March 9th: The True Markers of Christian Authenticity

Pastor Josh here.

I would like to give you a preview of our Sunday morning service

on March 9th here at Middletown Baptist Church.

We're going to be continuing our study in Second Corinthians,

and we're going to be in Second Corinthians, chapter 11.

2 Corinthians 11 · chapter mention

And we're looking at here this week the.

The credentials of a certified Christ follower.

Paul is continuing his defense of the truth here in the Church of

Corinth.

And there have been some false teachers that had slipped into the

church.

And so Paul is defending his ministry.

He's ultimately defending the truth of Jesus Christ.

And he is explaining that, hey, to be a true Christ follower,

you have to have some credentials.

And these false teachers were not matching up to that.

These false teachers were seeking after the things of this

world and not the things that God has called us to follow.

And Paul goes through many of the things that give him the credentials,

and he doesn't use things that we would think.

He doesn't talk about his education.

He doesn't talk about his wisdom.

He doesn't talk about his talents.

He talks about actually his struggles, the things that he's burdened

with in his life, physical struggles, persecutions, being left

out into the ocean, being shipwrecked, all these different

things he talks about.

And, and so what do we learn from that is we learn that there

is more value in understanding the difficulties that we're facing

in Christ instead of our own good works.

And so ultimately, Paul recognizes that the biggest burden

that he has is for the church, for their spiritual needs, and he

points everyone back to the power of Christ.

Meaning, hey, I can go through all these hardships knowing that

there's the bigger picture of serving the Lord and there's a greater

reward in the.

In the service to God, greater than anything we can experience here

on this earth.

And so we're going to be talking about that.

The credentials of a certified Christ follower.

Hope that we can see you on Sunday at 10:30.

If not, we live stream on YouTube and Facebook and we repost

the sermon on Mondays here on the podcast channel.

We hope that you have a wonderful weekend.

God bless.