Hello, I am Jim Leamon, I am a friend of GOD TV, and it is my honor to be here sharing with you on God Today. Today, I want to share with you a scripture in 2 Corinthians 13:5. And Paul writes this to the Corinthians and the first thing I want to say really quickly, these were believers. But listen to the exhortation of the Apostle Paul. He says, “Examine yourselves as to whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Do you not know yourselves? Jesus Christ is in you. Unless indeed you are disqualified.”
You know, I talk to quite a few people about their faith. One of my favorite scriptures I like to ask people personally when they are thinking through this is 1 John 5:13. Where John wrote, “These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life.” And so, inside God has wired us so we can know that we have eternal life.
Paul is saying here, “Examine yourself, test yourself, know yourself.” Three times he says “yourself”. Who should be responsible for this? It is not your pastor, it is not your parents, it is not your spouse. It is ourselves. We know whether we are in the faith or whether we are not. The interesting thing about the word for “examine” is, and I am no Hebrew scholar, but I can use a concordance. And interestingly, these words talk about examining and testing metals. “Examine” talks about quality. So let’s just imagine that the metal we are talking about is gold and pyrite. Pyrite as you may know is fool’s gold. Let me ask you to do this. From a quality perspective, when you are examining yourself and you are looking at your faith, do you have 12-carat gold faith? Do you have 14-carat gold faith? Do you have 24-carat gold faith? Do you have pyrite fool’s gold faith?
Where it says, “test yourself,” it is really whether it is genuine. Is it genuine gold or is it pyrite? Some interesting things about gold and pyrite. Gold is a precious metal. It doesn’t rust. You can actually make cups out of it and drink out of it. Pyrite, on the other hand, is naturally a source of arsenic. It would be poison. If we use pyrite to make our cups, we would be drinking poison. Pyrite is unstable. A precious metal, by definition, is much more stable. Gold doesn’t melt until it reaches almost 2000 degrees Fahrenheit. Pyrite melts at half of that. So gold is able to handle pressure and stress much more – almost double – what pyrite can withhold. Gold has softer edges, it is smoother. Pyrite has hard edges. It is a lot rougher.
So really, the question is, when you examine yourself and test yourself and test your faith, and again, Paul is writing to the believers, but he is still telling them and challenging them. What kind of metal is your faith? Thank you for allowing me to share with you today, this message in 2 Corinthians.