Sunday, December 11, 2016
Dear MLEPC Members and Friends:
On this coming third Sunday in Advent, we look forward to listening to the proclamation of the Scripture by our Teacher in Residence, Dr. Bruce Bickel. He will continue in our current sermon series, The Start of Something New, by describing to us the riches and blessings of the New Covenant in Jesus Christ with his sermon entitled, "Triumphant Living." A very good way to prepare for his message is by reading, meditating, and praying over the passage from which Dr. Bickel will preach, 2 Corinthians 2:1-3:6.
2CO 2:12
Now when I [Paul] went to Troas to preach the gospel of Christ and found that the Lord had opened a door for me,
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I still had no peace of mind, because I did not find my brother Titus there. So I said good-by to them and went on to Macedonia.
2CO 2:14
But thanks be to God, who always leads us in
triumphal procession
in Christ and through us spreads everywhere the fragrance of the knowledge of him.
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For we are to God the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing.
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To the one we are the smell of death; to the other, the fragrance of life. And who is equal to such a task?
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Unlike so many, we do not peddle the word of God for profit. On the contrary, in Christ we speak before God with sincerity, like men sent from God.
2CO 3:1
Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Or do we need, like some people, letters of recommendation to you or from you?
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You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by everybody.
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You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.
2CO 3:4
Such confidence as this is ours through Christ before God.
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Not that we are competent in ourselves to claim anything for ourselves, but our competence comes from God.
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He has made us competent as ministers of a
new covenant
--not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.
Having given this great passage a first reading, allow me to remind us of six good questions to ask about this text as we go back to read it again.
- What does the passage say? Do I have a good comprehension of the words and sentences?
- What does the passage mean? Do I understand what the writer [Paul] is communicating to those who first received and read these words [Corinthian Church]?
- What does the passage mean for me? How would the Spirit apply it to my life?
- What response is God calling me to make in my life based on the passage?
- What does the passage mean for our church? How would the Spirit apply it to our life together as fellow Christians?
- What response is God calling our church family to make based on the passage?
I suggest that if we read this passage through closely enough to answer these six questions, we'll come ready to listen to Dr. Bickel's sermon on Sunday morning. And we'll already have been blessed by exercising our minds, hearts, and actions to be both hearers and doers of the Word of God. May it be so whenever we take up and read our Bibles.
Advent Blessings,
Pastor Tim
