December 6, 2025 | 2 Corinthians 10-13
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Introduction and Christmas Coffee Event
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Hey everybody. Welcome back to another edition of the Daily Bible podcast. Happy Christmas Coffee Ladies. Yes. 95 Ladies registered for that 95. Wow, that's a lot of ladies. Yeah. Yeah, and I think Amanda said there's 96 seats that we have in the room. Whoa. So just barely gonna fit everybody just squeezing in there.
I hear they're gonna have all these different condiments and things to add inside your coffee. Like hot chocolate. Yes. And whipped cream and all sorts of different milks. All kinds. Creamers of milks. I feel like we should just do black coffee and make them learn to drink it. Just toughen up, ladies. Yeah.
Come on. Yeah, come on. I don't think that would go over very well. Well. I don't know if you can call it coffee after you douse it with 95% creamer. Yeah. Well, that's fair. That's fair. But they enjoy it. I'm big deal. Anyways, she's I made us teaching out of Romans 1513, I believe on, joy, peace, and hope, and how they can only be found in Christ.
So, oh, that's good. Yeah, I agree.
Men's Christmas Gathering and Registration
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And then a week from this Saturday, a week from today, we also have [00:01:00] our men's Christmas gathering, except it's not about coffee. Nope. It's about brisket or krist for that matter. Christmas brisket affectionately referred to as. Cri, gett, cri gett. Yeah. Yeah. But men, we'd love for you to register for that and get signed up for that.
I know it's not of our nature to do things like that and we typically think, ah, we'll get around to it. We would love for you to do that today. If you haven't yet registered, we'd love for you to get online and register today. For that. They've actually done a really good job at this good job, and I'm so thankful that a lot of guys have already done their due diligence.
We have 40 right now as of today. That's great, man. Who are already registered and we're so thankful for you guys. Appreciate that. A whole bunch. Yes. Let's double that number. Yes, and let's bring our friends, our neighbors. This is a good one to bring people to. I'm not gonna be doing any special. Come to Jesus sermon.
Yeah. All of our sermons are that way, I think. But we are gonna have a lot of fun together. We're gonna have some food and some games. It'll be a really great time to get to know people in the church, other men. And there will be a 25 minute sermon. Hold me to that please. A [00:02:00] 25 minute sermonette on.
I promise you this is gonna make sense when you get there. May not make sense when I tell you right now. Trusting God through trials. Okay. For Christmas. Yes, I know, I get it. But trust me. We'll have some fun talking about that. We're gonna be looking at part of the life of job as we work through that this Christmas season, because we're like the brisket sometimes.
Sometimes God takes us low and slow through the trial on the smoker of life. Wow. And you're a preacher. We have to keep I did not think of that, but if I do use it, I will credit you for it. Well you're gonna have to now because it's on the podcast, so you think so? I have to. Okay. You know, I'll sneak it in there somewhere out there.
Yeah, so Christmas season, a lot of fun stuff going on. We're excited for that. And we've got our kids Christmas choir coming up. A week from tomorrow. That's gonna be Sunday the 14th. We have our Christmas Eve service coming up as well on December 24th this year. Oh yeah, we're gonna do it then.
Yeah. 4:00 PM going for something different. Yep. Christmas Eve. But hey I was gonna bring this up yesterday and then we had so many chapters to get through, so I wanna bring it up today.
Reading and Retention Techniques
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[00:03:00] We talk about reading, we recommend books on here a lot. But I was curious to get inside your. Process of what you do when you're reading, when you're reading a book not a fiction book necessarily, not something that you're like, okay, I'm reading this for fun before I fall asleep.
But when you're in your office and you're sitting down to read something, you're going, I want this to impact. Now I wanna be different as a result of reading this book. Talk us through what some of your processes there as far as retention and how you go about that. Oh, I have so many things that I've been doing throughout the years.
It's kind of an iterative process, but I'll just tell you maybe the three things that I do that are, I think, most impactful. And the first one is I actively read by engaging with it. So I highlights, I'll make notes. I will, and I do this primarily on my iPad. I do that there for the second reason I'll come to, but the first one is I'm engaging with it.
I try to not just read it and take in the words, but to understand what the guy's saying, what the argument is and why it matters. And so I'll highlight things that are especially relevant to me or things that I think might even be helpful when I'm preaching a sermon In the future, I will always find interesting [00:04:00] anecdotes or illustrations, and I'll save those.
I'll find a way to keep those now because the second step of this process for me is to find a way to. Revisit some of that content down the line. I use a service called Read Wise. It does that for me. So it'll take my highlights from my Kindle books and send 'em back to me 5, 15, 20 at a time. And just remind me, oh, do you remember when you read this in this book?
Mm-hmm. And at that point, I can now choose to either take that passage or that selection and I can choose to master it where I can find a way to memorize. Or at least ingest it well enough so that I know it or I can say, ah, I don't wanna see this highlight again, not useful and move past it. And throughout the books that I read, some of them I want more of that, and others I want less of it.
And I can tell my read wise to do exactly that. So read Wise is a big part of my process and really for me, it's a matter of just reading it, making notes, thinking about it and finding ways to implement it. And some of the things that I do, like my teaching or my preaching. Yeah, read Wise is great. I use that as well.
They've got another app associated with them called Reader, which if you are, if you follow Tim Cha's and he sends out his daily a la carte with all these different articles, or if you see [00:05:00] things online that you're like, oh, I wanna read that, I don't necessarily have the time to do it right now.
Reader is super helpful 'cause you can export that straight into your reader app. And then when you go into the Reader app I appreciate two things. Number one, it gets rid of all the ads and all the other junk that's on the website. So it's just the pure article for you. And then number two, when you're highlighting.
You can, I guess that's a second thing you can highlight. You can inter interact with the text in the article in reader. And then number three, it connects read wise so that it will even grab some of the things that you've read in these internet articles and bring those back as quotes later on for you as well.
Yeah, such a great tool. It's, I've been using that now for, I dunno, five, 10 years. Yeah. I, the one that told me about it. I love this app. It has been, and that's probably the main reason why I will often buy a Kindle book before the paper book, even though I love paper. Yeah, the Kindle book just makes it easier to sync all those highlights and get them outta my book so that I can have a really good skeleton of the content that I found helpful in the book, including I can use it to structure the chapters and all sorts of fun stuff.
Yeah I've recently, just over the last couple days, I actually watched this video on how [00:06:00] to. Reads who you actually retain. And the guy on the video was talking about mind mapping in books as well. And so Oh, Justin son. Yeah, Justin son. There we go. Yeah. So I'm starting to do that a little bit with a book that I've read before that I'm going back and reading back through again.
But that's really been an, a fascinating process because one of the things I've disciplined myself there to do is to read the section first and then. Step back and think about it. Yeah. And kind of process it at that point. Super helpful because he talks about this optimum window that we have where it, there's overload in reading and there's under load in reading.
Yeah. And finding that optimum window there where sometimes we can read just too much and that's where I'm guilty. I'll sit down, I'll read a book through and it's. I'll be highlighting and interacting with things, but I'm not stopping to think about how does all this work, how does it connect? Where does it fit in the different compartments of what I already know and everything.
And so he does a really good job. Justin Sung, if you want that video, it's on YouTube. It's how to read so that you actually retain information. It's about a 35 minute video on there. It's super helpful. I'm just getting into it, but I'm liking it so far. I think what Justin gets at. Is what Christians have been talking about for thousands of years [00:07:00] now, and that's called meditation, right?
Reading, not simply to get it through, but to consider its relevance and find places where it means things to you, or even find areas where you're challenged and confronted by what it says. I think that's, obviously meditation has been practiced for so long because of that very thing. It becomes real and personable to you, whereas if you're just reading passively, you're not gonna get any of the benefit, especially when it comes to your reading of scripture.
You have to read slowly and thoughtfully and inquisitively if you can. Challenge yourself by reading the text inquisitively and thoughtfully to what you just said, to pause and reflect on what you just read. You will get so much more outta scripture. And what's fascinating is that there are so many things that you read over that you take for granted, where if you just thought about it for a second, your mind would be blown because there's so much there.
And I have so many questions. Every time I, you. We talk on our, we talk on the podcast. I have questions for you. Like, oh, what about, what about, and often I'm thinking about, okay, what is a normal reader gonna ask questions about? Sometimes though I'm asking you questions like, I have this question, right?
This is not, this is not for y'all, this is for me, right? I wanna know, so. The slower you read, the more questions [00:08:00] you'll have, the better questions you'll have and the better answers you'll get. So I affirm that heartily, yeah. Read thoughtfully, read reflectively, read meditatively, and you'll improve your reading for sure.
Yeah. Yeah. And also know that the goal is not finish the book as fast as you can, especially the Bible, right? If you finish the book over however much time, but you get more out of it because you're reading thoughtfully, that's way better than speed reading the book and not having any clue what it's been about.
And suggest that the reading you're doing itself, if you're not reading a high quality book, Chuck it. Yeah. If the book's not scratching the itch, get rid of it because it doesn't finish it. It doesn't warrant that kind of time and attention. Right. I remember hearing Doug Wilson, one of his books, Wordsmithy Wanted something like that.
He was talking about reading in order to write better, and he said something that has changed my life forever. He said, you, you don't need to read to remember you. You read to be shaped. Hmm. So even if you don't remember things, that's fine. Some things don't warrant that kind of attention and reflection.
Yeah. But by and large, you're shaped by it even if you never really know how. Yeah. Well, let's get into reading God's word together, second Corinthians 10 through 13. Well, we're commenting [00:09:00] on it. We're commenting on it. You're reading it? Yeah, we're all reading it. Hopefully you're reading it before you get to us.
Yeah. Chapter 10. Paul goes a little bit on the defensive here. He's basically saying, look, those that are contradicting us. Those that are teaching against what we're saying here. We've got a response for them. In fact, he's gonna say in verse five, he's gonna say, we're gonna destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to Christ, being ready to punish every disobedience when your obedience is complete.
And so. I hear this a lot of times, take every thought captive to Christ as something that's about personal sanctification. And I understand that and I think that's good. That's good to be disciplined with our thought life and not let our thoughts run wild. But I think here in the context, Paul's saying, when you hear a thought.
When a thought is introduced to you and you're wondering, is this in agreement with the gospel? Is this true according to God's word? That's what it looks like for us to take every thought captive and make it obedient to Christ. We're gonna say, I'm only gonna entertain the thoughts that are in agreement with God's word.
And so this is in chapter 10, really in a lot of ways about apologetics. This is one of the clearest [00:10:00] examples of where we see a use of apologetics in the scriptures. There are those that are gonna argue that are. Apologetics don't save anyone. And I understand what they mean by that. I do. I get what they mean by that.
Because the gospel alone saves a hundred percent. It's kinda like what we talked about in second Peter, or in First Peter chapter three, when the quiet and submissive attitude of a wife can lead to the salvation of her husband. Well, the wife isn't actually, her conduct isn't saving the husband.
The gospel is saving the husband. But there are other elements that can come alongside to help in the process of evangelism. And I think Paul's pointed to that here by saying, we're gonna destroy any. Any challenge to the veracity of scripture. And so as Christians, that's part of the reason why we do things like study apologetic arguments because we wanna be ready to have those engagements, those debates, and to remove the obstacles that are preventing somebody from entertaining whether or not they would bow the knee to Christ in trust and repentance.
Chapter 11, then Paul's going to deal with more of the opposition. He's gonna defend himself. He is going on the defense here. Not in an arrogant way, but basically [00:11:00] in a way to say, look I'm zealous for you. I'm concerned that these false teachers are getting to you. So let me again remind you of who I am and what I've gone through.
Kind of like what you were saying back in chapter six. That he was enduring all the suffering because he loves them. And he's gonna go to that again here in chapter 11 and point to really a, an unparalleled resume of suffering. But before he even gets there notice in verse 13 he says, such men are false Apostles, deceitful workers disguising themselves as apostles of Christ.
And no wonder for even Satan. Himself disguises or disguises himself as an angel of light. So it's no surprise that the servants disguised themselves as servants of righteousness.
Discussion on Discernment and False Teachers
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Pastor Rod, what are your thoughts on a Christian's? Sometimes they're known as discernment bloggers. I guess discernment bloggers is an old term 'cause nobody's really blogging anymore.
But the discernment social media influencers, guys that are out there and calling out other people saying, this person's bad, this person's bad, this person's bad, this person's bad by names. Challenging them on that. Some pastors have done that as well. Is that. Is this supporting that? Should we do that?
Because Paul here is saying, [00:12:00] Hey, look, these people are false teachers though. He doesn't call them out by name, and he even says they're just like Satan. They're disguised as angels of light when really they're messengers of Satan. I think if you look at the whole corpus of Paul's teaching, it's definitely replete with a calling out of unbelievers.
False teachers. He uses names on occasion and he's un unafraid of doing that. He knows it's a necessary part of pastoral ministry, which is to say, here are the wolves. Beware because you're sheep. I would say that's necessary helpful and it's. Part of what it is to be a pastor. However, if someone says about themselves, I have the gift of discernment.
When I listen to a pastor, I can tell right away if he's on the straight and narrow or if he's introducing philosophies of man, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I get nervous about a person like that because they self authorize and they self-police things that perhaps would be better. To the larger body of the church to do together someone who's naturally inclined toward that.
They're a ISTs, they're a fighter. And Paul warns us against being around people like that. They like picking fights. They're unafraid of jumping into the [00:13:00] fray. And sometimes they're helpful. Sometimes often it's unhelpful because they come out with strong opinions that are usually ill-informed. And again, sometimes they're wrong.
I'm not gonna say that everything they say is bad, but that kind of spirit is usually not a blessing to the church. There are people that do it. Well, but those people are far and few between. And so I would say by and large, a Christian who has discernment is going to recognize that discernment is best practiced in the church.
And there are some people whose platform is built on discernment and maybe God gives you that. That's a rare person, though. That's a rare person. And better for us to do that kind of thing in the context of the local church with other believers who can help calibrate us and even correct us when our filter is broken or a afar.
Measuring stick is malfunctioning in some way. It's better in the church and it's better to do it amongst other brothers and sisters who can help you temper your discernment with grace. And that's often what's missing with some of these guys. They can say the true thing, they say it in such a way that is often unhelpful.
Now, there is a time and a place for that. Not gonna say it's never [00:14:00] okay, but by and large, again, general rule of thumb, it's best in the church. It's best not on a platform where you have an X account and you're calling people out. It's better within the church, with it, with brothers and sisters who can help temper your personality.
And your quirks. Yeah. And the thing that was unique about the Apostle Paul was he wasn't jumping on to your point X or Instagram or anything like that and calling these people out to a broad audience.
Paul's Defense and Suffering
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He was identifying people that were a direct threat to those churches that he was writing to. And I think for us as pastors, that's one of the things that we're gonna ask is, okay, is this public enough and widespread enough that we feel like we need to address it because it's out there and it could be a danger to our church, to our flock, so we're gonna address it with our church and our flock in that context.
Yeah. Or is this a threat from within the church that we need to address, that we need to call out, that we need to identify because it's a threat to our church? Yeah, so it's not, I'm gonna just throw this out there to all of Christendom because all of Christendom needs my opinion on this guy's teaching, but it's more about, man, my concern is our flock here and is, if there's somebody out there that's a wolf and sheep.
Clothing that's putting themselves out as a Christian that has a growing voice and a growing [00:15:00] platform. And we would sit here and say, man, we're concerned that they may get into the algorithms of our people. Then we're gonna say, Hey, you need to be aware of this person out there because of this reason, this reason, this reason because we love our flock.
Not because we're gonna be out there going, Hey, I think everybody else needs to hear our opinion on this. You also have to ask the question too, are they drawing lines at the right place? The sermon bloggers are really good at drawing lines that, I guess it's helpful. They're creating a line where maybe there's not a lot of clear lines.
Sometimes those lines are necessary. Often they're unnecessarily divisive. I think we're learning a lot from the kind of lines that we drew during COVID when there was racism and, mm-hmm. Or at least. Supposed racism and different churches are breaking off with other churches for the same reason. And we found a discernment blogger who went under a pseudonym.
Yep. And then he was dishonored pulled away from his ministry because he was taking shots at fellow Christians who were drawing lines in areas that he thought were unfaithful lines. And that's where I haven't bad taste of my mouth from these things, because by. For the most part, we're [00:16:00] not seeing it exercised
well. What we do see is often someone flaming another Christian because they sincerely and biblically hold to a belief that differs from another person's. That's a hard place for us to be, and I think we're in a very dangerous place as a Christian Church when that's our primary form of engagement.
That's what X encourages. That's what Facebook encourages. 'cause if it's gonna keep your attention, get you riled up, boom. They gotcha. So you have to be very careful here. I do agree Satan disguised himself as an angel of light. So you gotta be careful that you're not just listening and following anybody who has a podcast, yours truly included.
Right? Follow us only if we're faithful to Christ by his word. And that's the standard for every person that you listen to, no matter who they are. Right? And it. Needs to be seasoned with humility. And that's what I think I appreciate so much here about Paul, is Paul goes onto this and say, look, here's what I wanna boast in.
If I'm gonna boast, I'm gonna boast in these things. And he goes on and he talks about all the suffering, all the things that he's gone through. And he's appealing to this resume of going, this is what I've endured. I'm not doing this for myself. I'm not doing this for
my own credit, my own reputation out there. In fact, he [00:17:00] says in verse 30, if I must boast, I'm gonna boast of the things that show my weakness. Which leads then into chapter 12 of another really well-known section with Paul, where he talks about this idea of his weakness and he capitalizes on that, and he goes on to talk about what God had provided for him, which he calls.
Thorn in the flesh. He calls it a messenger of Satan. And we talked about it last year and we've talked about it before this we're not clear exactly what this thorn was. There's different views out there. But the point is God gave this to Paul, Paul says, to keep me from becoming conceited.
So to keep me humble, I had this messenger this thorn in the flesh. And Paul says three times he prayed that God would remove it for, from him. And three times God made it clear, no it's not gonna be taken away. And so Paul got to this place where he was. In his soul, convinced that what God was doing here was to show him that he needed a greater dependence on him.
And that's where Paul says, he said to me, my grace is sufficient for you. My powers made perfect in weakness. And so here Even James talks about that when he talks about rejoicing in the trials. [00:18:00] And even here because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was giving me in the flesh, he said, a messenger from Satan to harass me, to keep me from being conceited. So there's almost like a dual, like this is a messenger from Satan, but it's also from the Lord, the Lord's allowing it.
And so it's a little bit of that job kind of scene going on in, in Paul's life here. Yeah, it seems like God's the actor here. It's a messenger of Satan from God. God's using this messenger to do good for Paul. So even though Satan's desire is to destroy him, hinder him, harm him, God's desire.
Which will prevail is to do good de Paul to strengthen him. In fact, to weaken him enough to cause him to boast in Christ, which I think is the point. But it's interesting to me that God does allow Satan to oppress Christians still. Yeah. I don't take this to be a one-time thing. Probably is a Christian somewhere around the world that.
God is allowing Satan to oppress and to to at least harm, but not to the detriment of the ultimate victory, belonging to Christ. He's gonna do something good through that for sure. But here it happens. For sure, for sure. Chapter [00:19:00] 12 goes on and Paul appeals to his love for the church there in Corinth.
And again I appreciate this. Afresh because of how strong Paul came out against the Corinthian church, and rightly so in first Corinthians, that the Corinthian church had a lot of growth, had a lot of work that they had to do, and yet Paul was willing to love them. He didn't grow impatient with them.
And this is a challenge, for us is to say, okay, with those that we want to see more godliness in to, to continue to love, continue to pursue them even, in chapter 12 here in verse 14, he says, for the third time, I'm ready to come to you, and I will not be a burden for, I seek not what is yours but you.
And he says, for children are not obligated to save up for their parents, but parents for their children, I will most gladly spend and be spent for your souls. Which I love that phrase that Paul is just saying, I love you this much. I'm here to pour myself out for you. And so whatever that looks like, whatever cost, I'll exhaust myself in service of you because I care for you.
And you just see the heart of Paul for the Corinthian church here, which again, Paul's. Desire is to see the church built up. That's the ex, that's the expressed purpose of the gifts. That's the expressed purpose of the [00:20:00] pastor. That's the reason he has authority to lead the church. He is called, all of us are really, but the pastor and preacher, the apostle in particular, called to build up the church.
This is, I wanna say this is a big part of why we're here. If. Our grand purpose in life is to glorify God and I would contend to you that way. We do that is we love God and we love others. That's done by building the church up. Yeah. We do both of those things. We accomplish both of those tasks by seeing the church built up, which means that this should be one of our constant preoccupations.
How do I serve my church best? What can I do? Best support the growth and the furthering of the church's mission, to love the people that I'm entrusted to and to see her continue to make efforts at becoming more and more like Christ. And that's one of the reasons I love Second Cor. First and Corinthians.
She's a messed up church, but there are so many good things that Paul says to them that I'm so thankful that they were so messed up that warranted two of Paul's letters because I find so much satisfaction in reading them. So much richness in these books.
Final Encouragements and Conclusion
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Yeah, Paul doesn't want to leave them feeling like, oh, okay, so everything's [00:21:00] great.
We don't have to worry about anything though. 'cause in chapter 13, in verse five, he says to them as he's laying in the plane and closing the letter, he says, Hey, examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith and test yourselves. Or do you not realize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you unless indeed you fail to meet the test.
So Paul's just saying, Hey, there is cause to stop. And really in light of everything that I've said. Examine yourself to see whether or not you're really walking with Christ. If you don't see the evidence there, don't take my words of saying, Hey, I love you and I desire you not the things from you.
As me saying a blanket statement, everybody there is. Okay. Paul says there's still a responsibility that, that we as believers have to make sure that we are there. We make sure that we're walking, in line with what Christ has called us to. This is similar to Second Peter chapter one when Peter says, Hey, confirm you're calling an election by practicing all of these different things.
And so we talked about works in yesterday's episode in the beam of seed of Christ there's another element of our works. That's another motivation for us to pursue them because they can give us great confidence in our standing with Christ today. If we look at our lives and we see the. Evidence of God's spirit at work within our [00:22:00] lives, the fruit of the spirit, the virtues of Second Corinthians chapter or second Peter, chapter one.
Then there's reason for us to have confidence that we are walking with Christ. And so Paul's encouraging them, Hey, make sure that you are in the faith. That's a good thing for you to be doing. And then he ends en encouraging them. In verse 11, he says, finally, brother, rejoice, aim for restoration, comfort one another, agree with one another, and live in peace, and the God of love and peace be with you all.
Just an another encouraging conclusion from the apostle there that has so much to do with the letter itself, that going back to one Corinthians the desire for unity, the desire for purity in the church. Aim for restoration. Comforting one another. Back to chapter one, comforting, agreeing with one another, living in peace.
Paul's revisiting a lot of these same themes that he's covered with them in the, these letters. So let's pray and we'll be done with this episode. Lord we thank you for Paul's example and we just pray that we would be like Paul in the sense of loving each other well, that we would be willing to spend and be spent for the good of our brothers and sisters in Christ, that we would be willing to remain humble.
Whether that be through a thorn in the flesh or just [00:23:00] through constant awareness of your greatness and our finitude and how much we need to boast in Christ and not boast in our own strength. And so thanks for the example that we have in the Apostle Paul and in these letters, first and second Corinthians.
And we are grateful for our church family. Grateful for the Christmas coffee today. Just pray that you'd bear fruit through the time that our ladies spent together and we pray for a great weekend as we anticipate gathering together as the church tomorrow. We pray this all in Jesus name. Amen. Amen.
Keep reading your Bibles. Tune in again tomorrow for another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. We'll see you. Bye.
Bernard: ​Well, thank you for listening to another episode of the Daily Bible Podcast! We're honored to have you join us. This is a ministry of Compass Bible Church in north Texas. You can find out more information about our Church at compassntx.org. We would love for you to leave a review, to rate, or to share this podcast on whatever platform you're listening on, and we hope to see you again tomorrow for another episode of the Daily Bible Podcast.
PJ: Yeah. I would agree with everything that you said