoring them.
SPEAKER_01: Uh, we pray that today we would take time to rest in your love and your affection, to turn from our sins, to turn from the judgment and trust in the righteousness of Christ given freely to us.
SPEAKER_01: If we're in Christ and we're struggling with shame or anxiety, if we're looking more at ourselves than looking at the cross, we pray that as we examine and test our lives, that we would do so firmly in view of the wonderful sacrifice that Christ made on the cross.
SPEAKER_01: We pray that we would be an authentic friend to others, or that you would direct us into the path of those that need that type of friendship, that we would live honest and authentic lives around others in this body with those that we love.
SPEAKER_01: Um, Father, we pray that we would be a people that enter into this dance of love, uh, but also stand ready to invite others into it.
SPEAKER_01: Um, we know we can't do it on your own, so we're just asking and trusting.
SPEAKER_01: We're yielding ourselves to the power of your Holy Spirit to maintain this church, to lead this church and guide this church into being a loving community.
SPEAKER_01: We pray all this in your Son Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Thanks for tuning in to another episode of the podcast for Christ Methodist Church in Memphis, Tennessee.
SPEAKER_00: We pray that today's message has inspired and encouraged you in your walk with Christ.
SPEAKER_00: To stay connected with our church community, visit us online at Christchurch Memphis.org.
SPEAKER_00: We hope to see you this upcoming Sunday for worship as we seek to glorify God and make disciples of Jesus Christ among all peoples.