Christ life & ministry focus on the truth for the maturity &...

So we're going to cover the last seven verses and also I spent a little time just talking about what's coming up next year. I'm excited about that. So a little preview of coming events. So. All right. So could someone read seven through 14. Now we pray, God, that you do no wrong, not that we ourselves may appear approved, but that you may do what is right, even though we may appear unapproved.

For we can do nothing against the truth, but only for the truth. For we rejoice when we see ourselves are weak, but you are strong. That with this we also pray for, that you may be made complete. For this reason I am writing these things while absent, so that when present I need not use severity in accordance with the authority which the Lord gave me for building up and not for tearing down.

Finally, brethren, rejoice, be made complete, be comforted, be like-minded, live in peace, and the God above in peace will be with you. Greet one another with a holy kiss, all the saints greet you, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.

OK, so kind of wrapping up some thoughts as we're going through. And then the kind of final closing, which is you're going to see some similarities, obviously, with Paul's writing. We actually have so many letters of Paul's writing, there's quite a bit of similarity between the closing. Actually, the openings and the closings, which is pretty cool. All right, so let's just go ahead here.

Now, we pray to God that you do no wrong, not that we ourselves may be approved, but that you may do what is right, even though we may appear unapproved. You look at these verses now, we've been going through this, and Paul's always, you know, this has been a long road here. Since chapter 10, he's been, you know, just going at this in ten different ways, it seems like. And he continues on with his Corinthian believers, and just the difficulties they're having, and the teachers that have come into that body of believers. So it says, now we pray to God that you do no wrong.

Literally, the idea is do not even do one bit of evil. And there's quite a few verses that talk about doing evil. And the one we saw back in, if you look back in 1 Corinthians, in chapter 10, It talks about here in verse 6, it talks about, now these things have happened as an example for us that we should not crave evil things as they also crave. And this is this whole dialogue back in chapter 10 where he talks about our fathers in the wilderness and they craved the manna and all that kind of things like that. were not to crave evil things. And then it goes on here in Romans, it talks about, do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

And then in Romans 6.19, it talks about, I'm sorry, 16.19, but I want you to be wise in what is good and innocent and what is evil.

So it seems like Paul, he kind of gathers together in these last closing verses, Thomas, some closing thoughts about about his interaction with the Christian church here and also about just things that he's taught before. But he wants to reiterate to make sure they understand. And then we'll see here in these statements, these three statements here, not that we ourselves maybe maybe may appear approved. And the Amplify kind of has our teaching. But that you may do what is right, even though we may appear unapproved. So the bottom line here is that his true motivation is they do what is right. They may. They may.

It may look like Paul. And he talks with me. It looks like he's not. He's got to show us a flash. He's a fossil. So and he wants him not to not to be caught up in that. And so he kind of. He kind of talks about the fact that they may be unapproved, but that's not the truth. He is approved.

He is a true apostle of the Lord. And his goal is they do what is right. And this is very typical of other verses we've seen, where he kind of goes back and forth. But his goal overall is that they do what is right and walk with the Lord. And we'll see other encouragement he has along that line. So any thoughts about this? I'm going to keep marching along here, if not. And that was just basically, he's praying for these believers continuously, obviously. He's concerned about them. And this is kind of an interesting verse.

For we can do nothing against the truth, but only for the truth. And it's a present tense. This verse kind of came to mind when I started looking at this passage. This kind of assumes that when he says we can do nothing against the truth, obviously Paul had a sin nature and he couldn't, but I think what he's referring to is as we walk with the Lord and are abiding in him, then we'll do what is right. And that's kind of the thrust of this, and I love this verse back in chapter 5 here.

For the love of Christ controls us. Having concluded this, that one died for all, therefore all died, he died for all so that we who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who died and rose again on their behalf. So the idea that as we walk with the Lord by faith, and trust him, then we will do what is right. And I think that's what he's trying to bring across here. Not that he says, I never do wrong.

Roger, it seems like this may refer back to verse 5 too. Examine yourselves as to whether you're in the faith. Ask yourselves, don't you know that Christ Jesus is in you? That walk of in truth and honesty is really related to the new life we have in Christ Jesus. So the truth is the truth because that's the life.

I think that's a good verse to also refer back to. Excellent, that's a very good point. Obviously, as we walk with the Lord and trust in my faith, then we'll be the truth. We're walking and his life will be shown through us. It's kind of interesting because Today's Hungry Heart really reflected that fact that to be is to do and it took the emphasis off of works but put the emphasis on who we are in Christ Jesus in terms of our walk. So in a sense that really relates to what you're talking about here this morning.

That's good. I was also wondering, in this context, what do you think, if you look at your notes you'll see what I think here, so what do you think the truth is? What is the truth here? The truth is Christ. Entirely. I mean. OK. All right. That's good.

Well, the other thing about that is that in this context, Paul's been talking about the church being deceived and the church being pulled away. The idea is that Paul can do nothing against the truth there, and it's critical that the truth be, yes it is Christ, but it is something that is knowable, it's concrete in contrast to relativism or some of the philosophical nonsense that the Greeks were. And that's what was happening, right? People were coming in and they were getting them off track and they're going off in different directions.

So he's bringing them back to the truth. So I thought, the truth is Christ, but it's, well, what about Christ? What did he accomplish? He accomplished his death on the cross. It's good news about Christ. That was Paul's passion. Why did he go on all these missionary journeys? Why didn't he just stay in Jerusalem? It might have been a safe place for Paul. I mean, his passion was that people would know Christ. And I agree with Bob, it's Christ, but it's in particular certainly the saving knowledge and the Church stays focused on that. But I am the way, the truth and the life. There's nothing about truth that doesn't relate to the Lord Jesus Christ.

That's true. I think if you embellish that by works in any way, you're flawed. Absolutely. So even though it's representative by a life that's honest, I mean, go back to verse 7, I mean, that's all true, but what's honesty? If you're in doubt about the truth, if you have the wrong source of truth, you're, you know, it's going to be futile. Because I mean, self-righteousness, we can only put that on to some extent, but it's like filthy rags right before the Lord. So anyway, I'm not. No, no, no, no. You're fine. Yeah, I will. She tells me that at home a lot. Actually, you look at us the other way. And then also.

So he says, for we can do nothing against the truth, but only for the truth. And actually, that's a that's a Greek who pair. and you could be rendered for the sake of the truth. So if you know the truth then and you walk in the truth then the last day but only for the truth. So he's not going to do things that are contrary to what he knows is the truth and that's the truth about our Savior and all that encompasses and that's what you know if you could encapsulate one thing that he wants that Corinthian church to know he wants them to know Christ and that they truly know Christ and then they won't be drawn away by these false apostles.

We know often think also about In the banking industry, they look at what the real thing is all the time. They only look at the real thing. They don't look at all these counterfeits. Because if you know what the real thing is, well, you're not fooled by the counterfeit. Imagine somebody spending their time looking at counterfeits. There's always going to be another twist on counterfeits. If you know the truth so well, you'll never be fooled by the counterfeit. That's true. And that's something true for us as well.

OK, great. So the total focus was to support the spread of the gospel, the good news about our Savior. OK. For we rejoice when we ourselves are weak, but you are strong. This we also pray for, that you may be made complete. You may be made complete. OK, this is another kind of interesting verse. For we rejoice when we are weak. OK, first of all, so we kind of rendered it a slight bit differently. For as for us, we rejoice when we are weak. And that just reminded me of, Bob covered these verses, the wonderful verses back in the beginning of chapter 12 there. About this. Let's just read those. Someone read nine and 10 and chapter 12.

He said to me, my grace is sufficient for thee, for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly, therefore, will I rather glory in my infirmities that the power of Christ may rest upon me. Therefore, I take pleasure in infirmities and reproaches and necessities and persecutions and distresses for Christ's sake. For when I am weak, then I am strong. So I really felt that that's what he was saying. We rejoice when we ourselves are weak. It seems so counter, but that allows Christ to live in you and live his life out.

If you try to be strong, well I'm going to take care of this, or I'm going to solve this, then you're going down the wrong path. But it's interesting, he talks about himself, but then he kind of flips the tables when he talks about the Corinthians. I think it's because, but as for you, when you are strong, he's not saying, well why don't you be weak too?

He's saying, you have a problem. There's a problem here and you need to stand against these guys. Yes, you should be weak in the Lord, but the main thing for you guys is to be standing strong against the false apostles. That seems like a paradox. I'm weak, but I want you to be strong. Why didn't you tell him to be weak too? I think that's kind of implied, but it's interesting. And then also, what does he pray for? He prays for their maturity.

That's what this last part is, that they be made complete. And the idea of made complete is the act of completing, perfecting. We're going to actually see this word made complete, at least in the New American Standard it's called made complete, a little bit later on on another list he has about things he desires for the Corinthians. But in this context, it's the act of completing, perfecting.

And it only shows up here in this passage in verse 9. And it's the idea of going on to maturity. Paul is praying for the Corinthians to be perfected. And if we see that in a lot of Paul's letters, to completion, to maturity, growing grace in the knowledge of him, he wants them to be mature believers. And then they'll be able to sort out these false apostles that are in their midst. Verse 10. For this reason, I am writing these things. And of course, he said this. This is about the umpteenth time he said this.

And his tack here, again, as before, is that he wants to settle the issue before he comes. It's sort of like, well, let's settle this so when I come, there won't be all this finger pointing. And we're much that way, too. We like to have things settled to show up in a place where and chaos is probably a lot of heat and emotion and nothing is going to be solved. He wants them to resolve this thing before he gets there.

For this reason, I am writing these things to you, all that has been said before, while absent, so that, or with the purpose that, when present, I need not use severity. I may not, we say, I may not deal sharply, in accordance with the authority which the Lord gave me for the building up and not for the tearing down. Boy, that's another key thing that Paul tries to get across. He wants to build them up, not tear them down.

Again, many times he's had that thought through these last three chapters. So as people have observed, this kind of ends, believe it or not, this ends this long dialogue about the Corinthian church and Paul's relationship to him, who he is in relationship to him, can they trust him, is he a true apostle. We've finally come to the end. The rest of what we're going to see from the rest to the end of the chapter is some closing remarks about just encouragement for them, but this kind of ends this dialogue which started back in 10.1.

I thought I'd just quickly here, if you have, go back to chapter 10 in your Bible. I have just some, you know, many of the translations will have little summary statements at the beginning. So in chapter 10 it says, charges of cowardness is answered by Paul. That's starting in verse 1. And then it says down in verse 3 it says, charges of walking the flesh is answered. Down to verse 10 in chapter 10. Charges of personal weakness is answered. Then we go to 11. Paul defends his apostleship. Paul's suffering support his apostleship. And we go to Chapter 12.

Think about this. If he hadn't had this defense he had to make, or vindication, That beautiful section that Bob taught in chapter 12, when we really had that in scripture, I was thinking about that. Wow, that would be so... I'm sure the Lord, you know, He knows what He's doing. I mean, He's not going to leave anything out. I just thought, wow, here's this line.

Lord, I'm getting tired of hearing this, of the problems with Corinth. I'm tired. I'm happy we're moving on to Ephesians. I want to live in a different church. This Corinthian church is getting to me. I want to hear about all the good things. I'm tired of hearing all this stuff.

Putting everybody down and doubting this and finger pointing and this. But wait a minute, Lord. We wouldn't have had that beautiful section, those first 10 verses of talking about being caught up to the third heaven and all that wonderful, you know, so we trust the Lord for what he's given to us. And it may seem worrisome and tiresome to go through this, but Hey, it's scripture and it's his word.

And I promise I wouldn't talk again. But you know, Margaret, I were talking about this on the way to church this morning and I was having trouble sleeping. And I was thinking, you know, about the five. If I had to choose five books of the Bible, which five would I choose? And the second was 2nd Corinthians. And you know, because I think 2nd Corinthians chapter 4, I mean, you talk about understanding how our position affects our condition. It's really the highlights for no, you know, this light affliction, which is but for a moment work within the far more eternal. Anyway, this is a great, great book.

It is. It is. But you would have to get these last 10 through 13, right about here. You know, we've been down this path. Paul, how many times do we have to hear this again? We get it. There are problems in Corinth. They didn't believe who you were. And you have to be hard with them. And, you know, it just seemed like we'd go on and on and on and on. But anyway, the problem is it props here today, too. Yeah. And we look at it. We look at our world and look at our, you know, it's there on every side. Yeah. Paul would still be talking about all these churches, these churches today. He'd really be. He would. Paul's epistle to Aurora. We're trying to do churches in Aurora. OK. OK, so this verse kind of wraps it up.

And once again, Paul's desire was the building up and not the tearing down. That was his desire, that they walk with the Lord, walking in the truth, following the Lord Jesus, and being excited about the gospel and getting the gospel out. OK, so now we kind of shift gears here. Finally, finally, brethren, brothers, rejoice. Finally, brothers, rejoice. You may complete. Be comforted, be like-minded, live in peace, and the God of love and peace will be with you. Greet one another with a holy kiss.

I'm going to talk about that one a little bit, too. That was kind of fun. I wasn't going to talk about it at first, but I started looking at it. I said, oh, this is really interesting. And I kept looking into it. And it occurs a lot more than you might think. Anyway, I said, OK. So Paul's going to list basically five things for the Corinthians to remember. The first one is rejoice or literally be rejoicing. So he and the president's continually rejoicing. It's a personal salutation meaning joy to the rejoice. And actually there's some verses that talk about that. So. Oh, yeah. OK. So actually, before we do that, let's just back up for a second.

This finally, brother, he used that phraseology in, you know, several places in Thessalonians. He used that. So could someone look at first test for one? Just use that same phraseology there. Furthermore, when we beseech you, brethren, and exhort you by the Lord Jesus, that as you have received us, how we ought to walk and to please God, so ye would abound more and more. Good, thank you. Okay, so just, you know, he's talking about a brother and a brother, so he's talking to believers here. So in terms of, so now let's go down to this first point, rejoice. A couple of verses. Actually, I have a connection. Turn to Luke chapter 1. I'm doubting my trail here. Luke chapter 1, verse 28. Can someone read that? It may not seem like it fits.

In coming in, he said to her, Greetings, favored one. The Lord is with you. So actually, what it is, is that greetings, favored one, is the same idea for rejoice. that greeting. So I actually, I kind of stumbled across that and I actually was doubting that was true. So it means, so when the Lord came, he says, you know, greetings favor, you know, when the angel came, greetings favor when the Lord is with you. And then it shows up in, in other places, back in second Corinthians chapter one.

It comes across as comfort sometimes. Why don't we just leave it there right now. It's rejoiced, let's go on to the next one. It's interesting that King James says farewell. Yeah, actually it can be either, and that's a good point. So this is where culturally we have an opportunity as students of God's Word to look at what's going on when we see grace, or in this case God wrote, which is This is Kairos, this is Cairo. But it was a word used as a greeting, culturally, by the Greeks. It's like when you walk into the room, instead of saying, hi, or howdy, or how you do, it's blessings, or rejoice, or I hope you are well. Joy to thee. So it's a cultural thing, where for us, the reason why King James was translated that way is because One of the ways they used a word was as a farewell.

I couldn't find I looked for Phil. I couldn't find farewell. And I traced it through. I couldn't. I found more the greetings like in the Luke past greetings favorable and that kind of deal. And it's used it's used on both ends of the letter just like we see grace as you're going to probably hide in verse 14. Right.

So maybe your interpretation then in those times was that farewell really was kind of a transmission of an emphasis placed on rejoicing. In other words, it's kind of a cultural greeting that would ultimately be viewed favorably. The translators translated it into what in 1611 would have been the equivalent. And the 1611 equivalent was farewell. But the literal, it's kind of like bowels versus heart. Culturally, there's a variance, and they translated it to the best 1611 modern English they had.

It just happens to be that it's farewell in that time. Whereas in today, we might say rejoice doesn't actually fit the way we understand it. It seems a little awkward. As a salutation, you know, greetings or that's the thing is that if we if we understand it as a citation, may you be rejoicing. Yes. We treat it in that light that reflects the intent, the authoritative intent. But it's sorry about that.

That's OK. That's all right. You're good. OK. So. So here we have a make complete. And this is the second time we've had make complete. But this, of course, is in the American standard. I'm not sure what. Did you have Bob, did you have me complete this first? You have me complete this first with first eleven after after rejoice or after farewell. It says be perfect. OK. Complete. I think. OK. It's usually actually it comes across a rule. Put yourself in order. So it's the idea of get on the right track. Set yourself right. You know, hit the reset button.

So let's look at Galatians 6.1.

Does someone read Galatians 6.1? This has the same word as Coach Joseph there. Brethren, even if anyone is caught in any trespass, you who are spiritual, restore such a one in the spirit of gentleness, each one looking to yourselves, so that you too will not be So in 6.1, it's the word restore.

Restore such a one. So you tell the person, what Paul's saying is here, OK, he greets them, rejoice or joy to thee. And then he goes on and he says, get yourself on the right path. Set yourself right. Be restored. Next he says, be comforted or be encouraged to exhort in the way of consolation, encouragement.

We saw that in 2 Corinthians chapter 1. Someone read 2 Corinthians chapter 1 verses 3 and 4. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.

Great. So the word comfort shows up multiple times there. It's the same word. Be encouraged. Be comforted. So Paul's just kind of going through this. He's finishing up a letter. Rejoice. Set yourself right. Be comforted. And it's obviously comforting the Lord. And then he goes on. Be like-minded. Or literally say the same thing, and we've seen this before in Corinthians here.

Romans 12.16 says, Be of the same mind toward one another. Do not be haughty in mind. Be associated with the lowly. Do not be wise in your own estimation. So, just an encouragement, he wants them to be of the same mind. And then 110 has a very similar thing. Say there, I exhort you that you all agree and that there be no divisions among you. Because there were divisions among them.

So you just live in peace or basically be living at peace. And we see that in Romans. Someone read Romans 12, 18 for me. If it be possible, as much as lies in you, live peaceably with all men. So he's encouraging them to live in peace. There's obviously lots of turmoil there. Thessalonians kind of carries the same idea along. Live in peace with one another.

So those are the five things. And then he says, and the God of love and peace will be with you. And there are verses that kind of go along with that. Romans 15.33 talks about, May God of peace be with you all. Amen. And Ephesians talks about towards the end of that, kind of the closing there, talks about peace be with you. Okay.

So Roger, the way this first reads, it sounds conditional. I know. And I wondered about that too. I wondered about that too. God of love and peace be with you. I think Paul meant to put that first. I would actually say it's conditional in an earthly sense. And it's conditional in the sense that if you're in the church and you're stirring up strife and you're causing division, you're not saying the same thing, or not being like one. All the things he just went through. If you're doing contrary to that, then the God of peace is not with you. You need to repent.

And if there's repentance, then he wants to dwell with us. So it is conditional, and that's a little rough, because of our senses. He's always there, right? The Holy Spirit always dwells with us. But his moving through us, if we're not abiding, That's not, we're not going to have the one. Yeah, that's good. That's good. That's good. Excellent. Excellent.

And I hate teaching those verses. So I'm glad you got it. So you guys helped me out. I was going to kind of flop away. So I'm the holy kiss. Let's get the good stuff here. Thanks. That's great. I appreciate that. Okay. Meet one another with a holy kiss. Actually you should, you should go ahead. Last questions here, Tom. Go ahead. What happened in World War II when a flight leader had to excuse himself to do another part of his mission and left his underlings to take care of other business, he would just say, and fly off. Wow. Okay. Okay.

Interesting. Interesting. So before we start, what do you think this Holy Kiss is about? Shall we be kissing each other? You know, some call it action. Right. Many cultures. You know, Europe. I mean, France, what you want to turn to France if you're in the bicycling. I mean, you know, these are how these ladies do it. They can see all these grimy cyclists every time they win a trophy.

On the cheek. The South has that say. That's a good point. When I came here from the South, I would greet people and they were like, what are you doing? That was how we greet people all the time. And you need to stop this. But I still do that. I mean, you know, where you kiss someone on the cheek, that's how you greet.

Exactly. Nowadays, you have to wonder who your attorney is. I know. That's right. No sexual harassment. Oh, I know. Actually, I don't know. But in some ways, it's kind of on the right side of the right side. But just reading that does kind of make it. I'm more conscious now. I have to be a little bit more careful. I know. I know. What might be an innocent thing to me might be conceived as who knows what. Absolutely.

When Bob and I got married, because he's a toucher, and I had to say to him, you know, because you work with all women. I don't work with all women. Nurses, assistants, all those are women. And you cannot anymore in our culture. Anyway, you cannot do that because that could be construed and this was 20 years ago when I said this to him. This could be construed by them even though it's innocent to you. As an unwanted advance.

Yes, absolutely. And now we're seeing all of it. I know, I know. And somewhat rightfully so. Probably most of it, but still. There's still that aspect. There is still that aspect and you never know someone else could be vindictive and look at you in a position of authority. And, you know.

Well, then you need to quit hugging because you could be accused of sexual harassment. That's right. Crazy in the other direction. That's right. Anyway, one thing, Roger, I thought this whole kiss, I mean, you're going to relate to Rowan's, but Peter used this in the closing of... Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Actually, it's... Actually, whatever this is... Okay. Well, let's turn to...

Let's see. Let's turn to Luke, Luke, chapter seven, chapter seven to look at Luke, chapter seven, verse forty five. Someone read that for me. You gave me no kiss, but she since the time I came in has not ceased to kiss me. So, that's the same word. Actually, the word for kiss here is actually a derivative of the word filial. Filial kind of love, brotherly kind of love. So, in Jesus' culture, the Lord says, you gave me no kiss. And let's look at another one, in Psalm 22, Luke 22, verse 48. Chapter 22, verse 48.

Can someone read that? But Jesus said unto him, Judas betrays now the son of man or the kiss. I know. I know this is pretty. So here's the case where he did. He did give the word a kiss on the cheek. I assume. And, you know, it didn't mean anything. And yet he didn't. So anyway, so. So the word kiss is, like I said, the word filial.

And it shows up as far point. It shows up in the Corinthians at the end of the chapter. The book of 1 Corinthians, it showed up in Romans, Thessalonians, and let's look at the one in Peter, 1 Peter 5.14.

Could someone read that, 1 Peter 5.14? This is a great cross reference.

Greet one another with a kiss of love and peace to you all who are in Christ. Yes. What's the love there, Randy? I don't know. But I love that the translation varies because I think it conveys the intent. Yeah. More culturally, more specifically. Right. But the word kisses.

So actually, in that case, if we said I was one of them, that's going to be filial love and agape love. And that would be kind of interesting because I'm going to talk to you a lot. Gary, don't see if you agree with this or not. The holy kiss, Paul's term, Romans 16, 16. OK. Was an expression of Christian love. It was apparently restricted to one's own sex. Hmm, interesting. This is Agape, actually, here in First Peter. OK. All right. That's interesting. Yeah, that's interesting. OK.

Well, we don't, in the New Testament, we don't see a lot of, and we don't see women involved in that, necessarily. And he talked about Judas. He talked about, and he was admonishing, well, actually, she was kissing his feet. And he talked about, well, you didn't greet me with, you know, you didn't give me the normal greeting. You didn't greet me with a kiss, but she kissed my feet. He was kind of referring to that.

I'm not sure I can make a great conclusion, but it's interesting. I guess one of the questions is what is the expression? I think the first Peter Cross reference. What is the communication of the act? Let's divorce the word kiss. from the intent for a second and ask what's the intent?

Because I think here at Holly Hills I get hugs from various people and I give hugs to various people and sorry if I haven't hugged you but we'll get around to it. Because culturally that's the expression. In Central America we had a foreign exchange student come to a friend's house in Central America, they would kiss each other, but hugging was considered sexual. And in our culture, hugging is generally normative, and so it's an expression of the agape. It's a bond, right? It's a bonding kind of thing. And so if we divorce the literal cultural expression from the intent, and we say okay the intent of the expression is I'm going to give you a hug.

When we're all said and done I'm going to give you a hug because that's comfortable coach riding. Maybe in closing here. My dad used to send letters to me while I was in the service and it was kind of embarrassing. I had to keep those letters private because they always closed the same way. All my love, prayers and kisses That was your father. I'm going to make a comment on their culture based on that statement.

I would say that if we had a biblical understanding of love, that kind of thing would not be considered or pansy or feminine or whatever else. Because when we see and treat each other with a holy kiss, this isn't a sexual kiss. No, it's not at all. This is an expression of Christ's life in us communicated to one another. And like right now, hugging one another is acceptable. And I appreciate someone giving me a hug. How are you doing, brother? That's wonderful. That's a neat thing. And I agree people the same way. So. So that's it. Thanks. It's good.

Back to Christ himself, the idea that not only did I not receive a kiss, but the kiss was in my feet. She took a position of being in a sense as weak and humble and inferior as possible. Not the usual kiss. That would have been a woman kissing the Lord Jesus Christ. And Judas' kiss was an insult. So it seemed that both same sex and opposite sex kiss in the right spirit. It was OK. Right. Yeah. But I think it wasn't.

Wasn't the Lord talking about other people. Let's go back to this. I hate to belabor this point. Let's look at Luke. Luke 45. I thought that he was kind of admonishing the people around. I don't think he was talking about her. You know, he's admonishing. Yeah. Yeah. Isn't he admonishing? He said the Simon. Right. Do you see these women in the house? I think he kind of said you he's speaking to Simon. Right. So I think he's admonishing Simon. We you know. Yeah. In terms of not receiving a kiss from Simon. Yeah with Simon. So I don't think he was. I don't know. The idea of not between sex. That's an interesting comment. I wonder about that.

So I anyway. But if you go on to the 46 it also says that my head with oil thou does not anoint. This woman has been known to my feet with this ointment. So, yeah, he was admonishing him, Simon, for sure. Right. That's what I thought. Yeah. This passage is a teaching on forgiveness and appreciation for that forgiveness.

And Simon didn't do any of the culturally expected things. And this person did things that were beyond those. Oh, yeah. And she was just over the top. Wow. Yeah. And he stuns her, says she's forgiven, and he stuns a lot of people. And they're like, whoa, who can forgive a saint? Yeah, who can do that? All right. OK, let's go on. And all the saints greet you. And he's used that before. Here's the part. You know what's interesting is?

In this part, starting in verse 14, The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. I couldn't find this particular salutation closing. He mentions the Trinity here. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. He mentions grace and love in a lot of other salutations, but not fellowship. So it's interesting, this particular one, he mentions the entire Trinity he talks about, which I thought was pretty cool. I thought, man, you could do a race kind of associated with the word Jesus, the love of God, the fellowship of the Holy Spirit.

There's some really neat stuff. And I didn't go down that path, but there's just a lot of neat stuff. That's a really cool section there about the Godhead and their interaction with us. And then I included basically, here's three other concluding passages, and there's a whole bunch more. And then at the beginning of 2 Corinthians, we saw, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. And that was Paul's typical greeting. And then the question I kind of asked, why does grace come before peace? What do you think about that? He never flips it around. It's always grace and peace. God has to make the offer, and the offer is through Jesus. And Jesus is the very embodiment of grace. Without God's grace being given to us, we really can't have peace. That's the bottom line.

So it's important that we realize that the order that we see, grace and peace, fits with his whole plan for mankind. And then I just listed a bunch of other ones here. Actually, what has been observed, Paul always begins his epistles with grace, mentions grace, and he always ends his epistles with grace. And we're going to see that in the next couple of weeks here. We get into Ephesians, in verse 2, he talks about grace, and then he closes with grace. So he always starts with grace and ends with grace, which is pretty neat stuff. So just a few thoughts. And so the last one, I would say, since he didn't mention grace in the ending, I would suspect that he has a feeling that they're picking up on this and they'll follow through. It doesn't well in the past. Giving. Right. OK.

I find this kind of interesting is the graces of the Lord Jesus Christ. If you think about God's grace, we see examples in the Old Testament that are all pointed to Christ. That grace is Christ's love of God. So grace from Christ, love of God, that becomes secondary, but the grace is the first step to God's love. And then the fellowship of the Holy Spirit is really the walk.

And that only shows up to my little search. I tried to do a search and you can fail searches if you don't do the right things. I mean, if you get the wrong parameters in there, as Randy would know, you can you can say, well, it does not in that document. Now, it certainly isn't a document. You searched the wrong way.

So I read it. But anyway, that that that that's really a cool thing. It's in there. Those three things, the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, that way that encapsulates that one little statement is pretty powerful. And as a segue. It's like an advertisement. You should go to whatever class you want. It was like it was like. OK. So. So just a few few thoughts about.

So no classes. Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve. So that's the next next two weeks. But there will be a main service. So then the first first Sunday in the new year, we're going to start in Ephesians. And it's just a it's a marvelous book. And just, you know, it's pretty cool. It's it's you know, what I kind of found is in studying a little bit, it's I was talking about how I'm kind of want to change from from the Corinthians to the Ephesians. Well, we're going to find I'll show you the first class.

The Ephesus part is really not in the original text. It's like they left a blank there. You fill in the church, or you fill in your name. So the Book of Ephesians was intended to be a generalized letter to all the churches of Paul ministered to. So you fill in the name, Holly Hills.

So it's pretty cool. And there are just so many wonderful things about Ephesians. One of the cool things is that the first three chapters are about our wonderful place and our Savior. And that phrase, in Christ, shows up 35 times in Ephesians. And there's just so many personal things about Ephesians.

It tells us the place we have with our Savior. So it's just a lot of really cool things. So I would encourage you, if that's what you'd like to do, come and join us. Actually, you're not going to be able to get away from the positional truth this time around.

Because Vern's going to teach the riches of God's grace, which is actually enumeration. He's going to be dipping into Ephesians a lot too. And then we're going to have Romans. Mike's going to teach Romans. So he's going to be teaching a lot of positional too.

So you can't run away from it. I just wanted to say I thank you and Randy for teaching. And we're going to go upstairs with Burton because it's getting more difficult all the time for Jack to go up and down stairs. OK. I love you all. We'd love to be with you. But I think we will go upstairs. OK. All right. But we just love this class. I love all of you. I feel like a family now. OK, well, good. That's good. Let's move the class geographically. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. We talked to you about how the elevators, all kinds of places is very difficult.

Well, thank you guys. I appreciate being able to teach Bob and Randy. It's been great. Looking forward to continuing on in the new year. Let's go ahead and close. We thank you, Father. Thank you so much, Father, for the blessings we have from our Savior, Lord. Thank you for just this letter to the Corinthians, Lord. The second letter, the second one we have. Thank you for the truths that we've learned over this last year. Thank you for just the marvelous declaration of your love and your grace and the marvelous sufficiency of your Savior, Father. In all things, Lord, we ask of His name. Amen.