48 sermon' topics for church growth

3. The Role of Ministry: Paul speaks of the ministry of reconciliation (2 Cor. 5:18-20). This emphasizes the importance of Christian ministry in the context of a society where there were divisions and conflicts. He calls believers to be ambassadors for Christ and to actively participate in the process of reconciliation between people and God.

4. The Culture of Shame and Glory: Greek culture placed great importance on public image and reputation. Paul mentions that he is not ashamed of his preaching (2 Cor. 5:12). This may be a response to criticism of his authority and ministry, which also reflects the cultural norms of the time.

5. Judgment and Evaluation: Paul speaks of us all having to stand before the judgment seat of Christ (2 Cor. 5:10). This idea of a final judgment was also part of a cultural context where there were different ideas about justice and consequences for actions.

Literary context

The literary context of 2 Corinthians includes several important aspects that help us understand its content, structure, and purpose:

1. Background and Relationship with the Corinthians: 2 Corinthians is a continuation of 1 Corinthians, which Paul wrote in response to problems and issues that arose in the church at Corinth. In 1 Corinthians, Paul addressed a variety of issues, including moral issues, divisions in the church, and questions about spiritual gifts. 2 Corinthians reflects the further development of Paul’s relationship with this congregation, his attempts to reestablish trust and authority after criticism of his ministry.

2. Defense of Apostolic Authority: In this letter, Paul addresses those who questioned his apostolic status and authority. He defends his ministry by emphasizing his devotion to Christ and his suffering for the sake of the gospel (2 Cor. 11:23-29). This defense is a key element of the text and helps us understand why Paul uses personal examples and testimonies.

3. Themes of Suffering and Comfort: Paul speaks of the suffering he experiences for the sake of the gospel and how God comforts him (2 Cor. 1:3-7). This theme of suffering and comfort permeates the entire letter and is important for understanding the Christian experience, especially in the context of the Corinthians who faced various trials.

4. Reconciliation and Ministry: One of the central themes of the second epistle is the ministry of reconciliation (2 Cor. 5:18-20). Paul calls believers to be ambassadors for Christ and to actively participate in the process of reconciliation between God and people. This emphasizes the importance of Christian ministry in a society that is experiencing conflict.

5. Eschatology: Paul also touches on eschatological themes such as the hope of resurrection and eternal life (2 Cor. 5:1-10). These ideas are of great importance to the Corinthians, who may have been influenced by various philosophies about the afterlife.

6. The structure of the letter: 2 Corinthians has a clear structure that includes an introduction (chapter 1), a description of suffering and comfort (chapters 1-7), a defense of the apostolic ministry (chapters 10-13), and a discussion of the collection for the saints in Jerusalem (chapters 8-9). This structure helps the reader follow the logic of Paul's argument.

The Second Epistle to the Corinthians belongs to the genre of epistolary literature, that is, it is a letter. Like many other New Testament epistles, it was written by the Apostle Paul and addressed to a specific Christian community – the church in Corinth.

Here is the outline of Second Corinthians:

I. Introduction (1:1-11)

• Greetings and attribution

• Thanks be to God for comfort in suffering

• Consolation as a Call to Service

II. Defense of Paul's Apostolic Ministry (1:12-2:17)

• Description of the purity and sincerity of his ministry (1:12-14)

• Explanation of change of plans (1:15-24)

• A call for forgiveness and restoration of relationship with the sinner (2:1-11)

• Comfort from God in Difficulties (2:12-17)

III. Description of the Ministry of Reconciliation and Hope (Chapter 5)

• Hope for an eternal, heavenly home (5:1-5)

• Confidence in the future and fear of the Lord (5:6-10)

• Call to the Ministry of Reconciliation (5:11-21)

IV. The Joy of the Corinthians' Repentance (Chapter 7)

• The joy of writing and repentance (7:1-9)

• Comfort and joy from changes in the church (7:10-16)

V. The Collection for the Saints in Jerusalem (chapter 8-9)

• Example of the generosity of the Macedonian churches (8:1-5)

• The Corinthians' Call to Generosity (8:6-15)

• Preparation of the collection and the role of Titus (8:16-24)

• Principles of Generosity and Blessing (9:1-15)

VI. Defence of the Apostolic Authority (Chapter 10)

• Apostolic Modesty and Strength (10:1-6)

• Confronting and criticizing false apostles (10:7-18)

VII. Paul's Personal Testimony (Chapter 11)

• List of sufferings and trials (11:1-33)

• Defending your ministry against false teachers

VIII. Revelation of the Power of God (Chapter 12)

• Paul's Experience and Visions (12:1-6)

• Trusting in God's strength in weakness (12:7-10)

IX. Conclusion and Call for Unity (Chapter 12-13)

• Final Instructions and Warnings (12:11-21)

• A Call for Correction and Unity in the Church (13:1-10)

• The Final Blessing and Call to Love (13:11-14)

Our passage is in Section III and speaks of the importance of unity and healthy relationships in the church. That is when people can be free from fear and speak freely of God's love and forgiveness of sins through Jesus Christ and His sacrifice on Calvary for our sins.

In our passage, Paul reveals the importance of a new life and a new eternal body. We live in a material world and tend to obsess over ourselves and our problems. The mind literally goes in circles, scrolling through the same restless thoughts, and each time they become even more restless, drawing us even more into another useless circle. What is a person to do? To look at the situation from the point of view of eternity, from the point of view of our perspective. Then the focus shifts from us and our problems to God, to His omnipotence, the hopeless situation is revealed, and we can exhale and go beyond our restless thoughts.

1 We know that when our earthly tent – our body – is destroyed, then an eternal home awaits us in heaven – a spiritual body created by God, not by human hands.

2 While we are in this tent, we groan in anticipation of the moment when we shall be clothed with our heavenly dwelling.

3 Having put it on, we shall not be found naked.

4 But while we are still in our earthly tent and groaning, it is difficult for us because we do not want to get rid of the earthly body, but nevertheless want to be clothed in the eternal, so that everything mortal may be swallowed up by life.

5 For this reason we were created by God, who gave us his Spirit as a guarantee.

6 Therefore we are always at peace, even knowing that while we are in our earthly body we are far from the Lord;

7 For we are guided by faith, not by sight.

8 Knowing this, we are at peace and would like to leave our bodies and dwell with the Lord.

9 Therefore, our goal is to do what the Lord wants us to do, whether we are in the body or outside it.

10 For we will all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, and each one will be given what he deserves for the good or evil deeds he did while in his earthly body.

11 {The Ministry of Reconciliation} So then, knowing what the fear of the Lord is, we try to convince others. Now God knows what kind of people we are, and I hope that your conscience knows us as well. (2 Cor. 5:1-11)

I The realization of the fact that after the death of the body we will be given an eternal body in Heaven comforts us

A Our earthly body is temporary.

B Not everything in it may work well.

C It is finite, and it will die.

D A new body will be created by God

E The new body will be covered with God's Glory

F We sometimes suffer in a temporary body in order to enter into the eternal

II The presence of the Holy Spirit in us is the guarantee of our peace

A While we are in the body, we are distant from the Lord.

B We live by the principle of faith, not by external circumstances.

C The anticipation of moving into a new body makes us resilient

D Our main task is to fulfill the will of God

III At the end of our earthly life we will have to give an account to the Lord Jesus Christ

A We will be rewarded for our deeds

B The realization of God's sovereignty directs our lives in the right direction

C The fear of the Lord enables us to persuade others to submit to God's will and accept His love

The idea of God's progressive revelation runs through the entire Bible. And in the New Testament we see how the most important event for each person is realized – the coming into this world of the Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave us forgiveness of sins, who gave us the opportunity to directly communicate with God, the opportunity to go beyond the boundaries of our earthly life and apply to it the scale of eternity, in comparison with which our earthly problems seem small and not scary, if we hope and trust in God, remain faithful to Him and His plan for our lives.

So how can we overcome our fears and depression that are trying to surround us from all sides?

1. Read the Bible, God's Word, daily.

2. Pray the prayer of repentance, ask God for forgiveness for your life without Him and invite Jesus Christ into your mind, your heart and your life.

3. Find a local church where God's Word is read and taught, and begin attending and serving there.

4. Pray about your problems and needs and ask other local church members to pray.

5. Help those you can help, and God will help you.

May the Lord bless you in your search for Truth.

With respect, prayers for you and God's love

Rustam Kodash Nasyrov

The Importance of Obedience in the Family and in the Church

Wives, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord,

because the husband is the head of the wife, just as Christ is the head of the Church, and He is the Savior of the body.

But as the Church submits to Christ, so also wives to their husbands in everything.

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the Church and gave Himself for her,

to sanctify it, cleansing it with the washing of water through the word;

that he might present her to himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish.

So ought husbands to love their wives as their own bodies: he who loves his wife loves himself.

For no one ever hated his own flesh, but feeds and warms it, just as the Lord does the Church,

for we are members of His body, of His flesh and of His bones.

For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.

This mystery is great; I speak in relation to Christ and the Church.

So let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife respect her husband. (Eph. 5:22-33)

In the modern world, people, as at all times, strive for happiness. We want to love and be loved, and very often in achieving these goals we are guided by emotions, and not by the recipe for happiness given to us in the Holy Scripture.

God loves man and has done everything for his salvation. He also wants man to be happy during his earthly life. There are times when we all go through trials, but if you ask a Christian who has lived with God for 5, 10 or 20 years whether he regrets the choice he made, you will get a smile and the answer "no".

Recently, the number of divorces has become equal to the number of marriages. The problems in people's relationships have become especially acute during the pandemic – while in self-isolation, we spend 24 hours of our lives with our spouse.

Once again, we can turn to the Word of God, the Bible, to find answers to our pain, our problems, and the loneliness we may be experiencing.

Following and fulfilling God's word is the key to a happy life for us.

What is the recipe for happiness for a person, to be happy in earthly life and inherit eternal life?

There is one story that I am inclined to believe because it seems very close to the truth. One day, Barack and Michelle Obama went to a restaurant to have lunch there, and this visit was not planned and prepared by his security. While they were in the restaurant, they saw the restaurant manager talking to security, trying to approach the couple. "What does he want from me?" the president asked. "Oh no, he wants to talk to your wife," the security answered. When Michelle returned after the conversation, Barack asked, "Who was that?" "He was in love with me when we were in college," Michelle answered. "If you had married him, you would have been the wife of the restaurant manager," the president said with a smile. "No, if I had married him, he would have been the president of the United States, not you."

But let's go back to our passage and look at the historical situation and the cultural atmosphere of that time to understand what God put into these words for us living in this time.

According to the commentators of the past, the epistle was written during Paul's imprisonment in Caesarea and/or Rome in 60-63, since in the text Paul repeatedly calls himself a "prisoner" (Eph. 3:1, also 4:1 and 6:20). That the epistle was written by Paul, as St. Theophan (Vyshensky) noted in the 19th century, "there are almost no doubters of this, or there are so few of them, and the grounds for their unbelief are so insignificant that it is not worth dwelling on." However, in modern biblical studies there is an opinion that the author of the epistle was not Paul, but one of his Ephesian disciples, who used the apostle's authentic letters when writing.

Paul hoped that all who were striving to attain Christlike maturity would receive this letter. Ephesians contains science for application by true children of God. In addition, studying this letter will help to form and strengthen the believer to fulfill the purposes and calling of God. The purpose of this letter is to establish and equip the mature church. It presents a balanced view of the Body of Christ and its importance in the work of God.

This epistle was probably written between 60 and 63 A.D. The epistle was written from Rome towards the end of the Apostle’s time in bonds, i.e., about 63 A.D., and was delivered by Tychicus (Eph. 6:21). This is not the second, but the first bond; we see that the Apostle freely preaches the Gospel, asking for prayers for this work (Eph. 6:19–20). He could not have written this during the second Roman bonds, when he knew that “the time of his departure was at hand” (2 Tim. 4:6).

The immediate reason for writing the Epistle was the Apostle’s desire to share with the Ephesian flock his deep contemplations about the mystery of the Church of Christ, to reveal the mystery of the salvation of Jews and pagans through the Church, and also to teach a whole series of moral teachings.

Let us look at the state of the world at the time Paul wrote his letter.

The Jews had a low opinion of women. In his morning prayer, the Jew thanked God for not creating him "a heathen, a slave, or a woman." Under Jewish law, a woman was not a legal person, but a thing. She had absolutely no legal rights; she was the complete property of her husband; he could do with her as he pleased.

In theory, the Jews had very high ideals about marriage. The rabbis had sayings like, "A Jew should prefer death to idolatry, murder, or adultery." "Even the altar sheds tears when a man divorces the wife of his youth." But in reality, divorce had become terribly easy in those days.

At the time of Christ, even among the Jews, the marriage bond was in danger to such an extent that it threatened the foundations of marriage, because Jewish girls refused to marry because they faced uncertainty.

In the Greek world the situation was even worse. Prostitution was an essential part of Greek life. Demosthenes described the norms of life in his time: “We have courtesans for pleasure, concubines for cohabitation, and wives who bear us legitimate children and take care of our household.” The woman of the upper classes of Greek society led a solitary life. She did not take part in public life, never appeared on the street alone. She did not even attend banquets or public holidays, she had her own chambers, which only her husband could enter. Everything came down to the fact that, as Xenophon wrote, “she saw, heard and asked as little as possible.”

The woman of the noble Greek classes was so brought up that all friendship and companionship during marriage were excluded. Socrates said: "Is there anyone to whom you have entrusted more serious matters than to your wife, and is there anyone to whom you have spoken less than to her?" Verus, who shared power with the great Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, answered his wife, who had accused him of having relations with other women, that she should not forget that the title of wife gave the right to self-respect, and not to pleasure. The wife of a Greek had to keep house, care for his legitimate children, and he sought society and pleasure elsewhere.

To make matters worse, there was no judicial procedure for divorce in Greece. As someone said, divorce was a matter of chance and caprice. The only guarantee a woman had was that her dowry would be returned. Hearth and home life were fading, and marital fidelity was nonexistent.

Paul's letter is divided into three main segments: 1) Chapters 1–3 present principles regarding God's work;

2) Chapters 4–5 set forth principles concerning our present existence;

3) Chapter 6 presents principles regarding our daily struggle.

This letter, although it has an epistolary form, can be considered as a doctrinal teaching – a scientific article. Despite its brevity (6 chapters), the Epistle to the Ephesians is very rich in content both in the dogmatic and moral parts. St. Athanasius called it "a catechism of Christian teaching."

I The Necessity and Importance of Subordination.

The stability of any system of power is built on subordination. If there is no subordination, the structure will fall apart. This is what the Roman wisdom "divide and rule" says, the rabbinical wisdom says that "a house divided cannot stand." Therefore, the absence of subordination is extremely dangerous for any structure. Where can a person take an example of subordination?

A. Wives must submit to their husbands.

Paul writes for wives to submit to their husbands. This is difficult. For a later version of man, with stronger intuition, emotions and analysis, to submit to an earlier version is not so easy. For men, the submission of wives should be an example of their submission to Jesus Christ. As the wife submits to her husband, so the husband should be included in the vertical of authority God – Jesus – husband – wife

B. Husbands must submit to the Lord

From the point of view of submission to God's will, all people can be divided into four groups:

Dielectrics are ordinary people who do not know about God and cannot fulfill His will voluntarily. (pagans)

Semiconductors are mostly religious people, but they do not fulfill God's will in full, and only when it is beneficial or convenient for them. (Saul)

Guides are believers who live a spiritual life and, for the most part, fulfill God's will. (Jonah)

A superconductor is a person who carries out God's will despite the circumstances and even despite the safety of his own life. (Jesus Christ)

S. How Christ Submits to God

Christ completely submitted Himself to God, and already at the Last Supper He says that the Father has given everything into His hands. The manifestation and confirmation of this is the arrest, mockery and execution of Jesus Christ. As a result of this, Jesus was resurrected, made the head of the church and is our heavenly intercessor.

1. Christ is the head of the Church

This is the secret of the invincibility and eternity of the church. The gates of hell will not prevail against it as long as it obeys Christ. The head of the church is not the senior pastor or the church council – the head of the church is Jesus Christ.

2. Savior of the body

Furthermore, Jesus not only exercises leadership over the entire church, but He is also the personal Lord of every believer.

3. The Church must submit to God

The submission of the church to God is an unquestionable statement. But how often do we fail to fulfill God's will? God's desire is for us to go and bear fruit. What is our good fruit: stable families, high professional achievements, good deeds and our charity, helping those in need. But all this must be a means of evangelization. Without this, the church will only look like a charity fund.

II Husbands should love their wives

A husband's love for his wife is not a feeling. It is a choice. We make a strong-willed decision to love our wife even more than ourselves.

A. Husbands should also love their wives.

No one has emotional love for their body (narcissism), but to take care of it, protect it, treat it if it is sick, not leave it until death. This is the image of how a husband should love his wife. Does everyone always do it this way? I don't, but you have to try.

B. Just as a man loves his flesh

C. Family is the unity of husband and wife

D. The wife should be afraid

A woman's emotional life is even more complex and mysterious than a man's. That's why the Scripture does not force her to love her husband. It says that a wife should show her husband the utmost respect. It is difficult to imagine that a husband will be respected at work, obeyed, if he has problems with obedience and respect for his wife in the family.

E. A husband should love his wife as himself.

But no matter what, a husband must love his wife and take care of her. If our body fails us, gets sick, or even becomes paralyzed, we still remain in the body until God takes us. So our love for our wife must continue until our death hour.

III Christ loves and nourishes the church

This is another important point for being in the church. By giving the church tithes, serving in the church we come under the care and provision of Christ for His church.

A. Christ loved the church and gave Himself

Christ's love for the church is so great THAT HE DIED FOR IT. How can we doubt His provision when even His life was given for the church.

V. He presented it as a glorious church.

Jesus is the head, representative and intercessor of the church before God. Therefore, we can rest assured that Jesus is involved in our earthly life and is guiding our Salvation, our road to Heaven.

C. That the church may be holy and blameless

In the church there is a cleansing by the Word. Therefore, it is important for us not only to be in the church, to listen to the Word of God, but also to be doers of this Word.

D. The Church is the flesh of Christ

Being in church and doing His will is where we can experience the closest fellowship with Christ. One day, while in a home fellowship, conducting an Alpha course, I was telling guests about the love of Christ, and at that moment His love passed through my heart. It is an experience like no other. All the people who were in the meeting then are now in the church.

IV

In the First Epistle to the Corinthians (chapter 7), Apostle Paul set forth his teaching on family life and virginity. There he gives preference to virginity if it is chosen for the sake of the Lord. Here he sets forth his teaching on the height of Christian marriage (Eph. 5:22–23).

The Apostle points to the Divine institution of marriage: “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh” (Gen. 2:24). The depth of the unity of both spouses extends to the point that they lose their limited individual qualities and each becomes the possessor of mutual completeness – the two of them constitute one body.

Marriage is also a sacrament, a mystery, the prototype of which is the mystery of the union of Christ and the Church: "This is a great mystery; I speak concerning Christ and the Church" (Eph. 5:32). After all, each member of the marital union before marriage is already a member of the body of Christ, i.e. the Church. Of course, the spouses, as one new being, "one flesh", are attached to Christ. Marriage as a sacrament consists in the fact that the grace of Christ, which united a person with Christ in baptism, now unites, blesses and sanctifies the spouses in the image of the union of Christ and the Church.