Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Our heavenly Father, we ask that you would bless us now as we come to the reading and preaching of your word, that the word would go out among us and then through us into the world. May it spread to others that many, many might know and believe the glorious truth of Jesus Christ and the goodness and grace he brings into this world. Lord, we ask that you would help us not merely to listen, but to truly hear, to see with eyes that have been given sight to see.
[00:00:36] Let us believe, Lord, in our hearts, that you are our Lord and our savior. We pray this in Jesus name. Amen.
[00:00:47] Let's turn to second corinthians ten now two corinthians ten. 718.
[00:01:15] Here in this passage, Paul defends the ministry that he's been given by Christ, and we will consider that this morning, and consider what he says here, how he defines that ministry as we do so I want you to be thinking about what it reveals to us about Jesus, the one who gave to him this ministry.
[00:01:40] Two corinthians ten, beginning at verse seven.
[00:01:46] Look at what is before your eyes.
[00:01:50] If one is confident that he is Christ's, let him remind himself that just as he is Christ's, so also are we. For even if I boast a little too much of our authority, which God gave for building you up and not for destroying you, I will not be ashamed.
[00:02:11] I do not want to appear to be frightening you with my letters, for they say his letters are weighty and strong, but his bodily presence is weak and his speech of no account.
[00:02:24] Let such a person understand that what we say by letter when absent, we do when present.
[00:02:31] Not that we dare to classify or compare ourselves with some of those who are commending themselves, but when they measure themselves by one another and compare themselves with one another, they are without understanding.
[00:02:46] But we will not boast beyond limits. But we will boast only with regard to the area of influence God assigned to us to reach, even to you. For we are not overextending ourselves as though we did not reach you, for we were the first to come all the way to you with the gospel of Christ. We do not boast beyond limit in the labors of others, but our hope is that as your faith increases, our area of influence among you may be greatly enlarged so that we may preach the gospel in lands beyond you without boasting of work already done in another's area of influence.
[00:03:25] Let the one who boasts boast in the Lord, for it is not the one who commends himself, who is approved, but the one whom the Lord commends oh, man.
[00:03:37] Maybe seated.
[00:04:10] So in our passage, Paul is very obviously defending himself.
[00:04:17] He's under attack, right? People are saying things. He even says in verse ten, they say his letters are weighty and strong, but his bodily presence is weak, and his speech of no account.
[00:04:33] They're mentioning what I talked about last time, as in some ways, there's a few different critiques here, but one of them is an integrity issue, that he's willing to speak strong when he's not with you, but when. Or, yeah, when he's not with you, and then when he is, he chickens out.
[00:04:50] But there's another thing that's going on, too, that we've seen in one corinthians and various places in two corinthians.
[00:04:58] And that's the sense of this expectation that the ministers of God are supposed to be a certain kind of way, a certain kind of way that is very charming, very impressive, not weak in any way, but masterful. And Paul was a speaker. We can say in a general sense, a preacher who is a speaker, but in a world where speaking was usually thought of, or often thought of, I should say in this one category, a category in which people were actively engaged in oration, listening to speeches, going to watch and hear people talk. And these orators, these people that spoke for a living, for a profession, were very polished. They were expected to be polished. And we know this through all kinds of accounts. We know it through the training, training manuals that we see the way that Paul speaks and other things.
[00:06:11] It was a kind of celebrity status. To be one of these kinds of people. You could gain a lot of fame, a lot of money. You'd have lots of followers, followers who would sometimes even get in fights with other followers from other people. It was kind of intense.
[00:06:27] I kind of think of it as sort of sports teams combined with talk radio, combined with TEDx talks or Ted talks. Sort of all this mix of celebrity culture, fan bases, social following, these kind of things all kind of coming together.
[00:06:49] And to be one of these people, one of these people, you needed to be good.
[00:06:55] You needed to be able to talk for, give long sentences without taking unnecessary breaths. For example, you needed to be able to control your voice, have commanding presence, looking at notes, not using artful phrases, stumbling over your words. These were all negative points against you.
[00:07:19] You can imagine something like when people watch the Olympics and there's these markers, these judges. 9.87.7 people were doing this in their minds, judging the speakers. And if the speaker was really, really good, if the speaker was really really impressive. Whether it was a funeral elegy or a court oration or whatever it was, they would be someone worth paying attention to, worth following.
[00:07:47] And not all. And this is not to say that rhetoric is all bad. Paul uses some of these tools in his own writing.
[00:07:54] But this is what authority was judged on. Impressiveness, skill in this way.
[00:08:03] And Paul certainly has a certain amount of skill in speaking and in writing. But ultimately, he does not base his authority. I mean, he does not want the church to be basing his authority on his ability to speak, on how great he looks, on how nice he dresses. These things don't matter.
[00:08:28] They don't matter. Now, Paul does say, when it comes to his speech, he does have integrity, as he says in verse eleven. Let such a person understand that what we say by letter when absent, we do when present.
[00:08:45] He's not talking about style here. He's talking about content. In other words, he's not chickening out when it comes to getting face to face someone, but happy to blast them online or in a letter, so to speak, when he's away.
[00:09:00] No, he speaks what he speaks and he speaks the truth. There's consistency in that.
[00:09:08] But when it comes to his authority, when it comes to the way he understands himself, the way he acts, the way he operates, he's operating in a whole different way than the way that many of the other speakers in the world were at the time.
[00:09:26] And he describes that way for us in a very positive, positive way. I mean, he tells us what it is here and in the coming verses.
[00:09:39] Let's think about some of the things that he says.
[00:09:43] First, he calls in verse seven, he says, look at what is before your eyes.
[00:09:52] This is a helpful thing as we sort of approach what he is about to say, what he is doing, in other words, how he operates, how he works, is not hidden, it's not secret, it's not confusing. Paul says, it's obvious, right, what the expectation here is. If you look and you examine, he's saying, my life, the way that I work, you will see the truth.
[00:10:22] And Paul said in an earlier place that they sought to live in a blameless way. It doesn't mean that people won't blame them, they obviously are. But he wants to live in a way that's open and honest, as we should as well.
[00:10:38] Then he says, if anyone is confident that he is Christ, let him remind himself that just as he is Christ, so also are we.
[00:10:46] He says here in the second part of verse seven, let's get on the same page.
[00:10:52] If you say you're a Christian. Let's talk about being a Christian. If you say you are a Christian, I am too. And let's talk about things from that perspective. Let's talk about things from a Christ centered perspective. We are of Christ. He's making this claim, and he's going to explain that more as he moves forward. The first thing he says, having set things up, is that his authority is legitimate. It's legitimate.
[00:11:23] For if I boast a little too much of our authority, which the Lord gave, I will not be ashamed.
[00:11:32] Now, when he says a little too much, he's not saying that he's going further than he should, but he's saying he's going further than perhaps other people would like him to.
[00:11:43] If he has confidence and trust in what he's doing and talks about that, and people are like, he shouldn't be talking about that. He says, if I'm going a little overboard, I really don't care.
[00:11:54] Because he doesn't think he's going overboard, I think is the way to understand that.
[00:11:59] Why doesn't he care? Well, one, because he knows he doesn't care. He's not ashamed of it. He's not embarrassed by what he's doing because he's doing the right thing.
[00:12:11] His boasting is not in an authority of his own making.
[00:12:16] His authority, his confidence. And the confidence in his authority is that which the Lord gave.
[00:12:24] The Lord gave.
[00:12:27] Let's say you're at work and you're in middle management, and your boss tells you to tell your team that you need to do something or other, and you go and you tell them to do it. And they say, well, why? You don't have the right to boss us around and tell us what to do. And you say, well, yes, I do, and you're not going to be embarrassed about that. And you shouldn't be embarrassed about it because you were instructed to do the job. In fact, if you didn't tell your team what they needed to do, you would be failing, right? You would be failing at your job to exercise the authority that you've been given.
[00:13:04] Paul had been given authority by the Lord. It is legitimate and he's right to have confidence in it, not to be embarrassed about it or ashamed by it, but to move and act according to it.
[00:13:19] The next thing he tells us is the purpose of the authority that Christ has given him. The apostolic authority that he has been given has been for this purpose, for building you up and not for destroying you.
[00:13:32] This begins to show us in really clear ways the heart of our Lord, doesn't it? When the Lord Jesus sends his spirit into the world, gives to us the apostolic ministry on which the church is founded, on which we are founded, he does it for building us up and not for destroying us. For healing, for binding, for caring, for forgiving. He builds us up. And that's what Paul's aim is. Not frightening you with my letters.
[00:14:07] Sometimes people with authority think that the way to have and exercise power is through fear.
[00:14:15] Through fear, you can get people to do things right. You can intimidate them, you can coerce them and get them to act.
[00:14:25] Sometimes it works. In fact, often it works until it doesn't, and it starts reaping the evil fruit that was sown by it.
[00:14:37] Paul certainly says scary things at times. He offers warnings, implores people, says very, very serious things, particularly when it comes to those who would reject the authority of Christ.
[00:14:55] But his goal, as he speaks to believers, is not just to frighten them in power, but to build them up in the gospel, to build them up.
[00:15:10] Next, he tells us that his authority has integrity. As we've spoken about already, he acts the same when he is at home.
[00:15:20] Face to face is when he is away.
[00:15:25] And next, he tells us this very important thing, which we'll think more about in verse twelve. About his authority.
[00:15:33] He says, not that we dare to classify or compare ourselves with some of those who are commending themselves, but when they measure themselves by one another and compare themselves with one another, they are without understanding.
[00:15:55] And then he picks up that theme again in verse 17 and 18, when he says, let the one who boasts boast in the Lord, for it is not the one who commends himself, who is approved, but the one whom the Lord commends.
[00:16:12] This is very key for understanding how Paul thinks and acts. And he sets a good example for our own thinking and acting as christians.
[00:16:21] Let's think about what he says here.
[00:16:24] He says, we do not dare, almost like it's a scary thing, something you wouldn't want to touch or go near. We do not dare to do what? Classify or compare ourselves with others, and in particular, these others who are doing that very thing.
[00:16:45] So he's setting up for us basically, these two ways of operating.
[00:16:51] One way is you look around at the people around you, and you make judgments about yourself and how you should act, primarily about those who are around you and how they're acting and how they're working.
[00:17:04] These people, these other people were commending themselves, were looking at Paul, and they're saying, well, you're not as impressive as me. You're not as great as me. They were complaining about various things about him, and there would be a temptation in that moment for Paul then to basically play the game at that level, to then go and look at the comparisons they're making, we'll say, well, actually, I am.
[00:17:27] Wasn't this turn of phrase really nice? And wasn't I really bold in this moment? And basically to try and operate on that level that they're operating on?
[00:17:38] He says, I'm not even going to play this game.
[00:17:41] We're not even going to do this. We don't even dare to classify or compare ourselves with other people.
[00:17:50] When they measure themselves by one another and compare themselves with one another. What does he say? They are without understanding.
[00:18:00] They're without understanding. It's like if you go and you get a broken ruler or a messed up measuring tape or something that is the standard is fundamentally wrong, and then you try to build a cabinet with it, it's just not going to work. You are without understanding. You don't know that the thing you're going to do is going to fail because of the way that you are beginning.
[00:18:31] Instead of defining himself externally, instead of thinking about his mission and his calling purely by other people and their standards and their expectations, he defines himself before the Lord.
[00:18:46] He defines himself. He thinks about his mission. He thinks about his call. He thinks about what he boasts in what he trusts in before the Lord.
[00:18:57] Let the one who boasts boast in the Lord. It is not the one who commends himself, having either being an island to himself, or by commending himself by comparing himself to others, who is approved, but the one whom the Lord commends.
[00:19:14] This is so essential for the christian life.
[00:19:18] It's so easy to think about judging ourselves and patting ourselves on the back by saying, well, I'm not as bad as that person, or I'm really good like this other person. And forgetting that ultimately we are called to walk before the Lord.
[00:19:35] As an example of this, we could think of many from scripture. I like to think about Abraham.
[00:19:41] Think about Abraham living in a place, living in a family that was filled with idolatry. The scriptures tell us the Lord calls him out, calls him to follow him on this promise that he would have a child even though he was old, and all of these other things. And he calls him to go into a land that wasn't his and that the Lord would give it to him.
[00:20:05] This is intense, right? This is a lot to ask of a person. And yet the Lord supplies what Abraham needs. He supplies him with faith. And in that faith, what does Abraham do? Does he look toward his parents and the people around him? And does he sort of try to judge and calibrate based on what other people think, or does he just do what the Lord says?
[00:20:28] He just does what the Lord says. The Lord says, go out. And Abraham goes out. He just goes. And he trusts, and he lives for decades in strange and awkward situations. But the Lord is present with him. The Lord takes care of him. The Lord guides him.
[00:20:47] It's tempting sometimes to not trust the Lord, to seek our stability and our identity and our hope and our callings in the expectations of other people.
[00:21:02] And certainly the Lord uses other people in our lives to give us wisdom and understanding. We aren't islands all to ourselves. We're part of communities and societies and things like this.
[00:21:15] But ultimately, brothers and sisters, ultimately, we are individuals before the Lord. Even as we are members of the body of Christ, we have a responsibility before him. He is ultimately the judge of all. And that's why Jesus says when people follow him, they will sometimes leave father and mother.
[00:21:38] They will find separation from friends. They will have to give up on positions and wealth and all kinds of things. There will be sacrifice in following him, sacrifice as the world sees it, sacrifice as the world judges it. But ultimately, whatever we might give up for the Lord is a gain for us, because there is nothing greater than knowing him, following him and trusting in him.
[00:22:10] When we are walking before his eyes, walking with faith in him, things become very clear. And actually, we gain a boldness that I think we see with Paul.
[00:22:25] Paul is not constantly calibrating and recalibrating based on what people think of him in Corinth.
[00:22:32] Now, he's certainly listening.
[00:22:36] He's sensitive to what they're thinking, or else he wouldn't be saying what he's saying. He understands their position. He hears their heart, and he's concerned. He speaks to it in love. He speaks to it with authority, but he does it not with the authority of having properly calibrated all his actions based on other people, but on calibrating his actions and his heart based on the Lord.
[00:23:02] He looks to the lord and he says, what has the Lord given me? What is my calling? What are my gifts?
[00:23:10] What has he called me to do? That's how I will measure myself.
[00:23:14] And when he knows he's been blameless, he's going to say it. When he knows he's done right, he's going to say it when he knows what he's supposed to do. He's going to do it, and he's not going to try and impress others.
[00:23:29] In fact, he's going to reject that whole path and condemn it.
[00:23:34] He says that those who commend themselves are without understanding the proof of these things. He gives in these in between verses in 13 through 17, where he talks about his actions, his particular actions among them.
[00:23:54] One of the things he says, which I think he's contrasting himself with the others that are there, is he says that they came as God has assigned. Notice how he keeps talking about this. His focus is on the Lord, verse 13.
[00:24:11] But we will not boast beyond our limits, but will boast with regard to the area of influence God has assigned to us to reach, even to you.
[00:24:20] He's talking primarily about his calling to go to the Gentiles.
[00:24:28] And we could add to that, especially as with his calling, as we see from other passages of scripture, that he wanted to go, and he was called to go and build where others had not yet built.
[00:24:41] Now, Paul is not against building on other people's foundations, right? He, in fact, calls Titus and Timothy and other people to come and fulfill or finish the work that he started. There's nothing wrong with that. He himself asks people for help in doing this. But he knows that his personal call from the Lord is to go and build where people have not yet built, to go and evangelize and disciple those who have not yet heard the good news. And so Paul goes to all kinds of places and continues to try to extend that reach more and more and more. That's what he's saying here. And that included the church in Corinth. He came to them. That was part of his mission, part of his calling. And how did he come? Did he come with a message of Paul? Did he come about following Paul and following his ways and gaining a big following so that he could be really influential? No.
[00:25:46] Yes, he desired influence, but the influence of God, the ministry of God.
[00:25:53] He came to them with the gospel of Christ.
[00:25:57] What is his hope? What is the Lord's hope? As we remember, the one who gave Paul this calling, our hope, he says in verse 15, is that as your faith increases, our area of influence among you may be greatly enlarged so that we may preach the gospel in lands beyond you.
[00:26:19] Paul's ministry is a ministry, a ministry that desires to see faith established among people increased in such a way that he can go forth even more, so that the prayers, so that the financial support, so that the ministers that are raised up in the corinthian church would just continue to expand the opportunities and possibilities in reaching the lost.
[00:26:44] And they were doing that. It was happening. As we saw in previous chapters, the corinthian church was collecting money, raising money for the support of saints elsewhere. There were people that were moving around in these regional churches for the extent for the expansion in the ministry of the gospel.
[00:27:08] So to sum up, what we see in all of this, what do we see?
[00:27:13] What can we say about true apostolic authority?
[00:27:18] One, it's legitimate.
[00:27:20] Two, its purpose is for building up. It's for establishing faith. And through that faith, to establish more faith in more people.
[00:27:31] We see that the goal is not coercion and intimidation, but it is preaching the gospel, the good news of faith and faith in Christ.
[00:27:44] Paul is in some ways demonstrating the very thing that he is calling us to do, which is wonderful because his words match his message. And what is the faith? Dependence on the Lord.
[00:27:59] Faith is trust and dependence on God and God alone. Paul looks to the Lord and says, this is how I define myself. This is how I define my mission. This is from whom I will seek my commendation.
[00:28:17] And what do we learn from this? Well, of course, we learn about the apostolic ministry.
[00:28:24] We learn what the true apostolic ministry is, and we learn to distinguish it from that which is false.
[00:28:32] Those whom Christ sends are those who are not about themselves, but are about him.
[00:28:39] They're not about establishing themselves, even if they are very impressive and in some ways worthy of praise according to the standards of this world.
[00:28:49] Apollos was a really eloquent preacher. He was really, really good at what he did. Paul mentions someone who was famous throughout the churches for preaching the gospel, probably because he was really, really good at it.
[00:29:08] But if he was really, really good at it, let's say he was extra eloquent or something like this, extra skilled in some way, extra careful in his exegesis and his application of God's word.
[00:29:23] He would have only been true if he preached Christ, only been true if he used those gifts and abilities that God had given him to point to the Lord and away from himself.
[00:29:41] In Paul's example and in Paul's gospel, which is the gospel of Jesus Christ, we are called to take ourselves and submit ourselves to the Lord.
[00:29:54] We can even say something as strong as to die to ourselves so that we might live in Christ and find our gain in him.
[00:30:04] We ought to seek our commendation not in ourselves or in other people, but from the Lord and define ourselves and our confidence in him and in him alone. And as we do that, we will experience and see the kind of boldness that we see in Paul the kind of love that we see in Paul, the kind of hope that we see in Paul. And the reason for that is this. And I'll end with this, because the thing or the one that Paul puts his faith in is so strong.
[00:30:40] Paul's faith in the Lord. Paul, seeking commendation in the Lord is not a fool's errand. You put your faith in man and in the things of this world, they will fail you, but not the Lord.
[00:30:54] How do we know? Well, think about what the Lord has done. Think about the one who has given Paul this ministry. And we could say as well, who has given us the ministry of Paul?
[00:31:06] Who is that lord?
[00:31:08] Is he one who judged himself by the traditions and commandments of men? Or did he come to do the will of his father? And he did it perfectly.
[00:31:20] Not only that, because of what our Lord did, he obtained for us benefits which are, to put it mildly, stabilizing.
[00:31:33] He gives us benefits that allow us not to be rocked about by the things of this world, things like justification, an act of God's free grace. Where he declares us righteous before him, where he declares us and our sins forgiven before him, he cleanses us of unrighteousness so that when the world would say, well, judge us by, you should be judged by this or judged by that. You say I'm judged by God alone, and I already have his judgment. I'm not waiting to see what he's going to say. I already know. The word of God tells me there is no condemnation for those who are in Jesus Christ. I'm not condemned. I'm justified. I'm solid in the grace of God. And I know that on the day when the Lord Jesus comes, I will be glorified.
[00:32:36] So come at me with your accusations, even the true ones, because I know that my sins are forgiven. I don't revel in the ways in which I've fallen. I'm not happy about my sins. In fact, I abhor my sinfulness. I abhor my fleshly nature. And that's why I rely on Christ for my justification and nothing else. And because I rely on him, I have confidence and I have boldness.
[00:33:07] I'm justified in the Lord Jesus.
[00:33:10] More than that, I'm also adopted. I am called a child of God.
[00:33:17] I have an inheritance in God. What could you possibly promise me? What could you possibly threaten me with when I have an inheritance from the one who made heaven and earth, when I have an inheritance that will never be taken away from me? And that even now my heavenly father answers all of my prayers, every single one of them. And if I pray for something I shouldn't, he just gives me something better.
[00:33:45] I belong to my heavenly Father.
[00:33:49] In addition to being adopted and in addition to being justified, he's continually sanctifying me. He's growing me and increasing a life of holiness in me. He's putting to death that which is sinful. He's bringing to life that which is righteous and beautiful. He's growing me. And that growth will one day end in perfection.
[00:34:16] That's where Paul's confidence is.
[00:34:21] So you can see why he acts the way he does. You can see why Abraham acted the way. Sure, I'll go out from her of Chaldees or David or Joseph or Moses or Rahab, who we'll talk about tonight.
[00:34:40] When our confidence is in the Lord, there is no fear.
[00:34:48] When our confidence is in the Lord, we can be bold. We don't need to worry about comparing ourselves and measuring ourselves to others. Because our eyes are on him. Because his eyes are on us.
[00:35:03] Let's pray.
[00:35:07] Our heavenly Father, you loved us while we were yet unlovely.
[00:35:13] You gave your righteousness to us while we were yet ungodly.
[00:35:18] You did things for us while we were not impressive or wonderful or righteous or lovely.
[00:35:25] But you saved us while we were still in our sins.
[00:35:29] And so by this, we know that our salvation is not in ourselves, but it's in you, and it's in you alone.
[00:35:38] And so we learn in this, o Lord, to seek your approval and yours alone, and to seek it in Christ and in Christ's alone, not in our works or the works of others, not in our works as they are relative to our past selves or our future intentions or other people.
[00:35:58] But we judge ourselves.
[00:36:03] We judge ourselves in the light of the gospel.
[00:36:07] We are those who are dead.
[00:36:10] Dead in our sins, dead in our trespasses, dead in the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, but alive in him who was risen from the dead.
[00:36:23] And our faith is increasing.
[00:36:25] Our faith is growing because of you.
[00:36:29] Because of you and all that you have done and are doing. We find ourselves more and more following you, even though we face ups and downs and sometimes we struggle greatly. Lord, we do not forget that you do not leave us, that you are not absent in a way, but that you, by your word and spirit, are working among us and in all of your people throughout the world, growing and extending the work of the gospel, building on this foundation of the apostles and the prophets, Lord, our own lives here are proof of the fact that Paul's words are true because you have been building up your church on his ministry and the ministry of the other apostles.
[00:37:21] Lord, let us learn to trust this apostolic word, to devote ourselves to the doctrine and to the teaching of the apostles that you sent.
[00:37:34] Let us read first Corinthians and second Corinthians, the other letters of Paul, the other apostolic letters that we have just read our new testaments, and be strengthened, impressed and filled with hope within the word of God.
[00:37:52] We ask, Lord, that you would strengthen our hope in you through them, that we might not boast beyond our limits, but always boast in you and seek our commendation not in others, but in you and in you alone.
[00:38:10] Thank you for the benefits that you give to us in Jesus.
[00:38:16] May our faith be strengthened because of them, in our reflection and meditation on them. Today we pray this in Jesus name. Amen.
