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John 14:21-26 “He who has My commandments and keeps them is the one who loves Me; and he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and will disclose Myself to him. Judas (not Iscariot) said to Him, Lord, what then has happened that You are going to disclose Yourself to us and not to the world? Jesus answered and said to him, If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our abode with him. He who does not love Me, does not keep My words; and the word which you hear is not Mine, but the Father’s who sent Me."
Luke 4:42-44 "When day came, Jesus left and went to a secluded place; and the crowds were searching for Him, and came to Him and tried to keep Him from going away from them. But He said to them, I must preach the kingdom of God to the other cities also, for I was sent for this purpose. So He kept on preaching in the synagogues of Judea."
2 Corinthians 11:22-12:10
Welcome! We are coming down to the last few weeks of our series on Second Corinthians. As we get into today’s passage, I want you to think about resumes. Maybe you’ve never made a resume, or it’s been a long time since you needed one. Or maybe you’ve needed one quite recently or are sending it out to people now.
In America, because we live in a “secular” culture, we usually limit what we put on resumes to things that relate directly to the job we wish to apply for. We are so used to this that we don’t think it at all strange. We even have a “don’t ask, don’t tell policy” when it comes to job interviews. We are not supposed to reveal anything about our personal lives, and we are really not supposed to ask anything, if we are the interviewer. In fact, you can get in a heap of trouble if you do.
2 Corinthians 11:1-21
Welcome. I cannot think of a better introduction for my message than to start with the Apostle Paul’s first sentence in 2 Corinthians 11: “I hope you will put up with a little of my foolishness.” My first thought in reading this is to think, well, if Paul was foolish, what does that make me? I don’t think the English language has words that will do justice to the comparison.
But I actually want to start today by having you think back on a favorite teacher, you have had, whether in school, or college, or in music or art or athletics. Do you have a favorite teacher? Looking back, I can think of several. Frankly, the ones that come first to my mind are the ones who were the most entertaining, who did the most outrageous things to keep my attention. Just thinking back on them makes me smile. But is that necessarily a good measure of what makes a good teacher? I don’t think so. Certainly a teacher shouldn’t be so boring that it makes you fall asleep in you chair in five minutes, but there has to be more to it than that.
2 Corinthians 10:1-18
As you can see, today’s title is “God’s Measuring Stick.” What is a measuring stick? It is a stick of a standardized length by which other lengths, other distances, can be compared. But how does one define the standardized length? Today, one of the themes of our passage, Chapter 10 of Second Corinthians, is the idea of a standardized measure of goodness, of righteousness.
But to start, I thought it would be interesting to talk briefly about measuring sticks. We all know the yardstick, the yard. We know it is 3 feet. But do you know how many spans it is? (Four.) Do you know how many fingers it is? (Eight.) Do you know how many nails it is? (Sixteen.) But do these identities help us to know how long a yardstick is? No. They are all relative. And their names may imply certain lengths (feet, spans, fingers, and nails), but these vary from person to person, and are not very accurate at all.
