Good evening. It’s great to see all of you here this evening. I would ask you now if you would turn in your bible or turn on your bible to Second Corinthians Chapter Three I have the privilege of teeing it up for Z and kurt and brad And we’ll be working our way through 2nd Corinthians tonight and tomorrow morning. So, uh, you have a bible open. I want to introduce this passage 1st of all. Want to, I want to thank Ben for giving me the most uh, difficult text of the four. It brings me right back down to earth. Their personal life stories would read like a mature audiences only posting on Tiktok or reels before the Gospel was brought to this sin capital of its day. What happens in Coron stays in Corinth. They have been helpless and hopeless slaves of sin, abused and powerless addicts to every imaginable form of decadent behavior, in their desperate pursuit of meaning and significance and inner peace had convinced themselves that life without boundaries or responsible relationships was actually their freedom and their liberty. But the reality was that they were miserable. They were sick and tired of being sick and tired of their sin. In his first pastoral communication with them, Paul had described their lives before hearing the good news as unrighteous, sexually promiscuous idol worshipping marital lee, unfaithful L. G. B. T. Q. Participants, money, loving, money, grubbing alcohol, abusing Gangsters and cheats. Such were some of you, he wrote, but you were washed, you were sanctified. You are justified in the name of the Lord, jesus christ and by the spirit of God. But now these formally unsaveable sinners have turned against the very man who had so faithfully served them, taking great personal risk to live among them, to walk with them and their newfound relationship with the living God, to establish them as a faithful fellowship of saints. Though it endured trials and threats and suffering for them for over 18 months, they had discredited the very one whom they owed their very souls. So now in the second handwritten letter, paul finds himself having to defend his message. His methods and his motives, Paul reminds them that the message he brought to them was a word of life and not a word of death. Returning to the story of moses on Mount Sinai and the meeting with God, he describes the difference between a salvation by obeying the law and the salvation that is based solely upon faith. Second Corinthians chapter three, the phrase leading into our text is this for the letter kills, but the spirit gives life Now. If the ministry of Death, carved in letters on stone came with such glory, you want to mark the word glory. I think you’re going to find it 14 times in our short reading that the Israelites could not gaze on moses face because of its glory which was being brought to an end. Will not the Ministry of the Spirit have even more glory. For if there is glory in the Ministry of the condemnation, the Ministry of Righteousness must be far exceeded in glory. Indeed, in this case, what once had glory has come now to have no glory at all because of the glory that surpasses it. For if what was being brought to an end came with glory much more Well, what is permanent? Have glory now? He picks up a new word. The word veiled. I think you’ll market seven times since we have such a hope. We are very bold. We are not like moses who could put a veil over his face so that the Israelites might not gaze at the outcome of what was being brought to an end. But their minds were hardened for to this day when they read the old covenant, the same veil remains unlisted because only through christ is it taken away? Yes, to this day, whenever moses is read, a veil lies over their hearts. But when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. Now the Lord is …