Bible Guys Classics: 2 Corinthians 3

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Well today it is out with the old and in

with the new.

This is going to be a great discussion, it is.

I think it's going to be amazing. So he's Chris

and I'm Jeff and we're the Bible guys. Well, I

think I set the bar pretty high there. It's going

to be amazing. Yeah, sure, yeah, I don't let us down. Chris,

think it's something good to say. Man, oh on me. Okay.

So here's what we like to do these segments sometimes

that try to recall great your amazing ability to recall that. Yes,

and so today here's what we thought we've done this

before Psalm or pop song. Right, so we take phrases

from the Book of Psalms or a phrase from a

pop song. Well, today you know the most.

And you're gonna read these to me.

Yes, today may be the most surprising lyrics in the

whole Bible are in the Book of Song as Solomon.

Oh so, so I'm gonna it's song as Solomon or

pop song. You have to tell me it's song of

Solomon or pop song.

Okay, I'm gonna botch this up.

Okay, here you go. Ready, So here's the first one.

I look and stairs so deep in your eyes.

Oh, that could be either one, but I'll go with

pop song.

Yes, do you know who?

No?

Crazy in Love by Beyonce. Okay, let me see playing

outside in the street kissing in plain view of everyone

and no one thinking anything of it.

Wow, gee whiz, I'm gonna say song of Solomon.

Oh you're right, Chapter eight, verse one. All right, what's

he talking about? Okay, here you go. The fire of

love stops at nothing, it sweeps everything before it.

Oh, that's definitely song Solomon.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Song of Solomon eight, verse seven.

I look at my kingdom. I was finally there.

Oh the heck you go either way. It sounds like

Song of Solomon. But that's that's gonna be like a

like a like a that's some bait there. You know what,

I'm gonna go against my instinct. I'm gonna say, pop song.

Dude, you're four for four. That's a fresh Prince of

bel Air theme song.

Oh that's hilarious.

You know, there's a whole bunch of forty five fifty

year old people going, oh, that's for Prince.

Yes, Yeah, okay's hilarious.

Well, dude, you went four for four. That's all I've got.

Wow.

Yeah, yeah, that's amazing. Well, I don't think anybody's ever

done that on this show.

Wow, look at that right. Yeah, I'm saying.

This is what I'm saying. This is why we love

it when you do these games. Yeah.

Whatever, that's hilarious. That's so good.

So Song of Solomon was as a kid was quite

a shocking. I mean it's it's PG thirteen plus. Yeah.

Well you know, so listen, I became a Christian, you

know a little bit later in my teenage years, and

then didn't decide to go into ministry until almost I

was ready to go to college, and then went straight

into college. And so as I was in college, people

were like, my very first day of college, my Old

Testament professor said, Okay, come prepared on Wednesday, just having

memorized all sixty six books of the Bible. And out

of the two hundred people in the class, everybody was

like ha ha ha. And everybody had already memorized it.

They laughed because they all grew up in church. I

think I might have been among the small five percent

that I was like, oh no, like I've got to

memorize this, right, So I was hearing in Old Testament

history the stories for the very first time in the

Old Testament.

Oh yeah, it was like it.

Was like fascinating anyway, all that to say this because

I was so new to the Bible. In Bible college.

My wife had grown up in church. We were engaged

to be married, right, and we would write letters because

back then there's no FaceTime. There's letters. There's handwritten letters

and written and she would she would use like sexy

verses and like, and so it was like it was

this way of like sort of being godly right, because

you don't want to be like, you know, too like

inappropriate in that right. Sure, she'd sort of like write

a verse and I'm like, oh, this is like a

flirting kind of a thing, right, and then I write it.

Then I write went back.

You know, all from the song is all from the

song of so.

So all that to say, we quoted the song of

solov It back and forth to each other as a

way to sort of, you know, you know, sort of

prepare for our wedding night. But we did it biblically, right.

So let's take a second on this, because a lot

of people have grown up believing that you know, romance,

are flirting or any of those things. Those are you know,

somehow kind of bad. We shouldn't so they are certainly adult, right.

But God made romance. God made the delights and the

pleasures of that of the married relationship, right, and so

as the closer you're getting to your wedding night, obviously

the delight and the enthusiasms and the joys of that

are perfect find and God made that that way, right,

So then this is why he put you know, some

of the biblical scholars and ancient times questioned whether that

should be in the Bible, right, as if maybe romance

and love are inappropriate for being in the Bible, and

God's like, no, not only that, I'm going to push

it right to the edge of public appropriateness in this

love song between these the you know, the groom and

the bride, and God delights in us expressing romance to

the spouse that He's given us right, right, and it's

it's a beautiful thing, not a non negative thing. So

it is funny though when you compare some of those

phrase is to you know, pop songs.

Yeah that's very funny.

Yeah, yeah, that's great. So anyways, let's pick up. We're

going to start in second critne these chapter three, and

this chapter really is to me, it's just a delight.

It's such a good as opposed to all those undelightful chapters.

Right like the Book of Numbers.

Well, even Paul apologized for some of his previous writings,

but this is a really good one here. So it's

just so if you remember, he ended the last one

saying that God watches us, right and knowing that God

is watching over us, and so then he says, are

we being beginning to praise ourselves again? Are we like

others who need to bring you letters of recommendation or

who ask you to write such letters on their behalf.

Surely not The only letter of recommendation we need is you yourselves.

Your lives are a letter written in our hearts. Everyone

can read it and recognize our good work among you. Clearly,

you are a letter from Christ showing the result of

our ministry among you. This letter is written not with

pen and ink, but with the spirit of the Living God,

is carved not on tablets of stone, but on human hearts.

We are confident of all this because of our great

trust in God through Christ. It is not that we

think we are qualified to do anything on our own.

Our qualification comes from God. He was enabled He has

enabled us to be ministers of His New Covenant. This

is a covenant not of written laws, but of the spirit.

The old written covenant ends in death, but under the

New Covenant, the spirit gives life. The old Way, with

laws etched in stone, led to death. Though it began

with such glory that the people of Israel could not

bear to look at Moses's face, for his face shone

with the glory of God, even though the brightness was

already fading away. Shouldn't we expect far greater glory under

the New Way? Now that the Holy Spirit is giving life.

If the old way which brings commendation was glorious, how

much more glorious is the new way, which makes us

right with God. In fact, that first glory was not

glorious at all compared with the overwhelming glory of the

new way. So if the old way which has been

replaced was glorious, how much more glorious is the new

which remains forever. Since this new gives us such confidence,

we can be very bold. We're not like Moses, who

put a veil over his face so the people of

Israel would not see the glory, even though it was

destined to fade away. But the people's minds were hardened,

and to this day, whenever the Old Covenant is being read,

the same veil covers their minds, so they cannot understand

the truth. And this veil can be removed only by

believing in Christ. Yes, even today, when they read Moses' writings,

their hearts are covered with that veil, and they did

not understand. But whenever someone turns to the Lord, the

veil is taken away. For the Lord is the Spirit.

Wherever the spirit of the Lord is there is freedom.

So all of us who have had that veil removed,

can see and reflect the glory of the Lord. And

the Lord, who is the Spirit, makes us more and

more like him as we are changed into his glorious image.

So when you read verse seventeen, were you singing it? Yes,

where the spirit of the Lord is there is free you.

Such a good song.

So there's a lot in here, oh boy. And the

first is he talks about, hey, we don't need to

write recommendations for ourselves, because you know, our power is

with God, not in ourselves. And he's he's referring to

the false teachers who actually claim, uh actually they were

walking around with these false letters of recommendation to falsely

verify or or you know, give validity to their claims

of having, you know, being empowered. And so Paul wrote

a couple of recommendations, one to Phoebe, one to Timothy.

Uh So he actually wrote recommendations before. And what he's

really saying here is he's saying like, hey, I don't

I'm not like one of those guys that walks around

and says, hey, if you don't believe me, here's here's

this letter of recommendation. So he's written them before, but

he's What he's really saying is he's saying like, hey,

our power is evident through God, not in our you

know of ourselves.

And the proof of the effectiveness of our ministry is

your changed lives.

Right, Right.

Have you ever sat the listening to a quote unquote expert.

They wrote a book and they sold a bunch of

copies and now they're getting trotted out on stage as

the expert, and then you go, dude, you have like

zero results. There's a particularly famous author that I think

about every time for whatever reason, I've wound up being

around them, and they're a theorist, but they talk like

they're an expert. There's a big difference between being a

theorist and being an expert.

Right, So people are like, oh, we should all go

do it, he.

Says, and I'm like, he has no fruit. It's a

neat idea. Somebody should try the idea. But you can't

just suddenly overturn all of what you've been doing based

on this idea because he's an expert, just because he

has a PhD after his name or whatever. So what

Paul is saying is, it's not about the recommendations. It's

not about the paper I have hanging on the wall,

or my degrees or all the commendations I can get.

The proof of the fact that God is moving is

your changed lives. And so I think one of the

most important things, as we have so much information available

to us, sometimes people just get big social media platforms

or big promotional platforms and they've they suddenly come out

of nowhere as some kind of expert. My question always is,

whether it's in marriage, or it's in raising your kids

or managing your finances, is what's the proof?

Right?

Where? Where is their results? I don't care what you're claiming.

I want to see your results.

You know. It reminds me so much of long A

while back, somebody wanted to wanted me to hire somebody,

and they kept on coming to me with this guy's resume,

and they said, oh, this guy is going to be

a great like number two for you, and he's he's

just awesome, and here's here's here's why he's so awesome.

And I and and I just like rebuttaled and and

I just said, well, then how come nobody follows him?

Just tell me that, right, because he looks good on paper, right.

But the fact remains is that the fruit of his

life is that his resumes may say one thing, but

it's just not the case.

He's a great leader. He just has no followers.

He's a great leader of no one. So it's like,

it's like and listen, it's just what it is, right.

I'm sure, I'm sure like he has other things happening

in his life, just not that particular job description, right,

And that's fine because we all have different roles. But anyway,

but that's what arises me because it's not about the resume.

It's not about the letter of recommendation. It's about the

you know, just like you said, it's got to be fruit.

It's got to be you know, changed lives, it's got

to be results.

I got I got interested, you know, I do goofy things,

get interested in weird things. And I was trading global

currencies and I love the four X concepts and it's

always interesting to me. But I was doing it on

a trader account. It wasn't I wasn't using money. I

was just practicing learning how to do it. And so

I was doing tons of research and I'd read like

five books on this and all this, and I came

across this guy that I liked his ideas. Ideas were

really really interesting. And he had this course that he's

selling for you know, a thousand dollars or but right now,

if I hurry right away, I can get it for

two hundred dollars. And there's all this stuff. And then

I was very interested in it. And then he set

himself up as a world class expert, and he had

this massive social media following. But when I got the

digging into it, I discovered that, sure, he made a

couple million dollars last year, but almost no money trading.

When you finally found his trading numbers, he barely beat

the norm, right, barely beat it. But he was making

millions of dollars selling his course. Right. Well, dude, the

fruit is so if I want to learn how to

sell a course, I should take your course.

Right.

But that's hilarious.

Right, And so he's kind of challenging this idea that, hey,

we don't need any proof other than the actual results

of God's changed you know, God changing your life. So

then he gets into comparing the beauty and the glory

of the law. And sometimes I think those of us

that love the grace of God, we kind of shoot

down and make negative the law right in such a

horrible way. And he's talking about it was beautiful. It's

just that grace is even more beautiful, right, And that's

a real challenge for us to keep those two things

in perspective.

Well, I love his I love his comparison of the veil,

you know. And it's great because he says, just like

Moses when he comes down off the mountain, and he's

referring to the story of Moses would actually meet with

God and then when he came down off the mountain,

his face would glow. Think about this, I mean, we

read about it. You may know the story from you know,

from you know, learning about it as a kid, but

just think about like what that must have been like.

And it says that he his face would glow because

he talked with God so much they had to actually

put a veil on his face. And so everybody who's

listening to Paul, they know that story. And so he's

talking about that veil and then he sort of uses

that as a comparison and says like it's just like,

you know, think about it. It's it's he's referring to

a veil that that sort of hides God's glory. Now

they did it because it was so bright. But but

but still the purpose of that veil was to get

in the way of the viewer to see the glory

of God. And so he's using that as a veil.

And he's saying like, hey, it's those people who hear

the word of God and and and they reject the gospel.

It's like there's a veil. And he says, and when

when they when they trust Christ, that veil is removed, right,

But but for now they just can't see it. They

just can't see it. And some of these veils, if

you think about it, they're self imposed, right, Like we

can we can put up a you know, today I

would say instead of a veil, I would say, people

put up a wall, right, And it's just the wall

of doubt or the wall of skepticism, or the wall

of like being angry with God or you know, we

built all sorts of kind of walls. Well, Paul is

talking about veils, and uh, and I thought that was

really cool.

Yeah, So you know, Moses' proximity to God changed him.

That's what it was. That he got so close to

God and nobody else was that close. He got so

close to God it it changed him. And so then

he covered himself because people couldn't look at him. It

was too shocking. But we do know that that glory

faded over.

Time because he said, naturally it was going to face.

Yeah.

Yeah, so he keeps he keeps this veil so people

don't see the fading of this this radiance. And what

he's referencing here is the beauty of the law. God

gave the people of Israel the best way to live.

That that that's what he did. So there are all

the laws with regard to sacrifices, certainly, and that was

a religious law, but he also gave them a ton

of laws about social guidance, about health, about just how

to manage, you know, the the business of life as well.

And what he was saying was listen when you when

I codified these things for you, if you will follow them,

you're going to have a peaceful society. You're going to

have an equitable society. You're going to have a society

that works for the betterment of everybody, not just yourself.

But you're going to be able to prosper because you're

going to be free. But what happened was people then

began to make the law the point. And then what

he says now is instead this when the law became

the point, suddenly everybody realizes there's no way I can

keep this whole law. It's impossible. So then there's all

this guilt, there's all this oppression. What was supposed to

be beautiful became too heavy of a burden. And then

he says, but the new way, through Christ his grace

takes us to a whole other level. Now no longer

is it about us trying to keep every letter of

every rule. Instead it's about living every moment of our

life to please God.

Yeah.

And he said that this brings us to a whole

other level of glory. Yeah.

And it's so interesting about the law because even today,

if you walk around to a person and you know,

if a person doesn't know how to get to heaven,

and if a person is just you know, under the

belief system that you know, at the end of our life,

are good has to outweigh our bad, right, those people

who don't realize that it's not in trusting in ourselves

and our good behavior. The Bible goes out of its

way to say that it's just about trusting in Jesus

and the sacrifice that was done for us. So anyway,

all that to say, those people have a tendency to say, well,

you know, I've lived a good life and I've tried

to keep the Ten Commandments, and they sort of keep

the Ten Commandments as the bar. What's so interesting is

is that over and over the Bible tells us that

the law was actually given to us to show us

that we're sinful. The law was actually given. It says

the purpose of the law was to show us that

we're sinners, that we can't make it to heaven by ourselves,

that there's absolutely no way to keep the full law.

That's the purpose of the law. And then it says

that you know, it led to death. It actually talks

about how the over and over he says the old

law was death. And what he's meaning is not to

your point, not not the beauty of the law. He's

referring to. It leads to death, meaning you can't perform

to get your way into heaven, and so you're going

to leading to death means you're going to fail every

single time. It's a it's a separation from God. It's

it's it's.

Not the answer, and so which wasn't a mistake on

God's part. As a matter of fact, in the Book

of Romans, Paul says God did that on purpose to

show us how bad we needed God's grace, right right,

He took it. He took a performance away from us.

It's not possible for us to perform perfectly. He took

that away from us so that we knew we needed

God's grace. You know.

It's also great about this veil thing, is that uh,

those who were you know in the first century when

Paul was writing, knew that that Herod's temple had a veil,

and and and so you know there's you know, and

by the way, we're going to get into next uh tomorrow,

we're going to get into I think or tomorrow the

next day where Paul talks about how our bodies are

like earthly tents, right and and so so it's like

a so there's like the law of there's the tent

of the meeting place, which is what Moses was a

part of. And then Solomon built uh, you know somewhere

around in chronicles, I guess the tent was, you know,

somewhere around uh Uh, you know, Leviticus or so, and

then chronicles, they get instructions. They build. Solomon's temple lasts

for about five hundred years. Uh, gets ransacked by Nebukid Nezar,

and then Zerubabul comes along, right, and then he decides

to sort of reconstruct one that wasn't as glorious at all, right,

and that lasted for a little bit, but then that

get trembled, you know, and then uh, and then five

hundred years later Herrod builds this temple and in the

inside the middle of the temple was the Holy holies,

and the veil was the thing. And of those of

us who know, and you read the New Testament, when

Jesus was on the cross on the ninth houry cries out,

he gives up the ghost. And then what happens is

it says the veil was torn in two, and the

veil represented the separation between God and man. So God

existed as an as one place as you know. It's

just he had an address. God had an address, right,

and the veils ripped into meaning like God is now everywhere,

you know, everybody has access to the Holy of Holies. Hebrews,

I think nine talks all about that, And so think

about just the absolute brilliance of Paul talking about this veil.

Not only is it a veil that separates us from

seeing God's glory according to Moses, but it's also a

veil that separates us symbolically from going into God's presence

as made possible by Jesus's death. Now we can do it.

It's the veil Herod's veil. Isn't that cool?

And so then the Holy Spirit leads us into God's presence, right,

And that's what So that's why he says, where the

spirit of the Lord is, there's freedom. This freedom isn't

just freedom now to run amuck and do whatever you

want to do. As a matter of fact, this freedom

makes us more and more like Jesus as we are

changed into his glorious image. God's goal as we're free

from this law of death, his goal is now for

us to become more and more and more like Jesus.

And that's one of the benefits of spending time every

day in God's words.

Yeah, that's great. Well, I think that is a great

place to end. And tomorrow we're going to be talking

about jars of clay.

It's going to be amazing.

We'll see you then.