Do the wire taps of the AP News agency sound intrusive? Do you feel the IRS tactics with politically conservative groups seem over-reaching? Does the news of Benghazi make you wonder what is up with the government? Does all of this remind you in some way of George Orwell's 1984? Then you will want to hear Jim Boice, R.C. Sproul, David Wells, and Bob Godfrey from the 1984 Philadelphia Conference on Reformed Theology where they address just these types of issues.

In addition to tents, Paul uses a second image to refer to our earthly bodies, that of clothing. That is an image that we can all understand. Paul says that although our bodies are great things, they are, nevertheless, weakened by sin so that they are mortal. Our bodies are subject to disease. They die. They are like clothing that has fallen into rags. He wrote, "Meanwhile we groan, longing to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling, because when we are clothed, we will not be found naked. For while we are in this tent, we groan and are burdened, because we do not wish to be unclothed but to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life" (2 Cor. 5:2-4).

In the opening section of 2 Corinthians 5, Paul wrote about the dissolution of his body, in other words, of his death. He explained that death comes sooner or later to everybody. In his case, he said, death would perhaps come sooner because of the kind of hardships he had endured. Our bodies are at best ragged tents, tents that are going to be folded up and put away one day. But the glory of the Christian hope is to know that when that tent is put away, we have an eternal dwelling made with God in heaven.

This week we will be studying a long passage containing two separate sections. In the first verse of each of those sections, we find the words, we know.
2 Corinthians 5:1 says, "Now we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God...." Then in verse 11 we read, "Since then we know what it is to fear the Lord, we try to persuade men." That introduces us to a theme that ties these two sections together, the theme of Christian knowledge.

Do you have your eyes on what is happening internally? Do you know that in all of the circumstances of life, in all of the things you go through, God is renewing you inwardly? He is building within you a new character, a new life, and a new personality, one that will exist for eternity. That is why this is all so important. If our life began at birth and ended at death, thinking about the future would just be absurd. As Paul wrote in his first letter to the Corinthians, "If I have fought wild beasts in Ephesus for merely human reasons, what have I gained? If the dead are not raised, 'Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die' " (1 Cor. 15:32). But if we are eternal creatures, if we are going to live forever in one state or another, then what is happening to us now makes all the difference in the world.