Blessings of Grace, Love, & Fellowship To YOU

Good morning, Good News Church. Happy Sunday to each one of you.

Happy last Sunday of 2024 to you.

Last year, as the schedule and

God would have it, I also was preaching the last Sunday sermon of 2023.

And that was a sermon that had to do with thinking about New Year's resolutions

from a biblical perspective.

And I am not going in that direction again this year, but I was thinking like

a lot of people are like real big on New Year's resolutions.

Stuff. If that's you, I would recommend that you go and listen to that sermon

online. Check it out right there.

And really, I guess I will just say this. If you have resolutions that involve

exercising, you need to be aware of January 10th.

That is known, is like officially known as Quitter's Day.

I don't know why we can't go longer than two weeks in our resolution when it

comes to exercise, but it is a real thing.

So I wish you the best in making it to January 11th on your New Year's resolution

if it has to do with exercising.

But today, I wanted to borrow a powerful benediction that was used by another

preacher a long, long time ago.

He gave this benediction to people that he loved, and I want to give it to you

as a pastor, to the people that I love.

A long time ago, and I'm sure other pastors have used this, have borrowed this

over the years, He gave this beautiful, powerful benediction of blessing over

the people that he was serving.

I plan to do that, God willing, today with this sermon.

So the title of this standalone sermon is this, Blessings of Grace,

Love, and Fellowship to You.

Um, that's how I want to end our last Sunday of 2024.

And I pray, I've been praying that it will also serve as a springboard as we go into year 2025.

There is just something about the ending of a year and the beginning of another

year that captures our attention in a different way than the other 363 days

of the year do. Have you noticed that?

Like if you think about it, Tuesday's going to come, the clock's going to strike

midnight, and Wednesday is going to be here.

And we'll do that again, but we've already done that for 51 weeks.

So what's the difference?

The difference is because we're not ending a day or a week or a month, but we're ending a year.

And for whatever reason, that gets people really excited.

It gets people thinking differently.

We have these thinking thoughts. We have perspective thinking thoughts.

We have purposeful thinking thoughts.

We have thoughts thinking about the past and the memories, and we have thoughts

about what's going to happen in the future.

That's what happens every time we come to the end of the year.

And this year, today, on this final Sunday of 2024, I want to give to you a

benediction blessing, an end of the year blessing.

And like I told you, it is not original.

I am borrowing it from a pastor who said it a long time ago to a group of people that he loved dearly.

And again, I say to you, I am thankful to serve here at Good News Church.

There is a love that I have for you, whether even I don't even know some of

you, but this still counts as like into this ministry here at Good News Church.

I want to give that to you. And here is what he said to his people.

And this is what I want to I say to you, my people, and it is this.

May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship

of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.

May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the fellowship of

the Holy Spirit be with all of you.

In a way, like we could end right

there, but we can't because there's some explanation that has to come.

Getting to say that statement, there was a lot of stuff that happened earlier

before that final statement was made. And so I want us to kind of work through that whole process.

If you'll turn in your Bibles to 2 Corinthians chapter 13 and go down to verse,

2 Corinthians 13 · chapter mention

well, if you go down to verse either 13 or 14, some of your Bibles are going

to have 13, say what verse 14 says.

I can't explain it. It's a translation thing, all right?

Jalasa made me aware of it today. She was here in the first service.

She's like, my Bible doesn't have verse 14.

I was like, oh, well, you have it on verse 13. And that's true.

So depending on your translation, the HCSB uses verse 13.

All right. So if you have an ESV, I bet you have a verse 14.

And this is what it says. It says those exact same words.

The preacher who preached, who said these words was the Apostle Paul.

And he was writing these words to the group of believers who lived in the city of Cornuth.

And he dearly loved these people. And this is how he ended his letter to them.

The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of

the Holy Spirit be with all of you.

It is a powerful, is a beautiful blessing.

And honestly, if we stop and take a few minutes, which is what I hope we do,

there are some breathtaking considerations in this one verse.

First, can everyone see what's happening here as far as we use sometimes the

word the Trinity of God. It's pretty obvious.

Like, the grace of who? You can answer. Like, the grace of who?

Jesus Christ. The love of who? God the Father.

And the fellowship of who? The Holy Spirit.

And when we put those three together, we often refer to it as the Trinity.

And this is important to mention because the doctrine of the Trinity is a doctrine that has been divisive.

It's been a divisive issue all throughout the entire history of the Christian church.

Now, it is my opinion that there is no way to perfectly and completely understand

the Trinity, let alone describe it to other people.

God is infinitely greater than we are.

And so our finite brains are going to have some trouble sometimes truly understanding all that God is.

However, let me say however, the

Bible is pretty clear and can let us know enough about God in this area.

There's a graphic that I wanna show to you and I hope that it's helpful.

This is, well, this is not the triangle that Mario will talk about in Intro

to Good News. That's a different triangle, but this is a triangle as well.

Actually, this is a triangle if you've been reading some of the newsletters, Mario actually did.

He wrote an article recently and he used this graphic as well.

It's very helpful, I think, to kind of explain and get a good understanding of what is the Trinity.

The Bible teaches that God, his father, that God is Jesus, and that God is the

Holy Spirit, all while maintaining that there is one God.

So the idea of the Trinity is one God existing in three distinct persons.

However, the Trinity in no way suggests that there are three gods, one God.

And we need to keep this in mind when it comes to this word Trinity.

That word is not found in scripture. Like you can't find it in the Bible.

Trinity is a word, it's a term that we human beings have used to try to describe

this triune God, this three coexisting, co-eternal persons of God.

And over the years, we've been given examples and illustrations of trying to

explain this. Maybe you've heard of some of these.

The three most popular are the egg, the apple, and the water.

And maybe you've heard some of these examples, right? They will say,

well, the Trinity is like an egg. Like it has a shell, and it has a white, and it has a yolk.

Like these are all parts of the egg, but it's not the egg themselves.

Or they will say it's like an apple where we have the skin, then the fleshy

part, and the seeds. and all of these are part of the apple,

but not the apple itself.

Well, the problem with those things, those examples where they fall short is this.

The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are not parts.

They are one and they are God. Each one of them is God.

The water illustration, maybe a little better, a little more helpful,

but it's still going to fall short in adequately describing the Trinity.

In the water illustration, they say, well, we have liquid, we have vapor,

and ice. They're all forms of water.

What's the problem with that? The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are not forms of God.

Each of them is God.

So while we have these illustrations and we have this picture of the Trinity,

they are a little helpful.

It gets us thinking of it, but they're not going to be entirely accurate.

And again, I will come back to this. how can an infinite God be fully described

in a finite illustration?

It just is not a perfect fit. But what I do want you to notice is that what

Paul wanted the people he loved and what I want you, the people who I love,

received from the triune God of the universe.

Look what we receive, grace, love, and fellowship.

The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit.

There is simply nothing better to ever receive in your life.

Like you may have received some fabulous Christmas gifts this season.

You may have received some wonderful, incredible things over your lifetime.

But nothing beats receiving grace from Jesus, love from God,

and fellowship from the Holy Spirit. Nothing beats that.

Now, if you don't know this, you need to know this. Grace is a constant theme in the Bible.

And it is true that we can extend grace to one another, and we do often live

gracefully with one another.

But when the grace is used in connection with Jesus, who is God,

it takes on a much more powerful meaning.

Grace is God choosing to bless us rather than curse us of our sins and the things that we deserve.

So when someone says to you, may the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be upon

you, you should receive that either quietly or out loud, like, whoa,

amen, hallelujah.

Let's practice it on the out loud side. May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be upon you.

Yes, absolutely. I mean, you let that sink in. God is choosing to give us a

blessing instead of a cursing.

That is amen, hallelujah.

And the Bible repeatedly calls grace a gift.

One example, Ephesians 4, 17.

Now, grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of the Messiah's

gift. Jesus is the Messiah.

Grace is a gift from Jesus.

Now, what do we know about gift giving? Like we should be experts at this,

just coming out of Christmas, assuming many people gave gifts.

What do we know about giving gifts?

Well, several things. First, we know that giving a gift is different than giving a loan.

If you give a loan, you want something back in return, right?

Whether money for it or you want the object back, that's a loan.

But in gift giving, When we give a gift, that's the beauty of it,

that nothing is owed in return for it.

Fabulous to think about. Another thing we know about giving a gift is that there

is no cost to the person who's receiving the gift, but the person who gives

the gift, they bear the weight, the responsibility,

they bear the expense of it.

Paul has this kind of thinking in mind.

Earlier in his letter, 2 Corinthians 8, 9, he said this.

It was a few chapters before he ended his letter, he says this,

for you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Though he was rich, for your sake he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich.

The gift of salvation cost us, the sinners, nothing.

But the price of such an extravagant gift, the gift of grace came at an incredible

cost to the Lord Jesus who died in our place.

And we are the blessed benefactors of such a marvelous gift of grace.

We also understand that once a gift has been given ownership of that gift has

been transferred like gifts do not come with strings attached or take backs,

if you do if they do it's not really a gift.

It's an incredible incredible thing to ponder and believe the grace of the Lord

Jesus Christ is yours forever.

And the Bible teaches that the gift of grace is completely unmerited,

meaning that the grace of God is given not because any of us deserve it,

but because God loves us despite us.

He just does things differently than we do.

And grace, once we are saved, it doesn't stop.

It continues. God is gracious to us the rest of our lives. By his grace, we are saved, yes.

And we are kept being saved. We are also growing in his likeness by his grace.

And by his grace, we are getting to see bigger and better, more magnificent

views of God and understanding him and how he loves us.

Wow, the grace of God, the grace of Jesus be upon you.

Back to 2 Corinthians 13, 13 or 13, 14.

Then there is the love of God. As if the grace of Jesus Christ isn't enough,

the love of God be with you.

Now I realize we had better start by defining the kind of love God gives because

love is one of those words that has a wide range of meanings in our culture.

Take this picture, for example.

I love my wife, and she loves me.

She's trying to kiss up on me. She did not know this was here,

by the way, so I'll deal with that at home later, probably.

She loves me, and I love my dog.

But I do not love my wife the way I love my dog.

And when we say often, like, I love a movie, I love a song, I love a book,

it can't mean the same kind of love as when we say I love mom or dad or another family relative.

The way we love people and the way we love boiled peanuts, it's not the same.

But we use that same word to describe our fondness of both of them.

So we got to figure this out when we say God is love. The Bible's definition

of God is love is God is agape love.

That's the kind of love that we have. It's an unconditional sacrificing,

self-sacrificing love.

And quite honestly, it's not the kind of love that we see presented to us very often.

Not much in our culture today. And the Bible goes even deeper than that.

The Bible teaches that God doesn't only love us, it teaches that he is love.

His nature is love. He is the essence of love.

So God's love, it's not like the Hallmark movie love.

You know what I'm talking about? It's not sappy, it's not sentimental,

it's not romantic feelings love.

One of the greatest examples that we could see of the kind of love that God gives is Romans 5, 8.

It is a beautiful description of God's love to us.

But God proves his own what?

Love for us that while we were sinners, Christ died for us.

God's love is personal. He knows each one of us individually.

He loves us personally. And it is God's love that separates Christianity from all other religions.

I mean, there is a chance. We live in a day and age where someone may ask you

a question, why does God love us?

And the answer, because of who he is. God is love.

You spend a lot of time just dwelling on the magnificent concept of the love of God.

But we are going to press forward back to 2 Corinthians 13, 13,

with the fellowship of the Holy Spirit.

What does it mean to have the fellowship of the Holy Spirit with you?

Well, in a nutshell, it emphasizes the importance of the Holy Spirit dwelling

inside of us so that we can live in harmony outside of us,

in unity with one another, especially with believers.

And if you haven't figured this out yet by this point, sometimes that's easier said than done.

Oh, how we need the fellowship of the Holy Spirit.

As a matter of fact, this is one of the primary reasons why Paul wrote 1 and

2 Corinthians in the first place because of the trouble that the Christians

in Corinth were having with one another.

Like if you only read the last verse like we've done here this morning,

you might get the idea that the entire book is this happy, hunky-dory,

good feeling type book and it's great all the way through. And that's not the case.

There was a lot of trouble. There was a lot of trouble.

Before this last sentence was written.

The primary reason for 2 Corinthians being written was because when he wrote

1 Corinthians, it did not end with the results needed.

In other words, it did not move this church that was having unhealthy spiritual

practices moved to having healthy spiritual practices.

So that's why 2 Corinthians was written.

And you need to know maybe a little bit more of the background of this.

Before these letters were written,

Paul had spent a year and a half with these people as a missionary.

Remember in Acts 18, he went out on his missionary trips. One of the places

he stopped was right here in Cornuth.

And while he was there, he's getting to know these people for a year and a half.

He's presenting the gospel to them, the good news of the gospel over and over.

He's given them all kinds of Christian principles that need to be included in

their life and why they need to matter.

And when he did this, several people became Christians.

Like it's the same way it happens today.

And when they became Christians, they started this church. It's all in Acts chapter 18.

Acts 18 · chapter mention

But after a year and a half, Paul moved on to other cities to tell more people

the good news of the gospel.

And it wasn't long after that that Paul was hearing back that the church in

Corinth was having trouble. They were not doing well.

And so 1 Corinthians is all about Paul identifying, I see five problems that

y'all have. I'm gonna take us right through the whole book as a big summary

and then end with this last verse that we've been focusing on this morning. The troubles were this.

Church, you're having trouble with divisions. People were picking their favorite

leaders and teachers and then bad-mouthing the other leaders and teachers. That's a problem.

Then another trouble they had, another area of trouble they had was sex.

The Corinthian believers were committing acts of fornication and adultery on

a regular basis, like it was becoming a pattern of their lifestyle.

And they were doing these types of acts inside of the church and outside of

the church, especially with prostitution. That was a problem.

Another, and words of that was, while they were doing that, some of the current

leaders were like, it's okay, go for it.

God's grace is endless, we're free in Christ.

And that is abusive language.

Another area of trouble was over food. And this one was a little interesting.

And maybe in our culture today, we're like, huh, what's going on with that? Well, here's the deal.

The issue with food wasn't so much over preferences, like vegetables are better

than meat or meat is better than vegetables.

It wasn't so much that. It was about this. It was that food was being offered

as sacrifices to the false Greek Roman gods, and then Christians were eating it.

Oh, what's Paul gonna say about that? It was a problem in the church.

Which was creating this big divide.

And then there was a fourth area of trouble and it had to do with the problems

of their weekly worship gatherings, like what we're doing here today.

When they gathered, things were becoming more and more wild and chaotic and

unorganized and distracting.

This is what was happening. Some folks, they were experiencing these like super spiritual happenings,

and they would stand up and they would start speaking in this unknown language

and using all kinds of unusual sounds going on.

All right, so imagine if that happened here today.

Someone stood up and started doing that. And then while that was happening,

what was happening here in this church was someone would stand up and they would

start sharing this, some spiritual truth that they wanted to share with everybody.

And while that person was doing that, another person would stand up and start

doing the same thing, sharing some spiritual something.

And then another person, another person, and all this is going on.

All in the while, one of these Corinthian believers has invited their unsaved

Christian, unsaved person to come with them to church.

What do you think that looked like for that unsaved person? That person doesn't know God yet.

That was a problem that was going on. Visitors were completely overwhelmed at

the situation. They had no clue what was going on.

The gospel was confusing or muted.

And then the last problem that Paul addresses had to do with the resurrection.

There were some Christians there at that church who were saying they had this

idea that the resurrection didn't really matter.

It's kind of take it or leave it mentality.

And that's what 1 Corinthians is all about.

And when Paul wrote that, many of the people, they rejected his teachings about those problems.

So much to the point that Paul hightailed it back to Corinth,

and he had a personal one-on-church meeting with them, if you will.

And that meeting was described in Paul's second letter, 2 Corinthians.

He described that as a painful meeting.

You get it? You see what's happening? This is not good times like this last

verse sounds like that we talked about in 2 Corinthians 13, 13.

Now, the reason I wanted you to know this, the reason I wanna talk to you about

all these troubles because without the fellowship of the Holy Spirit.

We are subject to the same trouble. and even with the Holy Spirit indwelling

in us, we still struggle with some of these things.

And so...

I want to say and remind us how desperate it is that we have the indwelling

and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit active and present in our lives.

Not only did Paul identify the troubles of this unhealthy church,

he also had a response, like a fix, whether it's teaching or rebuking on these five things.

And I think it's important that we go through and look at his responses of these

things as a church here as we end 2024 and push forward into 2025.

So his response about the resurrection not being important, that was met with

a big time rejection, right?

Don't you see that? His response, he countered that teaching by saying,

the resurrection of Jesus is an absolute indispensable part of the Christian faith.

He was so emphatic about this that he said that if the resurrection of Jesus

didn't happen in Christians, we are just wasting our time.

Like let's just pack up shop and go live how we wanna live all on our own, doing our own thing.

And we need to hold that same position on this matter.

The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the backbone, the backbone of Christianity.

And as Christians, we must not only cherish the resurrection,

but we need to defend the resurrection to anyone who says it's not important.

And his response about gathering for worship, it's pretty straightforward.

If we are going to do, if what we are going to do when we gather is super distractive

or if what we do freaks our guest out,

stop doing it.

That is an essence of what Paul told these people and it is important for us to know as well.

Make it easy and simple to hear the gospel when we gather.

Make it a worshipful situation where it is organized and not chaotic.

His response about food, again, an issue that may not sound irrelevant to us,

like foods being offered to Greek gods and Roman gods, but there is a principle

that still is implied in this that we should take from Paul, and it's this.

See, what was happening in that day was there were some unbelievers who were

watching Christians worship God and eat this meat that was offered from the

idols, and their conclusion was this.

Oh, Christians can worship more than one God. Got it, good.

That's a problem, right? And so what Paul was saying, it was pretty remarkable what he said.

He basically said this, that believers don't eat that meat if it's causing confusion

and causing stumbling block to people who don't know God yet. Don't do that.

Don't let them think, don't let them believe wrong things about Christianity.

And yet in almost the same breath, he tells Christians, we believe God is the

creator of all things, including those animals that were sacrificed.

If you can eat that meat and not cause others to stumble and struggle and you're hungry, go for it.

And there is a sense, there is a principle here that we should take,

that we realize that amongst us right now, there are sins of conscience that

some of you can't do and others can.

And there's a balance between the two. And it is important that we love each

other and we love those who don't know God yet in a way that does not cause

stumbling, that we're considerate for one another.

And then Paul's response about the ongoing divisions was to remind them real simple.

Jesus Christ is the head of the church. He is the center. It is all about him.

So pastors, leaders, teachers, in our case, Bible study leaders,

community group leaders, people who work in kid zone, people who work in hospitality,

people who mow the grass, all of us are here to serve one.

And that one is Jesus Christ.

This is not a popularity contest. And that's what was happening back in that day.

They were saying, I'm a Paul, I'm of Apollos.

And they're picking sides and then bad-mouthing other people.

That is no place, no division like that belongs in the church. It's all about Jesus.

And then the last response, and I have purposely left it to the end.

Paul's response to sex, specifically ungodly sex, sex outside of marriage.

His response is this, it's not okay.

It's not okay.

As Christians, sexual integrity is one of the main ways that we respond to Jesus's

love and grace upon our lives.

Like what we do with our bodies matters. And as Christians, we cannot do whatever we want.

I'm going to address the elephant in the room.

Pornography.

To say that pornography is a problem in the church might be the wildest understatement ever said.

Church, we need help. We need to address this problem.

We need to kill this sin. We need to kill all sin.

We need to kill the sin of pornography. It is destroying lives and marriages

and families, and it is crippling the church.

I don't know. I know there are many great attacks on the church.

Pornography is at the top of the list.

And Paul makes it 100% clear that there is zero compromise when it comes to

sexual behavior as a Christian.

And I want to say this, and I hope I have all of your attention.

Thank God Jesus died for all sins, including sexual sins,

including the sins that wreck relationships because of sexual misconduct.

Thank God for that.

It is a wonderful gift of grace and love and fellowship from the holy spirit

that we as his people can be forgiven and push on towards righteousness and live godly,

even when we mess up.

I want to end today like this.

I used to attend a church where at the end of every service,

people would stand and receive like a farewell benediction.

It was really one of the highlights of the service worship time together for me,

where a person would stand as I'm going to do and speak over my family's life, my children,

me, and everyone around me.

It is a powerful thing to have God's word just spoken over you like that.

And I want us to end like that today. So if you can, will you stand with me?

And I want you to receive this benediction and this will serve as our ending prayer,

and our good news comment all at once. and it is this.

May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship

of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.

Amen. That's good news. Amen.