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Pastor Josh here.

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

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on March 9th here at
Middletown Baptist Church.

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

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

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And we're looking at here this
week the.

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The credentials of a certified
Christ follower.

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

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Corinth.

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

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church.

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And so Paul is defending his ministry.

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He's ultimately defending the
truth of Jesus Christ.

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

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you have to have some credentials.

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And these false teachers were
not matching up to that.

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These false teachers were
seeking after the things of this

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

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

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

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He doesn't talk about his education.

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He doesn't talk about his wisdom.

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He doesn't talk about his talents.

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

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

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out into the ocean, being
shipwrecked, all these different

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things he talks about.

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

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

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in Christ instead of our own
good works.

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And so ultimately, Paul
recognizes that the biggest burden

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

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points everyone back to the
power of Christ.

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

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

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reward in the.

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

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on this earth.

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

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The credentials of a certified
Christ follower.

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

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

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the sermon on Mondays here on
the podcast channel.

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We hope that you have a
wonderful weekend.

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God bless.