Living Letters
When was the last time you received a handwritten letter? Has it been so long ago you can’t remember? Never? Letter writing is a dying art in our digital age.
If you’ve ever received a handwritten letter, you know how special it makes you feel. I’ve received emails and texts that encouraged and blessed me, but not in the same way a handwritten letter does. Maybe I’m showing my age by that statement. That’s probably true. All I can say is, if you’ve never received a handwritten letter, you won’t know what I’m talking about.
In my mind, there’s a personal investment in a handwritten letter that’s missing in electronic forms of communication. When someone takes the time to sit down and put pen to paper, it says something about the value they place on the person they’re writing to. And a personal letter encapsulates the personality and character of the writer.
Aren’t you glad that God revealed His Word to holy men of old as the apostle Peter tells us? Aren’t you glad that as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit, they wrote down His message? And so, today, you and I have before us the Word of God in written form. And the apostle Paul tells us this Word of God is given for our benefit and to equip us for every good work.
So then, we turn our attention to the Word of God again today to discover some of that benefit and to see how it equips us to better serve the Lord. Our text is Second Corinthians 3:1 to 6. Listen carefully as I read and see if you can pick out the benefits we receive from letters.
“Living Letters” is the subject of our text, and today we want to explore the VALUE we give and receive through those letters.
The First VALUE of Living Letters is,
They Provide Information
That’s pretty simple, right? Why else do you write a letter? You have ideas you want to communicate to the person or persons receiving the letter. When my wife and I were dating, there were a couple of times when we were separated by distance for several weeks. So, we wrote letters to each other. We still have them, and occasionally we’ll get them out and reread them. It was the way we communicated our interest in each other and our growing love story.
Before we dive into the teaching from this text, let’s consider some background here. Paul is writing to the Corinthian church and, as we learned earlier, he’s defending his apostolic authority. Evidently, there were those at Corinth who were questioning his authority.
Paul talks about letters of commendation, or recommendation. I understand this was a common practice of that day. One example is Acts 18:27, where the Ephesian elders wrote a letter of recommendation for Apollos to carry with him to Achaia. So, a letter of recommendation said that the bearer of the letter was trustworthy and should be treated ac...
