Derek Thomas - Benediction and Gospel Sermon from 2 Corinthians 13 ________________ As we turn now to the Scriptures we pray for the blessing of the Holy Spirit that it might be written upon our hearts Lord for your servant is listening. For Jesus' sake. Please be seated. Now turn with me for the final time to second Corinthians and this time Chapter thirteen. And you'll find it in your pew Bible and Page nine hundred seventy beginning next week. And running for seven. Or eight weeks. Or so. We begin a new series on heaven. And I want to look at various things the Bible has to say to us about heaven and that will take us into the middle of the summer. Second Corinthians thirteen. This is the third time I am coming to you. Every charge must be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses I want those through sinned before and all the others and I want them now while absent as I did when present on my second visit that if I come again I will not spare them since you seek proof that Christ is speaking in me. He is not weak in dealing with you but his powerful among you for he was crucified in weakness but lives by the power of God. For we all. Weak in him but in dealing with you we will live with him by the power of God. Examin yourselves to see whether you are in the faith test yourselves or do you not realize this about yourselves the Jesus Christ is in you unless indeed you fail to meet the test. 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 though we may seem to have failed. For we cannot do anything against the truth but only for the truth. For we are glad when we are weak and you are strong your restoration is what we pray for. But 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 the authority that the Lord has given me for building up and not for tearing down. Finally brothers. 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 repeat one another with the holy kiss all the saints greet you the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God. And the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you. Amen. Now are the title for this sermon was. I did. Many months ago and it bears no relation whatsoever to the summit. As I was looking at this chapter this week. I. Decided that I want to focus simply. On. Verse fourteen and the benediction. There are a lot of issues going on here and Paul is returning to issues that he first address at the beginning of this apostle and a problem a severe problem that is taking place in the church at Corinth a disciplinary issue it involves some kind of sexual immorality of a serious nature Paul had written you remember a severe letter that has since been lost and he's returning to that here and now suggesting that he's coming back to current and. So it seems this issue has not yet been dealt with. But at the end of the Epistle, he gives this marvelous extraordinary and well known to us benediction it is perhaps one of them most well known benedictions apart from the one in Numbers chapter six which in prison for tear in circles is usually limited to a time of baptism the Lord bless you and keep you make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace that one. This is a benediction. Not a prayer. It's a benediction it's a pronouncement and therefore it is customary and and right in my opinion that we should keep our eyes open. In some branches of Scottish Presbyterianism of the more conservative kind. Somewhere in the last one hundred. Years or so it moved from being thought of as a pronouncement to being a prayer so if you happen to find yourself say in a worship service in the north of Scotland in the Free Church of Scotland for example in the congregation Sinclair Ferguson minister in the evening service and done DI It wouldn't surprise me one little bit not Sinclair's given the benediction But when when Sister congregations are giving a benediction it is a prayer not a pronouncement. It is in many senses a statement of the Gospel at the end of the service. It's a blessing. Sometimes a minister to say the blessing and that usually just means giving thanks for for grits and sausage but but the blessing here is the benediction and when you think about covenants think Foreman and broadly speaking in large categories think about covenants in the Bible what is true about covenants is that they have blessings and curses. I think of Deuteronomy twenty seven and twenty eight to remember on Mount Ebola in Mount Garrett zeem there were folk shouting blessings and there were folks shouting justice remember that abortion. Well in a real sense Jesus got the Carson we get the blessing. So at the end of every service as we now go forth as it were into the world there is a statement a pronouncement the benediction a blessing from God We are under the umbrella of the a blessing of the covenant. Whatever else may be true. As believers in Jesus Christ we are under the shelter of the blessings of the covenant and it is in that way that we. Exit the building every Sunday. I want you to notice just one thing about this benediction and that is. What you do know is more than one thing but one thing before we look at the main things in this benediction and that is the Trinity. And the references here to the Lord Jesus Christ the love of God understood here as the Father and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. The Corinthian correspondences relatively early in the mid to late fifty's. Within twenty twenty three twenty four years or so of Jesus' death within hardly a generation of Jesus's death and here in this blessing you have a statement of the doctrine of the Trinity that there is only one God but there is more than one who is that one god. And there is no debate about it there is no discussion about it early early early in the Christian church that was an affirmation of the doctrine of the Trinity. Though it didn't find creedal form technical form until the fourth century and and the nice seen creed. Here it is here in second Corinthians. It is vitally important. As Christians. And as a church that we are Trinitarian. It is absolutely vital and essential it is what distinguishes Christianity from all the religions in the world. You understand. That there is no gospel apart from Trinity. The Father loves us and sends his son. The son lives undying in the place of sinners the Holy Spirit applying all the Jesus has accomplished the manner the Gospel works is Trinitarian. Without the doctrine of the Trinity there is no god small. So it's vitally important in the Christian worship service that we make mention of the doctrine of the Trinity and we do that sometimes in a subtle way and sometimes in a not so subtle way but every Sunday morning for example our worship begins typically with a trinitarian hymn. Hymn to the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. And typically we give some consideration to the trinitarian flow of the hymns and songs that we sing during our worship service but that's a kind of an aside. Let's look at this benediction together and first of all the grace of our Lord Jesus trust. And actually way back in first Corinthians in the first chapter in the second verse Paul had begun his Corinthian correspondence with a mention of the word grid. And you remember how in the eighth chapter of this epistle you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ that though he was rich yet for our sakes he became poor that we through his poverty might become rich. Now last week we said so let me repeat it again this week. There is no such thing. As grace. It's not a commodity. It's not like ether it's not like a gas that can pass from one side of the building to another it's not something that you can actually physically take for example in participating in the Lord's Supper. There's only Jesus. And he is gracious. Sometimes the word grace in the Old Testament in the Hebrew can mean beautiful and sometimes in English we we use the word grace in that way we speak of things being griefs fall meaning beautiful artistic. But typically when we think of the word grace we think of undeserved mercy. Mercy to sinners while we were yet sinners Christ died. For us by grid shoe are saved through faith and that not of yourselves it is the gift of God Not of works lest any man should boast. Actually I think the word grace here. Is in grammatical terms Tondo mean Tanami meaning a word that is that is describing something bigger than itself he's not just thinking of gris year in terms of the forgiveness of sins he's thinking of gris Indian time our process of redemption from beginning to end every part of it is an expression of the gris of our Lord Jesus Christ. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. And this this is a term Lord it's the Greek word coolie us it's the word in the Greek translation of the Old Testament that was you. Used to translate the divine name ya way. So here is the Lord Jesus Christ. He completely forgives a woman. A woman who had lived in the streets and plied the streets and he completely forgives her sin. And she falls down before him and breaks open and alabaster box of aren't Monckton and begins to wash his feet with it and then begins to wipe his feet with her hair because she has been completely forgiven of her sins and that is Grace. A dying thief on the cross justly deserving his execution cries out to Jesus remember me when you come into your kingdom and Jesus says to him to day you will be with me in paradise. And that man ate breakfast on earth and supper in heaven with Jesus and that His Grace. A leper. Ostracized from society living in caves and rocks and and food being brought to a certain location but family and friends keeping a distance always perhaps communicating over fifteen or twenty yards and probably holding clogged up to their mouths and noses but never touching that person and Jesus goes to this leper and he touches them and says you are clean and the man is restored and that is Grace. And Saul of Tarsus an enemy of the Christian Church who almost single handedly destroyed the Christian Church in its infancy signing documents for the death of men and women and children and Jesus made SYMOND arrests him and brings him to his knees and brings him into the knowledge of the Gospel and our sins forgiven and have peace with God and that. His Grace. Grace to heal you. Grace to strengthen your. Grace to support you. Grace to fill you with purpose and meaning. Grace to cover all of your sins grace to provide you with a robe of righteousness or that you can stand in the presence of God as holy and righteous as Jesus is holy and righteous. Grace from beginning to end my friend. He feeds the fish of the sea. On the birds of the air and he holds the stars in the night sky. And isn't that sufficient for you. That behind Greer slice that kind of sovereign power. If your burden this morning want to grow ten thousand times greater. Wouldn't his grace still be sufficient for you. Your sins may be reverse. My friends your sins may be grievous. And the memory of them still haunts you perhaps. Every now and then you you wake up and you think. Can God really forgive that sin. And then we do something that's not so subtle. And we begin to doubt whether there's sufficient grace to forgive my sin. And so I want you to look at this text again familiar as it is to you the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ is full of grace and truth. Remember what John said. The law came by Moses. Grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. You can never find forgiveness you can never find wholeness you can never find that purpose why you are here by obeying the law. You can only find it by believing and trusting in the Lord Jesus casting your deadly doing down at Jesus' feet and standing in him and in Him alone gloriously complete the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. And the love of God. And understood here in the context to be the love of God the Father. And first of all I think we need to think of this in a sense but not in the sense I think that the benediction intends here but but first of all we need to think of the love of God for His own Son the love of God for Jesus before there ever was a creation before there ever were stars in the night sky if before ever you were conceived of. There was a love of the Father for the Son and our reciprocity of love of the son for the for. So that in a sense they were in love with each other and in each other. The Greeks called it Perry chorus the Latin scald it circum incest it's not important that you remember the terms it's like when one early church historian and theologians called it the dance of the Trinity. The father and the son in mutual love for each other God is love. Isn't that what John says in his epistle as he thinks about a definition of what God is essentially like in his very being in the very core of his being God is love. Yes he's many other things he's right yes he's whole he's a button does omniscient he's many other things but he is essentially love. And he loves you. And he loves you. There would be no gospel apart from the love of God the Father you know sometimes Christians distort this and then they talk about the love of Jesus and and the father being somewhat temperamental and uncertain and it's Jesus who sort of could Jolles him and brings him as it were into a better mood and better favor so that eventually because of his son he manifests love but that's a distortion. It is because The Father loves the Jesus is send us think of John three sixteen. For God so loved the world that He sent His only begotten Son It is the love of God the Father. Remember the question that the prophet Isaiah asks in Chapter forty nine. Can a woman forget her nursing child. That she should have no compassion on the son of her womb even there they may forget but I will not forget you. I will not forget you. But all this is talk talk talk. Unless there is action. It's just talk unless there's action. And God demonstrates His love for us by sending his son his only begotten son - he only has one son. He only has one son and he gave him up. For us all. He gave him to. Mitigated wrath upon the cross. He gave him to that point where his own son cried out My God my God why have you forsaken me. As our sins were reckoned to the account of Jesus Christ there on the cross you want to demonstration of how much the Father loves you. Then look to the cross as his own son. In share. And God bless us for you. And for me. O love that will not let me go. I rest my weary soul on thee. Is that what you need to hear this morning. You've lost your assurance. Things have happened. Circumstances have come into play. Providence is frowned upon here you find yourself in a dark place. Things that you would wish would not happen have happened. And you're beginning to doubt whether God loves you and maybe you're beginning to think you're beginning to think like the world thinks. You may be you may be thinking this morning I need to do a little more in order for God to love me. I need to come to church more often well you may need to come to church more often but God won't love you any more than he loves you right now. Or maybe you're thinking just awful I need to pray a little more I need to read the Bible a little more and then and then God will love me. My dear friend God could not love you more. Than he loves you right now. An infinite love that knows no bound or limit. Imagine it. Imagine that you were at the beach. Would not be a fine thing. On this hot humid day. And you had a little. You'd have to have children of course to do this. You had a little bucket. And you went to the edge of the water of the ocean when you scooped out a little bit of water and poured it into your bucket and then you felt that was so good you did it again a second time and you poured it into your bucket and you kept on doing this for a while and the bucket is about a third a half full and then. And then you said to yourself. I NEED TO STOP NOW Otherwise the ocean will run out of water. And somebody was watching in the first service. But I won't name. But his second name is Daniels. And he sent me a text after the service and he said he was at the beach looking out at the ocean he said it goes as far as I can see. As does the love of God for you. It can never run out. It can never run out. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God the Father. And the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. The Fellowship of the Holy Spirit all of these genitives subjective genitives it is the it is the fellowship that is the result of the Holy Spirit's doing and action. You remember Luke describing the early church immediately after Pentecost when the Holy Spirit had been sent. You remember Jesus in the upper room and spoken I will go away but I will come to you again and he will come sending another comforter and he was talking about the Holy Spirit and you remember on the day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit was poured out in fulfillment of prophecy of Joe. Thousands came to faith that day. And then look describes what the church looked like what happened as a result of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit They continued steadfastly in the apostles doctrine fellowship breaking of bread and the prayers. Fellowship. That's what the Holy Spirit produces fellowship. Now my college students and folks in their twenty's are using a different word now they used they tend to use the word community so as you mean the same thing I'm happy. But you understand the word community is not in the English Bible the word in the English Bible is Bell ocean. So what can a neo. He produces a community. Of people who love the Lord Jesus I was telling the Inquirer star says a few minutes ago of my first experience of church. In January of one thousand nine hundred seventy two. I remember walking into that church as an eighteen year old student who had just been saved and I remember thinking this is family. Isn't my people. These are my brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers this is community this is fellowship like I've never seen it before. Look around you. And you can turn around it's fine. This is family this is your family. This is the people of God that is First Presbyterian Church and there are many many many more like it here in Columbia and elsewhere throughout the world. The Holy Spirit produces fellowship. When you find yourself in need. When you find yourself in dark places this fellowship will come around you. When you find yourself needing food. Because the family is growing and murmurs in hospital and you'll see this fellowship come around and provide you with food. When you need somebody to come alongside you and. Rebuke you a little. Paul is doing that did you sense that in in this chapter this this was not pretty this final chapter is not pretty Paul is pretty stern something amiss in the church at Corinth and it stinks and Paul is saying I'm coming and I'm coming in the full of oddity of the Lord Jesus Christ as an apostle. And you gladly ends with a benediction. Because no matter how much it stinks in the church at Corinth there's always the gospel. Maybe somebody needs to come and put his arm around you and say Brother. You need to stop this this is not good you are walking in the wrong path and in the wrong direction and you're not walking in the direction of the Lord. And that's fellowship. When two brothers meet together or two sisters meet together and they do so all over this city in times of prayer and they read the Scriptures and they exhaust one another and they disciple one another and they mentor one another that's fellowship. When groups of people meet together for prayer and they do serve all those times of day and night. And sometimes in small groups and sometimes in larger groups that fellowship my friend. The Fellowship of the Holy Spirit. John Calvin said that the first name that's given to the Holy Spirit is the spirit of adoption. Is the spirit of brings about adoption adoption into the household and family of God where Jesus Christ is your elder brother. He produces fellowship he produces community. And there's nothing like it my friend. I love this community. I'm not ashamed to say so I've been a minister for almost forty years and I love this community. Because I see something of the presence of the Holy Spirit producing fellowship. The blessing of the gospel. No matter what else may be going on and there's a whole lot of stuff going on and there's a whole lot of stuff going on in the car and here's the final word. Here's the final word and it's the final word of the service this morning as it is of every service every Sunday morning. Benediction. We get blessings. Blessings of the father blessings of the sun blessings of the Holy Spirit three persons one God We get blessings because Jesus got the car service for us. That. My friend. Is good news. And the best kind of news. You could ever imagine. Father we thank you. Thank you for this word of benediction at the end of what has been a tense epistle that Paul is written. We thank you. As we anticipate in a few minutes hearing those words of benediction pronounced over our lives as we look to Jesus and Jesus only for our salvation father fill us with your spirit now and we ask it in Jesus' name amen.