"Strength in our Weakness" - Admitting our Weakness and Embracing Christ's Power

let's open our Bibles to Second Corinthians chapter 12. second Corinthians chapter 12 verses 1 through 10. expositional preaching and teaching and catechizing and discipling that is the ministry we Revere because it is so clearly of God that we know is the ministry that will build wisely and strongly long term for the future so we're all thinking sign me up that's why we're here but what if we find ourselves personally inadequate for such a lofty calling it is sacred it is high it is Holy who of us is good at this who of us is thinking oh I've got this I remember my mom telling me once about a conversation that she and dad had on a Sunday night there was the morning Services of course then a Sunday evening service back then and dad had so much respect for Lake Avenue Church there in Pasadena and such a modest view of himself that this this Sunday night he was saying things like you know and this church deserves a better preacher what am I doing here I'm no good at this why don't I just quit and I think it was mom who suggested why don't we look at Jeremiah chapter one so they're sitting there reading the call of Jeremiah the prophet where the Lord reaches out and touches Jeremiah's mouth who says I'm putting my words in your mouth and Mom said to Dad what matters here is not your mouth but whose words are in your mouth that helped it gave dad the courage to go on indeed sometime later at that church it seemed suitable and right for Dad to say to the church you know this church really does need a new pastor and I'd love to be that new pastor in fact what if all of us together walk in newness of life into the future and they did now there was a lot going on a lot of years of laying foundations and so forth but dad was there for 20 years to clearly marked decades one decade of laying foundations another decade of going into warp speed and during that decade we could not wait for Sunday to come around the Lord is there the reality of it was more than the human contributions even gifted human contributions there was a certain X Factor in that church it was the felt reality of the Risen Christ with his hand upon the ministry of that church declaring to them and to the world this is mine and obviously none of us is adequate for that we all understand that God's power enters into our weakness we are not rejoicing in our strengths on steroids with God's power enhancing our power but we frankly admit our weaknesses inadequacies shortcomings and so forth and we are our hearts are cracking cracking open to God's power what only God can do and we do that through humility I'm reading John Milton's Paradise Lost these days because when I was in university and it was assigned in English lit I took a stab at every fifth word but I really didn't care because what I really cared about was I cared about the Beach Boys and the Beatles And The Four Tops and surfing and lifting weights and I blew it so I'm finally circling back because I don't want to die not having read deeply into Paradise Lost by John Milton for crying out loud so I'm finding in book one line 98 Satan is speaking and he speaks of High disdain his mentality High disdain from sense of injured Merit sense of injured Merit I'm not getting the recognition here in heaven that I deserve people are not all these angels not even God himself I mean I'm they are not admitting how impressive I really am come on you people basically that mentality treats the world as my audience my existence is the stage on which I can display my amazingness and y'all should see understand and understand what's going on here come on and when every member of the of the human race perceives reality and navigates reality that way really bad things start to happen a mentality of self-exaltation glorying in one's own strengths made an angel into a devil and brings hell into our churches but we can flip it we flip it by throwing our heads back and laughing the laugh of Faith the laugh of humility and marveling the fact that we even have a job just lucky to have a job it's crazy do they have any standards at all Charles Simeon wrote a letter to a friend that said this another observation in a former letter of yours has not escaped my remembrance the three lessons which a minister has to learn one humility to humility three humility how long are we learning the true nature of Christianity please follow as I read our Passage for second Corinthians 12. verses 1 through 10. did I say First Corinthians did I say second okay we're good I must go on boasting though there's nothing to be gained by it I will go on to visions and Revelations of the Lord I Know a Man in Christ who 14 years ago was caught up to the third heaven whether in the body or out of the body I do not know God knows and I know that this man was caught up into Paradise whether in the body or out of the body I do not know God knows and he heard things that cannot be told which man may not utter on behalf of this man I will boast but on my own behalf I will not boast except of my weaknesses though if I should wish to boast I would not be a fool for I would be speaking the truth but I refrain from it so that no one may think more of me than he sees in me or hears from me so to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations a thorn was given me in the flesh a messenger of Satan to harass me to keep me from becoming conceited three times I pleaded with the Lord about this that it should leave me but he said to me my grace is sufficient for you for my power is made perfect in weakness therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses so that the power of Christ May rest upon me for the sake of Christ then I think those are the five key words in the passage for the sake of Christ for the sake of Christ then I am content with weaknesses insults hardships persecutions and calamities fill in the blank foreign for when I am weak then I am strong this is God's word now we have a question of translation um the ESV in verse 10 says I am content with weaknesses the NIV reads I Delight in weaknesses so is Paul talking about contentment or enjoyment we know that you can mean Delight in because this is the word used in Matthew 17 when the father says at the Transfiguration this is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased the father was not merely contented he was delighted and I think that that stronger word delighted is required in our passage for two reasons one verse 10 is restating the strong assertion in verse 9. therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses so Paul's enthusiasm is going Beyond contentment the second reason I think we need to go with a stronger wording is the phrase for the sake of Christ at the beginning of verse 10. for the sake of Christ goes better with I Delight than with okay I can live with that I'm good with it I'm content why because of who Christ is for the sake of Christ remember how Jim Packer's book knowing God begins I walked in the sunshine with a scholar who would effectively forfeited his prospects of academic advancement by clashing with church dignitaries over the gospel of grace but it doesn't matter he said at length for I've known God and they haven't and Packer says when Paul says in Philippians 3 that he counts the things he lost as dung he means not merely that he does not think of them as having any value but also that he does not live with them constantly in his mind what normal person spends his time nostalgically dreaming of manure so in second Corinthians 12. Paul is saying I've not just accepted this new Arrangement that God has given me for my life I like it this way I Delight in this I wouldn't go back if I could for the sake of Christ so for a contextual reason in verse 9 and a spiritual reason in those words for the sake of Christ I think we have to read I Delight in this not merely I am content with it what is so striking about this passage is its very vulnerable personal honesty and transparency Paul is opening up to us his private thoughts and counsels and assessments and feelings behind his preaching Ministry he's opening up to us the inner realities out of which his preaching flowed and here is the Insight he offers us our greatest breakthrough to spiritual power will come through the worst experience of Our Lives our greatest breakthrough to spiritual power will come through the worst experience of Our Lives you know the context in chapters 10 through 13 Paul is defending his ministry he feels very embarrassed he's he's so awkward Murray Harris the great New Testament grammarian I sat in on a course he taught at Trinity once on Second Corinthians he said the very syntax of the Greek text of Second Corinthians is is Disturbed it's eccentrically written because Paul is riled up he's upset he's distressed as he writes this with relational distress so he feels embarrassed to talk about himself but he also feels trapped here's what's happening Paul's Ministry is under attack by Men He spoofs as super Apostles in chapter 11. you know the story and these false teachers are moving through the Corinthian Church boasting extravagantly of their amazing experience spiritual experiences and and putting Paul down as inferior why are you listening to him and these immature Corinthian Believers are dazzled by these guys and so there there's this growing sense of attachment to these Furious super Apostles that puts the Corinthian Church in danger of falling away from Jesus himself as Paul says in chapter 11. Paul's got he's got to man up and help them he's got to rescue them from their spiritual Peril but Paul himself has been made the flashpoint of controversy in a very personal way so he can't help the Corinthians refocus on Christ without also becoming to some degree self-referential in his appeal this is a very awkward position for a pastor to find himself in so on the one hand he's in a no-win situation on the one hand if he asserts his spiritual qualifications his critics will point at him and say see what did we tell you he's the Arrogant one on the other hand if he downplays his credentials they'll point at him and say see what did we tell you he's the second Stringer so either way the Corinthian spiritual Integrity in their their future their life before Christ hangs at this moment on their relational stability with Paul so he has no choice but to defend himself for their sake but the way he goes about boasting is surprising he boasts all right but about unboastable things he flips it he surprises everybody the way the Lord surprised him so Paul is reclaiming bragging rights in the hearts of the Corinthians by revealing on the one hand that the kind of mind-boggling spiritual experience his opponents were trotting out and boasting about but then he turns the tables on them I mean God gave the Apostle Paul a personal guided tour of Heaven thank you and then for 14 years Paul said nothing about it which tells me Paul was not raised in the United States of America because he had an opportunity he could have had he could have gotten some investors together and form Jesus land with thrill rides and made a theme park and he would that there would be this big Auditorium where he could sit there on a stool and tell his story over and over again if people would pay 19.95 per head to seniors get a discount and so forth it just it could have been big he didn't he didn't tell anybody he never wanted to seem above others now he's forced into divulging that sacred privilege and he feels so awkward about this he finds us so distasteful and bizarre he actually backs into it in a third person way I know this guy I know a guy I Know a Man in Christ verse two according to verse 6 Paul prefers to be known only for what people can see in him and hear from him for themselves he wants to be seen as just another Christian guy isn't that completely lovable so endearing there's just no big dealness there's nothing worse than pastoral big galeness Paul takes this approach for a really good reason he understands how divine power actually comes down not through privileged experiences but through common human ordinariness and even hardship extravagant experiences are not Paul's platform for spirituality everyday life is suffering is Paul isn't demeaning his experience of Heaven it was real it was of God it was sacred but that high and holy moment was not where Paul broke through to new power in his ministry that happened in the worst experience of his life getting that thorn in the flesh and then learning to live with it and even being very okay with it so whatever the thorn was obviously it was horrible that's the only way this makes sense I think of it this way Paul Paul has just had this Mountaintop experience he's coming down the Mountainside to the the little town below the real world as we think of it he's coming down his heart is filled with joy elated just amazing praising God and so forth and and but he's not paying attention and he stumbles and Falls as he's coming down the Mountainside and he instinctively puts out his hand to catch himself and oh man oh man oh man he Rams a great big Thorn right up into his hand he didn't see it that hurts and all of a sudden that Joy is gone it's gone and he looks at that and he says he can't pull it out one way can't push it through the other way it's in there for Keeps it never stops throbbing eventually he comes to realize this this is never going to stop for the rest of my life so whatever else he's trying to do 24 7 whatever he's thinking about counseling people writing letters preaching fundraising whatever it might be that thorn is just it's it's cruelty is always there and that's his new normal why did that happen Paul explains it at two levels simultaneously at one level it came out of Hell's dirty tricks Department a messenger of Satan he says and the fact that Paul experienced it as a messenger from Satan makes me wonder if the physical anguish was accompanied by fiery Dart thoughts like you Paul you hypocrite you you [Music] piece of trash you Pond scum God is finally catching up with you your life is over and you deserve it Satan meant to harass Paul but at the same time this attack from Satan was at a deeper level also a mercy from God the Lord meant it to keep Paul's feet on the ground after his vision of Heaven in fact the gracious purpose of God the merciful purpose of God the fatherly purpose of God literally wraps around the fiendish purpose of Satan as the phrase to keep me from becoming conceited appears both at the beginning and at the end of verse 7. so the thorn at the deepest level of causation was a gift from above it was a gift Paul really didn't want to receive so he goes to the Lord and he knew it came from the Lord so he goes to the Lord for Relief verse 8 Lord he's basically saying I could do so much more for you without this so understandably he's seeing only two options ahead of him for the rest of his life one go on living with the thorn and be less fruitful for Christ two get rid of The Wretched Thorn and be more useful and more fruitful for Christ he does not yet see a third option keep the thorn add in all sufficient Grace and become more empowered more fruitful more useful than ever before than ever he could have been but on his way there to that third option he goes to the Lord three times to to make his case because this is not just an inconvenience this is unendurable now he he knew from the life of Jesus we know from the gospels so many times suffering people came to Jesus cried out for help and he healed them wonderfully mercifully powerfully immediately three times Paul prays what does his Lord say in response each time the same answer my grace is sufficient for you for my power is made perfect in weakness that is not the answer Paul wants to hear but after the third time he gives up and his heart cracks open to power from Beyond painless thornless normalcy power Grace help comfort such as only God can provide and what the Lord teaches all of us in this life is that weakness is the fundamental Human Experience and he's okay with that weakness is not one experience we have alongside all our other experiences weakness is the platform on which we always experience everything we have never once in all our lives known even one nanosecond of non-weekness what does Paul say in in Romans 8 the spirit helps us in our weakness not plural weaknesses in our weakness it's a pervasive crippling reality throughout our experience of life so we never grow Beyond weakness weakness is where we receive power Carl plunk writes the study of virtually any aspect of Paul's theology must eventually consider this language of Affliction not because of its abundance as much of its as its fundamental character this language of Affliction exposes the ground on which the Apostle does theology and on which we do Theology and Ministry would we really want to preach Christ crucified without weakness how could that be real how could that be convincing to us or to anybody else the lexicons inform us that this word translated is sufficient means not surprisingly to be enough to satisfy to be a match for the Lord is saying to Paul I'm never going to pull that thorn out of your hand as long as you live but my grace my friendship my nearness my promises my presence my truth my smile all the encouragements I I am this whole treasure to this arsenal of of Mighty divine encouragements all that I am will match all that you are suffering your pain and the weakness it reduces you to will not be a barrier to your future it will be the very Avenue through which I will bestow my power for your future and I think Paul is saying to all of us if your experience of Life were undisturbed if you were always at ease if you lived a life you expected to I mean I find myself sometimes I wonder if mentally if I've ever graduated from high school when I was formidable and so were you and we have this you know these unchosen just intuitive expectations and assumptions about how life is going to play out and it's unsustainable and it's trivial and then God gives us the privilege of experiencing the demolition of the life we thought we were going to live and the Reconstruction of the glory only he can give and we're all thinking okay lord sign me up that's why we're here he's saying to us all if your experience of Life were undisturbed if you were always at ease and you were living that Designer life you thought you would had have if you felt no temptation to despair of yourself then you would trust yourself you would exalt yourself you would thereby disempower yourself and your wonderful experience of of heaven or Ministry Revival whatever it might be Seminary it would become your ruin so he's saying to us my power elite will become yours most perfectly most suitably most effectively most beautifully in the humbling experience of weakness so Paul turned a corner here he he realized okay this horrible experience is not coming to me as evidence against myself this is simply the way of God's wisdom grace mercy and Power this is a wonderful surprise only God can orchestrate and only God can work with this is his way with us all the super Apostles these these impressive amazing High School seniors they knew nothing of this all they understood was being impressive and they were what a tragedy that kind of fraudulent power threatens the Integrity in the very future of the Corinthian Church it threatens us always in every generation authentic Christianity does not produce a race of Superman who rise above need the most perfect expression of authentic Christianity in this age and always is divine power received with the empty hands of human weakness and poverty and pain without Thorns would we even open our hands foreign but with our Thorn and his grace maybe we should feel a little guilty for having such an advantage in Ministry so after his third try with the Lord Paul not only accepts that he likes it he's happy with the new Arrangement therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses so that the power of Christ May rest upon me I love that language the power of Christ resting Upon A preacher of the Gospel the power of Christ resting upon an entire church that's the real story the Lord is leading us into it's an old one it's a glorious one this verb translated rest upon appears nowhere else in biblical Greek but Paul seems to be alluding to the Shekinah Glory hovering over resting upon God's people in their Wilderness wanderings the Bible says that Moses could not enter the tent of meeting because the cloud of God's glory had settled on it but in the New Covenant where does the glory dwell on The Afflicted Christian believer now Paul is no masochist he doesn't like the pain but the power and presence and Glory of Christ resting upon him are worth it so Paul's not feeling sorry for himself he feels privileged he's no hero that's a form of self-exaltation and how can this world defeat a man or a woman or a church that finds power in weakness progress in setbacks and opportunity in confinement and most wildly Delight in pain if God has a purpose of Grace for you and your ministry and he does be all on beyond all you can ask or think huh we all know this is true you don't need to go looking for it it'll come find you something's going to come into your life something unforeseeable something Unthinkable something about which right now you might say oh that'll never happen not in a million years and then it'll happen it's inevitable and that is when and oh man what if what if we had time for people to come forward at this mic and tell stories second Corinthians 12 stories of God's power in the catastrophic moments of life it would be so powerful we all know this is real it's not what we would have built out in a million years but this is real and glorious and we have enough Faith to sort of stick or toe in it and say okay Lord okay have your way with me for the sake of Christ we do not believe in the weakness of power we rejoice in the power of weakness and when people are looking for spirituality today well that's where we come in and not just us in our ordinariness I mean that's bad enough but in our broken hearts in our devastation in our what just happened to my life that is where Jesus dwells that's where the glory comes down we're not just preachers of gospel truth we are living proof of Gospel Power when life is impossible and God is going to prove it through every single one of us and people will see Christ in you The Mystery of the Risen Christ in you even in you and they will put their hope in him they will connect the dots between this amazing message that they're hearing from you and this astonishing reality they're seeing in you and they will say sign me up so don't quit your horrible life is worth living finally in verse 10 Paul broadens the relevance of the grace of Christ Beyond his own experience of the thorn to everything we will face for the sake of Christ then I Delight in well here's an inventory for starters weaknesses insults hardships persecutions and calamities for when I am weak then I am strong let the list grow longer head in everything we ourselves will ever face and Our Risen Lord says to us as well my grace is sufficient for you you feel inadequate you'll feel overwhelmed I understand don't worry about it I've got this it's okay when you were defeated I'm going to be victorious for you when you are distressed I'm going to be resilient for you when you were confused I'm going to be clear-headed for you when you are fearful I'm going to be unstoppable for you just hang on to me I'm going to make this work my glory will hover over you my power will flow into you through you all I ask is that you give your weakness to me and I promise to give my power to you real time Moment by moment all over the world today are preachers teachers disciplers faithful intelligence sincere learned fun Godly diligent conscientious foreign how can I even go on I have nothing more to say I have nothing more to give all I have to offer right now is is my exhaustion and defeat and sadness my my humiliation these overwhelming feelings of failure and I'm no good at this why do I put myself through this blah blah blah all the drama and the Lord says to his servants I can work with that give it to me I'm not asking to get over it just give it to me and we do for the sake of Christ for the sake of Christ for the sake of Christ and then we get up and go go do the next great thing for the sake of Christ he'll make it work God be with you

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Length: 40min 59sec (2459 seconds)

Published: Tue May 30 2023