The sermon text today is taken from 2 Corinthians, Chapter 1,

15 through 22.

2, 2 Corinthians 1, 15 through 22.

Because I was sure of this, I wanted to come to you first so that you might have a double pleasure.

I wanted to visit you on my way to Macedonia and to come back to you from Macedonia and have you send me on my way to Judea. Was I vacillating when I

wanted to do this? Do I make my plans like a worldly man ready to say yes and no at once?

As surely as God is faithful, our word to you has not been yes and no.

For the son of God, Jesus Christ, whom we priest among you,

Sylvainus and Timothy and I, was not yes and no, but in him it is always yes.

For all the promises of God find their yes in him.

That is why we enter the Amen through Him to the glory of God.

But it is God who establishes us with you in Christ and has commissioned

us. He has put his seal upon us and given us his spirit in our hearts as a guarantee.

As long as we live in this age with sin and pain,

the contentment that we have in God should be a dissatisfied contentment.

Paul said in another place besides the text that Mike just read, not that I have already obtained

this or am already perfect, but I press on, I press on to make it my own because Christ Jesus has made me his own. So Christ has made us his own,

or as our text says at the end, he has confirmed us and anointed us and sealed us and given

us the Holy Spirit as a guarantee. He wants us to be secure and no contentment as we enter the new decade.

But Paul does not say, because I am secure, I coast. He says, because he has made me his own, I press on to make it my own. He longs for perfection. He longs for fullness. His contentment in God is a dissatisfied

contentment. Paul is a dissatisfied Christian. He knows that he has every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.

He knows that God has made over to him every promise, but he also knows that his experience of the fullness of all

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