2 Corinthians 5:12-21 – Ambassadors of Grace
A few years back, a Christian magazine did a study and discovered that over 80% of those who enter into full-time ministry quit within five years. How could that be so? One of the main reasons so many don’t last in the ministry is that they have faulty motives. In today’s text, Paul gives us the…
2 Corinthians 5:1-11 – Longing for Home
One day a preacher who had just experienced a terrible personal tragedy, walked past a construction site where a huge cathedral was being built. As he watched the men work, he noticed one man carving a small triangle out of granite with a chisel and a hammer. The preacher called out to the stone…
2 Corinthians 4:7-18 – I Believed Therefore I Spoke
In our study on Wednesday nights in Judges, we’ve been looking at this strange character named Micah. He was a religious man who thought he was well-pleasing to God. He had a nice home, and in his home he had his own religious shrine set up with silver idols of god. He also had his own Levite…
2 Corinthians 4:1-6 – The Privilege of Ministry
If an airline company was to give you the privilege of flying anywhere you wanted to, anytime you wanted to, that would be great, wouldn’t it? But if they didn’t provide the plane with gas, you wouldn’t go anywhere. The workings of flying a plane are not nearly as complicated as the supernatural…
2 Corinthians 3:7-18 – The Metamorphosis of the Soul
Paul in today’s text will tell those of us who are born-again believers that we are in the process of having our souls transformed through supernatural metamorphosis into the image of Christ. The IVP Commentary describes this process as follows: “Transformation is not a one-shot affair. It is…
2 Corinthians 3:1-6 – Committing Spiritual Suicide
Paul in 2 Corinthians 3 tells the church at Corinth that they are “an Epistle of Christ.” H. A. Ironside used to like to say “it takes the whole church to make His epistle, but each one of us is one little verse in that epistle.” So what kind of testimony do the verses of our lives say to this lost…
2 Corinthians 2 – The Fragrance of Joy
C. S. Lewis once said, “Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition, when infinite joy is offered to us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in the slum because he cannot imagine what is…
2 Corinthians 1:12-2:2 – I Cannot Tell a Lie
Scientists now say that it wasn’t a giant gash that sunk the 900-foot cruise ship, the Titanic, but instead a series of small narrow slits across the watertight holds in the hull of the ship. Fifteen hundred people died as the result of small chinks in the armor of that ship. As Christians, small…
2 Corinthians 1:1-11 – Delivery from Deep Despair
When Corrie Ten Boom was a young girl she told her father that she feared that if persecution came to her homeland she would never be strong enough to stand for Jesus Christ. Her father told her, “Corrie, tell me, when you make a train trip to Amsterdam, when do I give you the ticket? Three weeks…
1 Corinthians 16 – Breaking Curses (includes communion service)
In today’s text, Paul makes what seems to be a very harsh statement when he says, “If anyone does not love the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be accursed.” But in that statement, he wasn’t cursing the lost, he was just simply giving them a prophetic warning of their state without Jesus Christ. We know…