2 CORINTHIANS 11: 28-33 [GAINING PERSPECTIVE Series]
THE INTER STRESS OF INVOLVEMENT
[Acts 9:22-25]
Paul now changes from outward sufferings that he was called upon to endure as a minister of Christ to the daily pressure of concern that he bore for the churches and their leaders. These verses are the climax to the catalog of his ministerial suffering for his external difficulties seem insignificant when compared to the concern he has for the churches.
We as 21st Century American Christians cannot easily identify with Paul's physical sufferings as some of our international brethren can who are persecuted for their faith. But in this success oriented society we can identify with the inter-stress the Apostle speaks of here. Paul's stress though was not over worldly success but over spiritual concerns. His stress came from his devotion to Christ and His church (CIT).
Paul was deeply devoted to the Christ he worshiped and served and therefore to the ministry to which Jesus had called him. He not only was devoted to winning people to Christ, but to seeing them grow in the nurture and admonition of the true faith. Paul had deep seated faithfulness to his responsibility concerning the eternal outcome of each life. He knew they would not grow and reach others without the God’s truth and Spirit transforming lives. These and other eternal realities caused him to experience great stress. We also must not take lightly our ministry responsibilities but find strength in our weakness to care about the outcome of other lives. May we too live for the glory of God and work for the transformation of lives that also live for the honor and glory of Lord Jesus Christ.
I. INTENSE CONCERN, 28-29.
II. THE RESULTING WEAKNESS, 30-31.
III. ESCAPE FROM DAMASCUS, 32-33.
Paul seems to have been listing the sufferings that he experienced as they came to his mind [with no particular order], when suddenly he interrupts his train of thought. In verse 28 we learn that Paul's greatest burden is not without but within. “Apart from such external things, there is the daily pressure on me of concern for all the churches.”
Paul could have gone on with what he suffered to take the gospel to the world, but he chooses instead to describe the largest burden he carried. It is difficult to comprehend the pain Paul must have felt from these physical afflictions and deprivations. But the spiritual struggles of his ministry were an even greater burden. I know how very much energy, love, care, prayer, work, worry, study, waiting, meeting, and speaking is involved in the care of one congregation. And Paul had upon him all the churches.
So there is something more, something deeper than outward affliction and privations which Paul is called upon to endure as a minister of Christ. The suffering he has been forced to mention in order to put his opponents to silence are externals, thus he considers them incidental in their significance (Mt. 13:9). Daily Paul is spiritually pressed with concern for all the churches, many of them he had founded. That his concern was not lack of faith is shown over and over again by serious problems, defections and rebellions which occurred so distressingly in the various churches and which necessitated his visits and his letters and his constant prayers. This concern was based not only on the disturbing reports which came to his ears, but on his knowledge of the savage craftiness of the enemy of souls who is attempting to overthrow the work of the Gospel. To see Christ's name dishonored in the church of all places caused Paul the acutest grief. When the flock of Christ is ravaged by wolves the under-shepherd cannot stand by impassively as though uninvolved in what is taking place. It is his duty to immediately come to their aid and drive away the marauders both for love of the flock and for the honor of his Master the Good Shepherd, in whose strength he acts and to whom he is answerable for the work entrusted to his hands.
Oh that we today who grumble and find such fault with life could gain more of Paul's perspective which would shrink our external trials and give our spiritual ministry more significance.
In verse 29 the apostle speaks to his deep concerned for the weaker brethren. “Who is weak without my being weak? Who is led into sin without my intense concern?”
Paul was concerned for the individual in the churches he served. The concern which the Apostle experienced for persons was not generated by lack of faith but by compassion. Paul so identified himself with them that he could not detach himself from their lot in life. He could not hold himself aloof at a distance from his people’s problems for the compassion of Christ compelled him to care. He felt the weakness of any member as his weakness. Their frailty as his frailty.
If anyone was led into sin he not only “burned” (the I is emphatic) with indignation against the person responsible but experienced the grief and shame of the one who stumbled and longed for their restoration. Those with infirmities of faith, wisdom, and walk could find compassion with Paul (1 Cor. 12:26).
And it should be so with every faithful shepherd in Christ's flock. He should lovingly identify himself with those who have been committed to his care, showing himself deeply concerned and resisting everyone and thing which entices them away from the simplicity of their devotion to Christ. This compassion is not of man; it is the divine compassion of Christ Himself, burning in the heart of His servant and blazing forth in love to reach and to bind the heart of those to whom he ministers to the One Bridegroom.
That is why consistent DEVOTIONAL TIMES are so important. They’re not to earn brownie points with God. He already loves us completely. But if we fail to stop and sit, to think and pray, to listen and worship, our eyes get dry and our hearts become callused and we refuse to invest ourselves in the struggles of others.
While making his landmark documentary about World War II, film maker Ken Burns and his colleagues watched thousands of hours of MILITARY FOOTAGE. Scenes of the devastating Battle of Peleliu often invaded their dreams at night. Burns told Sacramento Bee reporter Rick Kush man, "You're listening to the ghosts and echoes from an almost inexpressible past. If you do that, you put yourself into the emotional maelstrom."
There's a price to becoming involved in the struggles of others, whether artistically or spiritually. Paul experienced this price in his work of sharing the gospel. Oswald Chambers said we enter this spiritual struggle as we "deliberately identify ourselves with God's interests in other people" and "find to our amazement that we have power to keep wonderfully poised in the center of it all."
Paul realized that God's strength is made perfect in our weakness (2 Cor. 12:9). Jesus paid the greatest price to be involved in our world, and He strengthens us as we share His
love with others. As we obey God's calling, He will provide the needed strength. [David McCasland. Our Daily Bread.]
II. THE RESULTING WEAKNESS (30-31).
If you’re still not satisfied by what I’ve gone through on your behalf to prove my commitment Paul says in verse 30 I will continue. “If I have to boast, I will boast of what pertains to my weakness.”
Paul had given of himself so completely, so intently to the ministry that he walked in weakness, but in this weakness as a poor earthen vessel he had encountered the strengthening of God. Though boasting is still clearly distasteful to Paul he would rather boast of his familiarity with the infirmities and sorrows of man as Jesus did (Isa. 53:4). Many of us find it easy to glory in God's power, but can we glory in our weakness? For it is in weakness of sorrowing and suffering where our greatest deeds of God occur. You need look no further than the cross to understand the greatest work wrought in weakness. In the weakness of the cross God displayed His greatest power.
So often we complain about these weaknesses but to Paul they were a cause to boast. Through these tough circumstances and his weaken state came the power of someone else, namely the power of Christ. If not so, how could Paul have continued on through harsh encounter after encounter? So he boasts in his sufferings that show his weakness which made him contemptible in his adversaries eyes, but useful to Christ.
No, everything does not go easy for you when you find Christ, or if you serve Christ. But there is proof in this pudding, for who else but a true servant, one who is sustained by Christ, who would go through all these occurrences. Only one who truly believes and is empowered to go on with God no matter what. His boasting turns therefore not to what he has done but to what God has done.
Paul was aware that his reliability was suspect among the Corinthians because of the slander and backbiting of which he was the focus, so in verse 31 he has to assert that he does not lie. “The God and Father of the Lord Jesus, He who is blessed forever, knows that I am not lying.
The listing of obstacles has been so monumental that some might think that no one would willing go through that for themselves much less for anyone else. To testify to these trials authenticity, Paul takes a solemn oath. There is no name or person to whom Paul could more solemnly appeal as a witness of his truthfulness than the One before whom all life and hearts are open and no secrets hidden. So the Apostle calls God to witness that all he has said and will say is truth, that there has been no inaccuracy or over-statement. Calling God the Father of the Lord Jesus is appealing to the special covenant relationship that all believers have through redemption into eternal life.
III. ESCAPE FROM DAMASCUS, 32-33.
Verses 32 & 33 recount Paul’s narrow escape from Damascus as one more example of his weakness and vulnerability. “In Damascus the ethnarch under Aretas the king was guarding the city of the Damascenes in order to seize me,
Paul now mentions his escape from Damascus, one of the oldest known cities to man. King Aretas (ruled Arabs from 9BC to 40AD) was the father in-law of Herod Antipas. They hated each other because of Herod's unfaithfulness to his daughter whom Herod divorced in order to marry his own niece, Herodias. Aretas even declared war on Herod. [Josephus tells us that during the reign of Nero and therefore in the time of Paul's Apostleship, no less than ten thousand Jews were massacred in Damascus within a single hour.]
This escape is narrated by Luke in Acts 9:22-25. The ethnarch placed a guard [phrouros -sentries] to watch the city’s exits at the instigation of Jews who constituted a numerous section of the city's population, and who assisted in the watching (Acts 9:24). It was not unlikely that the ethnarch was himself a Jew and that the guard appointed by him was mainly Jewish.
Ethnarch literally means a ruler of a race or tribe and was commonly used to denote a deputy governor or subordinate ruler responsible for a particular racial section of the population. This passage's statement under Aretas the king helps date Paul's conversion and the commencement of his ministry to 37-40 AD, for Aretas died in 40 AD. After a short time in Damascus Paul, after his conversion, went into the Arabian desert for nearly three years to sort out his dramatic transformation. He returned to Damascus and proclaimed for many days in the synagogue that Jesus is the Messiah. Paul then spent seven more years ministering before he started his missionary journeys. It was fourteen total years before he returned to Jerusalem.
Verse 33 tells of Paul’s undignified exit from the City. “and I was let down in a basket through a window in the wall, and so escaped his hands.”
He was hunted by Jew and Gentile alike (Acts 14:5) but delivered by God through the agency of fellow Christians. He was saved by being ignobly lowered in a basket, probably used for fish, in the dead of night through a window in a wall. This window was probably part of a house built upon the foundation of the City walls. This was the way the spies fled the city of Jericho in Joshua 2:15 and the way David escaped Absalom in 1 Samuel 19:12.
What great humbling the Apostle Paul experienced from the once arrogant Jewish persecutor and blasphemer of Christ to the persecuted and blasphemed. The false apostles resembled the unconverted Saul far more than the apostle Paul.
In CLOSING
Even when Paul did narrate his sufferings he was careful that Christ was glorified and not himself. Yet we cannot read these verses without admiring the courage and devotion of Paul. Each trial impacted his life but they never stopped his service of God. Acts 20:24 says "But none of these things move me, neither count I my life dear to myself.” Paul proved his love for Christ and the brethren. May we never take for granted the sacrifices others have made so that we might enjoy the blessings of the Gospel today in our nation and in our church.
Our utmost diligence and services appear unworthy of notice when compared with Paul’s, and our difficulties and trials seem far less significant. May the evidence of his faith lead us to inquire whether or not we really are followers of Christ. I leave you with this question as we close: What suffering to spread the gospel could you share as evidence of commitment to Christ? If we are His, there will be evidence of our what we have suffered for our faith and attempted for God’s glory.
Dear Reader, if you have never really accepted Jesus as your personal Savior, would you do it right now? Do not delay or put it off. If you would like to receive Christ by faith, pray this simple prayer in your heart:
Dear Lord, I acknowledge that I am a sinner. I believe Jesus died for my sins on the cross, and rose again the third day. I repent of my sins. By faith I receive the Lord Jesus as my Savior. You promised to save me, and I believe You, because You are God and cannot lie. I believe right now that the Lord Jesus is my personal Savior, and that all my sins are forgiven through His precious blood. I thank You, dear Lord, for saving me. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
If you prayed that prayer, God heard you and saved you. I personally want to welcome you to the family of God and rejoice with you. So please come forward at this time and share that with me.
[True believers follow the model of the Suffering Servant Jesus for ministry and maturity. God is shown to be strong in our weaknesses and sufferings. Paul will expand this concept of ministry in 12:1–13:4.]
