Second Corinthians 4:5-7 The Light of the Knowledge of the Glory of God

Well, good morning. So, we're gonna continue on where we left off last week. Actually, an interesting thing happened in Mike's Bible study. How many of you listened to, or are involved in Mike's Bible study? Raise your hand. Okay. Do you remember what Mike asked? He asked an interesting question. I think Phil actually answered, he was the only one to answer. So, and actually, it applies to you guys. What did you learn from last week? According to Mike's bio study, all you learned was final thoughts. Anyway, so that's why we're gonna review a little bit today. Actually, I like to review. Review is good. But it kinda shows you that the cares of this world, what's going on, there's just a lot going on.

Maybe we didn't give them time enough to answer. That was the other part. We asked them pretty quick. And Mike asked the question for the guys who didn't, weren't in my study, what do you remember from Roger's message last week? and nobody said anything, so I thought to myself, hmm, I don't know. Anyway, okay, well in case you can't remember, we're gonna do some review. Okay, so we're in the section, we're gonna cover five through seven, but we're gonna go back to verses three and four before we start. So I've titled this section, The Light of the Knowledge of the Glory of God. So this outline which I have is from our brother Hal Malloy. And we're looking at the section in blue there.

So we talked about the glorious gospel and those who are blinded last week. Like I said, we're going to review that a little bit. We're going to look at the glorious person of the gospel, our Savior. And the next week we're going to look at starting in this section on Paul talks about trials and suffering. It seems like he's only addressing himself, but I think it applies to all believers. Some really tough verses in there, so we'll get to those next week. So let's look at a review here.

So I want to look at the review of the gospel and man's blindness. And to start off with, like I said before, when you look at these verses, you seem like you say, well, how in the world can anyone get saved? How can anyone come to a saving knowledge of the Lord Jesus? And I'm going to show how that happens, but it's interesting how the effect of blindness on men who don't know Christ, which in the sense of all of us, we have gone from that state of being blinded to understanding the gospel and accepting Christ as our Savior. We've gone from darkness to light.

And that's going to be kind of a theme of Paul's in this. Okay, so let's look at what we talked about last week here. So verse three, for even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. Okay, so I'm gonna use my little bubbles from last week, but kind of add some words to it. So it starts off with that the gospel is veiled, and it's in this Greek tense called the perfect tense. So the idea, it's a past completed action, which has results in the present. So men are blinded, they're blinded from birth. A similar concept is that man is dead, dead in his trespasses and sins. This is another aspect of that. He's not only dead in his trespasses and sin, but he's blinded. The gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ is veiled, and every man is in that condition. So that's part A of the verse. Part B of the verse is, It is veiled to a particular group of people, the perishing.

And we find out as we go on that the perishing are all men and women outside of Jesus Christ. That's a group called the perishing. So a couple of points about the perishing. It's not that they will perish, they're destined to live in eternity outside of Jesus Christ, but it is that they're perishing this very moment.

They're in a state of perishing which culminates in them perishing. It sounds a little redundant, but they're in a perishing state. And so we see why this verse in 1 Corinthians we covered several years ago has a real impact. So why is the gospel, why is the cross considered foolishness? Well, it's to those who are perishing. And what's the state of the perishing is? The gospel is veiled.

So why in the world would they ever see any sense in the gospel if it's veiled to them? It makes no sense to them. It seems, that's utter foolishness that a man would die on a cross and God would raise him up again and that would pay for my sins. That all seems utter foolishness. And it's because they're in that veiled state.

Okay, let's go on, verse four. Just take the first part, 4A, in whose case the God of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving. So the first point is, the God of this world, Satan, has blinded, and the idea of that is, the original word is like a smoke screen.

So the God of this world, and if you look carefully, you'll see that that phrase is, not the exact phrase, he's actually called in several passages, he's called the ruler of this world, And the rule of this world in that passage has been judged. Satan has been judged. But his effect in the world is still there. Even though he's judged and his destiny has been sealed, he still has an effect in the world system. So the God of this world, Satan, has blinded, who has he blinded?

The minds of the unbelieving. So a couple points about that. Minds here is the idea of your thoughts or your understanding. So that's where, that's the battleground. That's where everything's going on. It's your thoughts and your minds. And that's called a certain term in scripture is called your heart.

And unbelievers' thoughts, and here's a couple points that Merriman brought out. I like this a lot because I can identify with this. I shared last week my testimony about becoming a believer. The first point is unbelievers' thoughts are confused as to the glory of Christ, basically who Christ is.

And also, they really can't sort it out. They can't make sense of the gospel, the good news about our Savior. And that was myself. I was in that exact position, in that bus station in Miami, Florida. I didn't know what the guy was even asking me. Even though I attended church and I was baptized in the church, I didn't understand the gospel. I didn't understand the good news. I was confused.

So this, you know, looking at the original words, I think, boy, that really fits. unbelievers are confused about the glory of Christ and they're confused and they can't make sense of it. So let's go on. The B part of the verse. So that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ who is the image of God. So the first point is that the unbelieving might not see or discern that they can't see or discern that And a couple of points. So the purpose of the God of this age or this world, Satan, is to prevent the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ from shining on the unbeliever. And the glory of the gospel actually needs no embellishment.

People try to embellish. They say, well, we need to be seeker-friendly. We need to make this, put them on an easy road to understand the gospel. No, the scripture doesn't say that. It presents the gospel clearly, and we're going to cover that in the next slide, very clearly what the gospel is. The gospel of the glory of Christ cannot be dimmed.

If you think about it, it's like a beacon. Have you ever seen one of those beacons that kind of goes around and does a circular thing like for airports maybe? The light will go around the way. It's shining out all the time, but men are in a blinded state. They can't see that light of the gospel. The glory is always shining forth. And Merriman shares here, the unbelievers' thoughts or his understanding is a target for this blindness. That's where the blindness occurs in his minds and his thoughts, often called the heart in scripture.

Okay, so then the last part of this, still on 4B, the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ. The glory of Christ describes the gospel. And we're gonna look at that again this week. We're gonna look again at the glory of Christ here, and glory of God. So it describes the gospel. The glory of Christ is revealed in the gospel.

It shows that he loved us, he died for us, and rose again for us. And again, man's only part in the gospel, in the good news, is that small little two words, our sins. Man's only part is our sins. The Gospel, again, is the objective message about Christ. It's to be believed. And this is the objective message.

Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures. He was buried. He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures. And it actually goes on, He appeared to men. So I like to look at that message in those verses in Corinthians. There's four verbs there. I only show three in my charts here. Christ died, and the verification of that was He was buried. That's the first two verbs. The second two verbs, He was raised, and the proof of that, men saw Him. He appeared to Cephas, to Peter, and then to the 500. So He died, He was buried, He was raised, He was seen. And that's what the good news, that's what the gospel is all about. That's what's to be believed.

Now, of course, some people say, well, I don't have a need for that. They don't see themselves as a sinner. So in a way, there's a previous step to that. If they don't see that they have a need for that, they say, well, why do I need to understand this message about Jesus Christ? He's not important to me. What's important to me is X, Y, Z, whatever floats your boat or whatever they say, whatever the expression is today. Okay, so let's go on.

So actually I'm gonna bring in the final thoughts from last week. I know I've gotten, people like my final thoughts. Actually Andrew, he joined the bandwagon this morning in the first John elective. He has final thoughts now too, so maybe he'll even go to Mike's class, who knows? Okay, all right. Little inside joke there, okay, all right. Okay, so, but actually, the final thought from last week is, so you say, well, Roger, you just, you painted an awful picture. You say, man, they can't see the gospel. They're veiled, they can't understand it, it's all confusion. Well, what is God's response to man's blindness?

I thought Schaeffer actually did an excellent job of that. He says the restrictions that we see in those verses three and four are overcome by the illuminating power of the Holy Spirit. With this in view, the scriptures reprove or enlighten the world with respect to the cardinal features of the gospel concerning sin and righteousness and judgment. And the first one that they believe not. Sin is the very first issue that the spirit brings to a man's mind. There are sins. And that's where he is to realize that he needs a savior, right? Because his sins need to be dealt with.

And then the last point that Schaeffer makes is that the Spirit, the Scriptures, and we're going to see that's very important, God's Word. God's Word was there in creation, right? He spoke and things happened. God speaks to men via His Word and things happen in His life. So the Scriptures are given primarily is to be used by the Spirit to have men come to faith. And the verse there in Romans is, faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God. So the way men are saved today is in the way that we all were saved, in a sense, people either spoke God's Word, you heard God's Word, You listen to God's word. Somehow God's word impacted your mind and your heart and you believed upon that and you trusted that. That's how men overcome that blindness that Satan is about in this world. Okay, so that's my review.

So today, we have, starting in verse five, So Paul continued, for we do not preach ourselves, but Christ Jesus as Lord and ourselves as your bondservant for Jesus' sake. For God who said, light shall shine out of darkness, is the one who has shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. But we have this treasure in earthen vessels so that the surpassing greatness of his power will be of God and not from ourselves. Okay, so let's dig into that guy. So it starts off, so Paul starts off very humbly, if you will.

He says, we do not preach ourselves. So it's the word, the idea of a sense of because or so forth, we do not preach ourselves. So Paul and his team and all who minister the gospel are not preaching themselves. I'm not preaching that I, through some great amount of learning or whatever happened, that you should be focusing on me. And Mike's not doing that for himself. We're not focusing on ourselves, we're focusing up on the Savior. And the idea of preach here is to herald, or to proclaim, present tense, continuous action.

We're proclaiming not ourselves. So a couple verses that come to mind, you know, Paul said in Thessalonians, he says, nor do we seek glory from men, either from you or for others, even though as apostles of Christ we might have asserted our authority. So Paul had authority that God gave him, but he wasn't going to use that in presenting the good news.

And then this really fabulous verse in Philippians, More than that, I count all things to be laws in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord." Everything else took second place. Paul was a very learned man. He was the highest in Judaism you can get, just about. But all that counted for nothing in terms of knowing Christ Jesus as his Savior. So that's why we don't preach ourselves. But in strong contrast, that's Allah in the Greek, we preach Christ Jesus as Lord. Actually in the original, there's only, the as has been added, it's just Christ Jesus Lord.

So the object of, the object of this is Christ Jesus is the object. I'm sorry, I'm confused here. Christ Jesus is Lord is the object of what we preach. So Lord identifies who Christ is. That tells us who he is. So a little bit of looking at the original language, when you have what they call a thee, or a definite article in front of, sometimes you'll see Jesus Christ the Lord, that's speaking a specific aspect, he is the Lord. In this case, it talks about his essence, or who he is, his character. The implication here is the Lordship equates to deity, so he's Christ Jesus Lord.

And in the context, apparently some men were preaching themselves. In Paul's day, they're preaching themselves, inflating themselves. And Merriman points out that's a danger of ministers of the gospel, that they present themselves as a focus. And unfortunately, there's plenty, if you're looking for that today, there are plenty out there for you to look at, unfortunately. A lot of men, and maybe they're sincere, but when the focus turns to them, that's not the right picture. That's a wrong picture for men to be saved. It must be Christ. Okay, that's verse, not quite, we're not quite there yet. Okay, so this is the part, the focus is to be. But Christ Jesus and ourselves as his bondservant.

So now Paul's gonna do this. Interesting, he's gonna say, he's gonna talk about being a bondservant. First he's gonna, we just gotta remember, a bondservant is the idea of a do-loss. So the idea is that of a voluntary service, implying obedience and devotion.

So Paul said in many cases, in the first part of his epistles, he would write, Paul, in Titus, he said, Paul, a bondservant of God, an apostle of Jesus Christ. Then in Romans, he said, Paul, a bondservant of Christ Jesus. Well, now he takes another step beyond that. He says, not only am I a bondservant of God and of Christ Jesus, he's a bondservant of the Corinthians. And you begin to think, wow, so Mike and I, we have graduated to be a bondservant of our fellow believers here at Holly Hills. And in essence, we're all bondservants.

There's a verse that says, by love, serve one another. As believers in the Lord Jesus, we're all servants of one another. What a refreshing view, right? If we're all trying to serve one another, isn't that gonna be a wonderful thing? rather than trying to outdo each other, we serve each other. What a concept, right?

So Constable shares this humble view of the messenger the gospel takes in regards to himself, a bondservant of Jesus Christ, but even as a bondservant of those he ministered to. And who is it for? It's for our Savior. It's for Jesus' sake. Because of Jesus, that's why we're bond servants. We're not bond servants to say, hey, look how lowly I am. I took a lowly position. Aren't you proud of me? No, we're doing it because we have a Savior who loved us and cares for us. We're doing it for Him.

Okay, now to verse six. Verse six is power-packed. Actually, in some ways, it's a couplet. You have verse four, which addresses the unbeliever, and verse six is gonna address the believer. So try to pick that out. I have a final chart toward the end that kinda shows that, but verse six is gonna focus on the unbeliever. Unbeliever, on the believer, excuse me.

For, because, God, who said, or maybe better, in the inner linear, word by word translation, God is the one having spoken. So God has spoken. So what has he spoken? And what comes in view here, we go back to Genesis, we think, God has spoken, and it happens, right? He spoke the world into existence, if you will, and it's going to be true of that picture in Genesis, and we're going to see it's true of His interaction in the hearts of men. God speaks to men through His Word, and things change. They're born again. They come to know Him. So there's a wonderful parallel that exists there.

So it says here, light shines out of darkness. So you look at that, it says light shines out of darkness. Where have I heard that before? Well, if you look back and go back to the Genesis, you'll see Genesis 1-2a says, the earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep. So there's the darkness. Then God said, let there be light, and there was light. So there's the picture, God spoke, and things change, things happen. Light, light happened. So some observations about this light. And this is from, I think, from Macaulay or Merriman. The names are so close. They're on the charts, but I forget which is which sometimes. So that's part of the three M's. That's about an inside joke, anyway. Not so inside. So God commands affected all of creation. It was universal.

When he spoke, let there be light in eternity past, or at the creation of the world. Only the physical light was God's light. There was no light before that. He created the light, so it's His light. The light was generated by His word. When He spoke it, it happened. Light dispelled the darkness, and this is physical.

So that was Macaulay. So now let's look at the other aspect of this. So to get that part, we've kind of looked at God's creation and He speaks. Now we're gonna look at God speaking to men's hearts. It says, God is the one, I supplied the God in there to make it understandable, who is shown in our hearts. So this is the second aspect of God speaking.

He is shown in our hearts. And the word there is to shine, to give light, It's a fact, it's a past point fact that happened for every believer. His light has shone in our hearts. Cardia is a word for heart, cardiac, right? Cardiac arrest. And as I said before, man's heart is what scripture talks about when it talks about the essential person. It's the entire mental and moral being, his heart.

It's where he believes from. So here's some parallels between light coming into the creation and then light coming into a believer's mind or heart. The only true light I know for a believer is God's light. He gave us the true light of who he is and we needed a savior. Physical light of Genesis was by his word. We are born again by his word. His Word in my heart dispelled spiritual darkness. God's Word at work in creation in contrast to God's Word personally in my heart. Just a beautiful contrast there between God's Word speaking in creation and God's Word speaking into our hearts.

So let's continue on. So I like to actually, it says in the New American Standard text, it says to give light of the knowledge of the glory of God, which isn't bad, but I like the inner linear here where it says, it kind of focuses on what's, he wants to give us knowledge for an illumination of the knowledge of the glory of God. So I have several iterations of trying to understand that part of the passage.

So it's four, there's actually only two Greek words here. So we have several English words for only two Greek words. So the first Greek word is pros, to give, or resulting in. And the Greek word is illumination. It's light, to bring to light, and illumination from the Lord himself, specifically in this one.

So I like the Wiest, what Wiest did. So in trying to understand that to give light of the knowledge of the glory of God, Wiest has it resulting in an illumination being given of the knowledge of the glory of God. So God's purpose was to illumine our minds. To illumine that, if you think our minds were in darkness, so to speak, because of that blindness from Satan, God's desire was to illumine, give us illumination in that area of our minds. So, illumination tells us why God's word was shown in our hearts. So what was the content of that illumination?

And it's of the knowledge of the glory of God. Kind of a mouthful. And knowledge here is gnosis. So he's seeking to know or inquiry. So in this context, it would be the investigation with respect to the glory of God. So I wanted to just kind of go back. We talked a little last week. what is the glory of God, what it is. So it says here that God's purpose to bring men to salvation, and once they know you, is that you will, to give them the light of the knowledge of the glory of God, or you could say it, the illumination. So what is this glory of God He wants to illumine in our hearts? Okay, so first off, let's just go.

So the glory of God, you could actually call it, maybe better for understanding purposes, you could think this is his essence, this is who he is and his essential being. Boy, but the scripture's just full of all kinds of pictures of God's glory. You know, the heavens declare the glory of God.

I'm not sure whether you guys are big fans on YouTube, but if you go on YouTube, you can see a lot of stuff, probably a lot of bad stuff. You can see some good stuff. There is some good stuff in there. There's these music videos. channels or videos or whatever, and they're not the rock music videos.

They're the ones like for quiet music for evening or like bedtime, you want to sleep 24 hours a day, you listen to this thing, just quiet piano music or guitar. But a lot of them have these spectacular shots of our world. They show the oceans, they show the mountains, they show every, And Vani and I have started doing that in the evening, this kind of quiet things now. We just turn on YouTube and just let it go for a while, for an hour or so, just with these soft piano music.

It repeats a lot, so you get maybe tired of the tune, but all these wonderful, glorious things of God's creation. And that speaks of his glory, the mountains and the sea and the oceans and all the living creatures, the horses, and it's amazing. So that's one aspect of his glory. And so a definition, like MacHead gave you last week, is the sum total, God's glory or His essence is the sum total of His infinite attributes.

You know, if you have any kind of Bible handbook, or maybe like the, my mind's going here, Chafer's, what is it, Roger? Yeah, what's his book? Major Bible themes, thank you. Major Bible themes. He has a listing of what, of, from scripture, God's attributes. And that's great, we're gonna just look at that.

But then I thought about this verse that, In Exodus, so here's where Moses, this is really cool. So Moses asked a question of God, of the Lord. So here, Moses asked him. Then Moses said, I pray you, Lord, show me your glory. And he said, I myself will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim the name of the Lord before you. So for you Bible students, you remember the rest of this? You know, this is the cleft of the rock story, right? So what does God do? He says, Moses, if you look at my face, you're a goner.

You're a dead man. He says, I'm going to put you in this little cleft of the rock. I'm going to put my hand over you. I'm going to put my hand over it, and I'm going to pass by you. And all you're going to see, he said, because if you see me, you'll die. But then you'll see my hinder part.

King James has an interesting thing, his backside, I guess it is. That's all you can see. Physically, that's all you can see. I was thinking about that. That's all we can see physically, but God in his word, once again, God speaking, God speaking in his word, he has described who he is, his attributes. And here they are. And this is our brother Hal Malloy's listing of this. You can find other listings.

First of all, he's holy, and his holiness is shown in his righteousness and his justice. And you can get verses, we've had classes on parts of this, but you can have verses for each one of these. His holiness is expressed in His righteousness and His justice. He's infinite, which is expressed in His being omnipotent. He's omniscient, He knows all things.

He's present, He's omnipresent everywhere. He's self-existent. He needs no one to sustain Him. He's love. His love is shown in His grace and mercy. He's immutable, that's shown in his faithfulness, in his truthfulness. He's spirit, God is spirit. He's sovereign.

And I was thinking, you know, you might think, well, okay, boy, that's just an incredible list. Well, with God, he doesn't have like, we're gonna have love Mondays here, where I'm gonna show you on Mondays, we're gonna show you grace and mercy, and then Tuesdays, you'll get some holiness, I'll show you righteousness and justice. No, he's all these, all these attributes, all the time, and it never changes. He's all those attributes. So that's, and isn't that glorious? So that's God's glory.

That's what we're to learn, if I look at the verse we're going to here, that's that part where it says, the one who is shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God. And then it says, in the face of Christ. So that's what that marvelous list of his attributes, that's what is the glory of God. And he wants us to know that and understand that and have a relationship with him with all that in view. And it says, lastly, in this verse, in the face of Christ.

So this is kind of, seems to be a section where Paul's comparing the face of Moses. You know, that was a glorious, if you look at that passage in Exodus, is that right? I'm not sure where it is. Anyway, it talks about the face of, you know, Moses' face shown of him being with God on the mountain.

So that's kind of comparison with a believer now. So Moses' glory was fading, it was temporal, it was external, it was passing. Christ's glory is intrinsic, that's who he is. It's within, it's growing, it's emanating. As a believer, we have the very life of Christ, we have the light.

What your need is, you don't need, you have that, The moment you become a believer, you have everything that you need to have as a child of God. But what you don't have is understanding of that. You don't understand it all. So what the scriptures say is that we are to grow in grace and the knowledge of him.

That's what our job description is, so to speak. So I like these two comparisons that Merriman made. The purpose of God is to give men light. The purpose of Satan is to keep men in darkness. So here's my comparison, you know, verse four I mentioned before talks about the unbeliever in a sense, and verse six talks about the believer. So let's just see this comparison.

So verse four says, the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ. So that's what a believer needs to know, the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ. Well, a believer needs to know the light of the knowledge of the glory of God. So he needs to know all the aspects of what his Savior is about. So two observations about this comparison. The unbeliever needs the light of the gospel, which comes from the glory of God, glory of Christ. The believer needs the light of the knowledge to grow in grace, which comes from the glory of God.

If you read those verses and say, wow, it took me a while actually to be able to produce this chart, you wouldn't think so, but I wanted to see, I said, wow, look at that, look at the text, it's almost identical. I uncapitalized a few things. Some people have capitalized light in the second one, and after looking at that, it's really illumination again, so I thought the comparison was just amazing between those two passages. Okay, so let's finish up here with verse seven.

So now we're gonna talk about this, this treasure that we have, this wonderful treasure. So what's the treasure he's talking about here? We'll see shortly. But we have this treasure in earthen vessels. We have, present tense, we have it 24-7. Paul now gives a contrast between the greatness of the treasure and the frailness of the vessel.

This treasure in earthen vessels, So what's the treasure? So I think after looking at what we just talked about, the treasure has to be, it has to be the glory of Christ or the glory of God. It radiates history in our hearts. It illumines the hearts of men.

The value of the vessel depends upon its content. Even though Vonnie points out to me, there are a lot of vessels that are really, you know, very expensive. But in this case, Paul's talking about these clay vessels that were apparently in Corinth. We have the most prized and valuable content because we have the very glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. And how Malloy shared that. Okay, continuing on.

It's in earthen vessels or they're frail human vessels of the earth. And they were made of earthenware or clay. So actually Constable has a couple observations here. These are all from Constable. He said that the pottery lamps used in Corinth provided an analogy. They're these simple clay pots.

The clay vessel's worth comes from what it holds. is precisely what the Christian's utter frailty, and he sees his utter frailty leads him to experience the sufficiency of the Lord Jesus Christ. So that, so here's the purpose of that. Why does God place his very character, his very essence in clay, in fragile pots, in fragile clay vessels, us?

And it says, so that the surpassing greatness of his power will be of God and not from ourselves. It's all about, the focus is not to be on ourselves, it's to be on the Savior, on what he has done. The surpassing greatness of his power, this is the idea, I love this word. You ever, if you're playing a sports, and let's say you're passing the ball to a teammate, and you way overthrow him, I mean, that's not a good thing, right? It makes sure you have a great arm. Maybe you're John Elway and you throw it into the sands someplace, but hyperballo, ballo is to throw, so it's hyper, it's way overthrown, so that's a surpassing greatness of his power, exceeding, will be, continuously exist, of God and not from ourselves.

Being from God is a source and not from ourselves. God's power surpasses our weakness. And this brings great glory to God. It gives him glory when we as weak vessels have the wonderful message of the glory of God, the glory of the gospel. So final thoughts, second final thoughts, okay, for this week. So Paul here is contrasting the insignificance and the unattractiveness of the lightbearers with the surpassing worth and beauty of the light, the glory of God, God's glory. It's precisely the Christian's utter frailty which lays him open to the experience of all sufficiency of God's grace.

So that he's able to rejoice because of his weakness. I want to read that passage when I finish here. Something that astonishes and baffles the world that thinks only in terms of human ability. Our world thinks that you have to be the one to take the bull by the horns.

But what, as a Christian, here's what Paul says. In 2 Corinthians 12, 9, he says, and this is, you know, Paul was, the Lord Jesus was speaking to Paul, and he said to me, speaking of the Lord Jesus Christ, my grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness. And then Paul's response to that, to that declaration that power is perfected in weakness, Paul said, most gladly therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. So that's just some incredible verses. Second Corinthians is just great. I mean, Mike and I, this is amazing, amazing, kind of not often realized how much wonderful truth is in Second Corinthians.

And we have more coming next week, so stay tuned. All right, so let's close. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you so much for your word. Thank you for the marvelous truths about your word being spoken and changing men's lives, speaking to our hearts, and your word has an effect and changes us. Lord, we thank you for that. Thank you for this time. In Christ's name, amen.