Strength Through Weakness (Part 1) Series

Some of you may not know this about me, but I am in fact bi-lingual. I am fluent in English and sarcasm. And because that is true, I love the verses in 2 Corinthians 11:16-33, if you want to turn with me there this morning. We have been studying the book of 2 Corinthians together for a few months and in the second half of chapter 11 we get to see some of Paul’s sarcastic personality bubble up to the surface as he basically says in verse 16, “Imma brag a little!” And the reason he is doing this is because the false teachers, the so-called “Super Apostles” that the Corinthians were being influenced by, were using their eloquent speech to boast about all their achievements in an effort to gain influence and to level criticism against Paul and his ministry. And basically what Paul is saying in verses 16-21 is, “All right. You want to go there. Let’s go there.”

2 Corinthians 11:16-21a

“I repeat, let no one think me foolish. But even if you do, accept me as a fool, so that I too may boast a little. 17 What I am saying with this boastful confidence, I say not as the Lord would but as a fool. 18 Since many boast according to the flesh, I too will boast. 19 For you gladly bear with fools, being wise yourselves! 20 For you bear it if someone makes slaves of you, or devours you, or takes advantage of you, or puts on airs, or strikes you in the face. 21 To my shame, I must say, we were too weak for that!”

A few weeks ago, I provided a physical description of the Apostle Paul. Add this descriptor as well – trash talker. And the reason we know that he is sarcastically talking smack is because he says clearly that boasting in your strengths is the endeavor of fools. He uses the word “boast” six times in six verses and he uses the word “fool” or “foolish” five times in those same six verses. And he even talks a little smack to the Corinthians directly when he chides them in verses 19-20 for putting up with spiritual abuse from these false teachers because they were so enamored with their external strengths. Now, here is a fair question – if it’s foolish to boast in your strengths, then what would be the wise thing to do? The surface answer is, “To not boast at all,” Correct? To be humble.

But let me tell you why that falls short of the gospel standard. It’s because basically what you are promoting is good manners. You don’t need Jesus for that. The gospel of Jesus Christ, rightly understood, calls us to actually boast in our weaknesses. That’s the big idea I want us to gravitate toward this morning: That there is strength in our weakness. It’s actually good to brag about how weak we are! Now if that doesn’t scream counter-cultural, I don’t know what does! The culture conditions us to manage and conceal our weaknesses, but the gospel tells us to boast in them because we know that it’s through our human weaknesses that Christ’s power in us is activated. And it’s through our weaknesses, that Christ is exalted, not us. So let’s be careful today to examine WHO we are boasting in and WHAT we are boasting in lest we give in to the natural drift of our hearts to be glory thieves by shining the spotlight away from Christ onto ourselves.

In our pursuit of Jesus, here are two things we need to pay careful attention to…

1. BE CAREFUL WHERE WE FIND OUR CONFIDENCE – vs 22

Confidence is an interesting thing. Confidence is all about self-assurance and we can all see how an extremely low confidence or an extremely high confidence can be detrimental. We saw that reality play out recently in the NBA playoffs. A young player for the Grizzlies arrogantly talked trash about LeBron James. Whether you like LeBron or not, there is no denying he is one of the greatest to ever play the game. Dillon Brooks said, “I don’t respect anybody unless they score 40 points on me.” Fast forward a few games and Team LeBron (Lakers) ended up closing out the series with a win by guess how much…40 points. How ironic! I guess pride does come before a fall!

Here’s the point: Fools place a ton of confidence in themselves and in their resume; not in Christ and HIS resume. This is what the Bible means when it talks about boasting in the flesh. It’s boasting about something that you feel like you have accomplished all by yourself because of your hard work, or your charisma, or your leadership gifts, or your business savvy, or intellect, or eloquence, etc., etc. That is exactly what these Super Apostles were doing. And Paul says that this is the activity of a fool.