There was a guy on the news the other day who’s about to become the first Australian to enter some Solo Round the World Sailing Race and he was saying how no-one from Australia had ever attempted this before. He was basically wanting to tell us how great he is. And why not? That’s how you get famous isn’t it? And that’d be nice. So I thought I might try it.
I’d like to tell you how great I am. For example I’d like to tell you what a great guitarist I am. The only trouble is: I saw "This is Your Life" the other night, with Tommy Emmanuel being featured. And they’d invited a number of his protégés on to play with him. And I realised, again, that I’m really just an average guitarist. Well, perhaps I could tell you what a great preacher I am. But then as I was preparing this I happened to look up at the cassette case on the wall with all those sermons by Peter Adam and Don Carson and Dick Lucas and the like. And I realised that I’m really probably just an ordinary preacher. In fact I’d like to be able to tell you all those other areas where I’m great, but I can’t think of any. The fact is, I’m just an ordinary person like anyone else. I’m good at some things and mediocre at others. Now some people would be depressed by that discovery about themselves. How terrible to be average! But it doesn’t depress me because I know that what I’m here to do doesn’t depend on my greatness, or on my ability. It depends on the power of Christ who works within me.
In fact as we discover in the passage we’re looking at from 2 Corinthians, to brag about your particular abilities is just foolishness. Greatness is such a fleeting thing. And it’s a comparative thing isn’t it? I may be great compared with some, but there are plenty of others who make me look ordinary. As soon as I begin to boast in my own strength or ability or power I open myself up to the reality of my own limitations.
This was what Paul realised as he addressed some of the complaints people in Corinth were making about him. Obviously there were some people who had come to Corinth on Paul’s heels, who were bad mouthing him. We saw last week how he pointed out that he was the first to come to them with the gospel. These others had only come later. And their method was to point out all Paul’s weaknesses. 10:10: "His letters are weighty and strong, but his bodily presence is weak, and his speech contemptible."
His problem, as we’ve noticed before, was that he didn’t fit the stereotype of the Greek heroic leader. In fact he seemed just the opposite. He was weak, he suffered from physical ailments of some sort and he couldn’t argue himself out of a paper bag.
At least that’s what his opponents were saying. But he had something to say to them. He says, "OK if you insist on this sort of foolishness then let me humour you. If you want me to act as a fool then that’s what I’ll do. But please don’t take me too seriously. If I’m to be a fool, receive me as one."
Here again we see the similarity between our world and theirs. We were commenting at our lunchtime Bible study on Tuesday the way our culture seems to love those who brag about themselves. Mind you we don’t call it bragging. We call it assertiveness. We call it presenting our credentials; letting others know what our potential is. Putting ourselves in the best light. But in the end it’s mostly just bragging. And that’s just foolishness.
Still, he says, let me indulge your foolishness. Not that this is anything that comes from the Lord though. It’s just foolishness. But then, they’re obviously used to putting up with fools, since these opponents of Paul are so popular. "In fact," he says, "you don’t just put up with these fools, you even let them enslave you, prey upon you, or take advantage of you. Talk about wise!" At this point his irony, his sarcasm reaches a crescendo. He says "To my shame, I must say, we were too weak for that!" He seems to be saying, "Listen to yourselves. What are you saying? Was I too weak because I didn’t take advantage of you?" There’s a worldly view of leadership that too easily creeps into even the Church. That’s a view that says leadership needs to be authoritarian. It should push people around. And it mustn’t show any signs of weakness or it’s not true leadership. It’s interesting how this kind of foolishness is fed by the audience. You can’t blame people for showing off when we, the onlookers, cheer when they do it!
But how does that sort of leadership reflect the nature of Christ? Not at all! Still, Paul hasn’t finished. If they want credentials, he has them in spades. His opponents are obviously Jews. Perhaps they’re the same group that seemed to follow him around causing trouble in the early years of his ministry. Jewish Christians who wanted to emphasise the Jewish origins of Christianity, with a particular focus on ritual and law. A Jewish pedigree may have carried some weight in this outpost of the Empire. Well, Paul could outscore them there. He was everything they claimed to be and more. A Hebrew, an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham. Yes, yes, yes! He doesn’t say it here, but no doubt they knew that he was a student of Gamaliel, so his understanding of the Jewish religion was without peer. And on top of that he’s a minister of Christ. In fact a better one than these others.
But there’s more. Not only is he the equal of anyone claiming Jewish heritage, he even matches those who want to use the standards of Greek heroes to judge him: "far greater labors, far more imprisonments, with countless floggings, and often near death. 24Five times I have received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. 25Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I received a stoning. Three times I was shipwrecked; for a night and a day I was adrift at sea; 26on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from bandits, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers and sisters; 27in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, hungry and thirsty, often without food, cold and naked." These are the exploits of the heroes of the great sagas of Greek mythology.
But notice what he’s done. In all this list of his exploits, there’s not one success story, is there? We all know that the hero has to undergo these sorts of trials before winning through to overcome the enemy. Hollywood movies are the same. Every thriller or action movie is the same. The hero fights insurmountable odds but in the end the heroine is rescued, or the villain is caught, or better still annihilated. But what’s the result of all Paul’s efforts: "28besides other things, I am under daily pressure because of my anxiety for all the churches. 29Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is made to stumble, and I am not indignant?" Paul doesn’t end up triumphant. No, he ends up exhausted and weighed down by worry. (sounds like a typical vicar!) There’s no mention of the converts, or of the many letters he wrote, or the churches he set up and continued to encourage and build up. That’s not the point of this exercise. He wants to show them that successful Christian ministry isn’t a matter of how heroically you’ve performed.
So he goes on to show them just how un-heroic he is. He tells them about the time, just after he became a Christian, when he was lowered in a basket, in a very unflattering escape from Damascus, rather than risk death at the hands of the Jews. He’s no hero. He’s just an ordinary person like one of them, who, when the going gets tough, runs away.
Mind you, he does have his fair share of supernatural experiences. One particular event stands out. It was a rare event apparently. It happened once, 14 years before, but nevertheless it’s a startling one. This could be a description of his experience on the Damascus Road. Or it could be something that happened in Arabia when he was searching the Scriptures to understand what he had experienced. But whatever it was, it involved an intense experience of God’s presence that took him outside himself in some way to experience things that are indescribable.
But even then he’s not going to boast about such an experience because to do so would make him a real fool.
This is a warning to us isn’t it? It’s very easy when we have some extreme spiritual experience to want to tell people about it. But if we do, we need to be careful that we’re not just telling them to make ourselves look more spiritual. Do you remember what Jesus said in Matt 6:3-4 about doing good deeds? "But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, 4so that your giving may be done in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you." Well if we’re to keep secret what we’re doing when we give an offering how much more when we have some spiritual experience.
So why doesn’t he want to use this experience to convince the Corinthians? Well, probably because these sorts of experience can so easily be counterfeited. The church has always been the target of people wanting to make themselves out to be super-spiritual because of the things they say they’ve experienced. I’ve seen it in a number of places. People who have a word from God; a prophecy, a word of knowledge. But they don’t go to the elders or the leaders of the congregation to check it out. They don’t follow Paul’s injunction that the spirits of prophets are subject to the prophets. They just stand up and tell the church what God’s telling you to do. Well, Paul doesn’t want to encourage that sort of thing and he certainly doesn’t want to base his reputation on something that’s not able to be corroborated. No. He only wants them to go on the things he does or says. In fact he wants them to see that the only real grounds for boasting as a Christian aren’t our exploits, but the power of God working through us.
He reminds them of this ailment he suffered from, this ’thorn in the flesh.’ Now commentators have been speculating on what this ailment might have been for centuries, but it doesn’t really matter. What matters is the effect it had on Paul and the reason it was given to him. Why was it given to him? "To keep me from being too elated (or conceited)." (12:7)
Now, if you think about it, Paul had more reason than most to be conceited. He had more converts than almost anyone. He’d certainly started more churches. He was a great teacher and evangelist, despite what his opponents in Corinth said. But the thing is, conceit, or pride, and Christian ministry just don’t go together. Our model is Jesus Christ who humbled himself to become a servant. The word commonly used for Christian ministry means service; that is, what a servant or a slave does. That’s why I worry when I hear people saying they want to be priested because it’ll give them an increased authority in the Church. The authority of a servant is all they should be after.
So God sent Paul this thorn to keep him humble. But notice at the same time that he describes it as a messenger of Satan. He obviously saw this thorn as something that was stopping him from doing all he could in the spread of the gospel. This was Satan doing what he could to hold Paul back. So he must have been doubly confused when God didn’t remove it.
You may have experienced something like this. Something happens that Satan obviously has a hand in; something that’s damaging to the kingdom or to the work of the gospel. Yet God seems to let it continue, even when you pray about it.
Well maybe something is happening to us in that situation like what happened to Paul here. Even when he prayed that God would take it away, God said ’No.’ Whatever it was, it must have been bad, because he says he pleaded with God to have it removed. But look at what God’s answer was: "My grace is sufficient for you, for power (or my power) is made perfect in weakness." Paul may not have wanted to hear that answer. None of us want to hear that we’ll have to persevere in the face of suffering. But he needed to hear it. And so do we. Particularly we Protestant evangelicals. We need to hear that the Protestant work ethic isn’t an ethic of salvation. Nor is it an ethic of success in ministry. That’s how we think though isn’t it? I’ve got to work harder if I’m to see fruit. We’re no different from our secular friends in that respect, are we? We think that the harder we work the more results will come. And that the smarter we are the better results we’ll get. (Or the more spiritual we are. Or the more disciplined. etc.)
Now all of those things are good character traits to cultivate. But they don’t determine the success of our ministries. How will your ministry grow? How will my ministry grow? By God’s grace. God’s power, in fact will be shown to be perfect by our weakness.
By the way, notice that God’s grace is shown through our weakness. It isn’t that one follows the other. You’ll occasionally hear people talk about the need to go through a wilderness experience before you experience the heights of God’s power at work within you. It’s as though they’re reading this as saying that first Paul experienced his thorn in the flesh, then when he called on God, he began to experience God’s power again. But that’s not what he’s saying at all. He continued to experience the weakness of this ailment, but his weakness only served to show just how great the power of God is. And how was that power shown? Through people being converted. It wasn’t that Paul was a great evangelist, so much as that when he shared the gospel, God was at work exercising his power through Paul’s weak words. Here’s what makes the claims of Paul’s opponents so stupid. They thought he was a poor speaker, but they failed to realise that it didn’t matter. God was at work in him, showing his greatness by using those weak words to bring people to faith.
Instead they would have done better to join Paul in rejoicing at his weakness; rejoicing that the God we worship is powerful to save; powerful to take our weak efforts and do miracles through us. In fact, I’d like you to turn back to ch. 3:1-3 to see how Paul knew that his weakness wasn’t a hindrance to the gospel: "Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Surely we do not need, as some do, letters of recommendation to you or from you, do we? 2You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, to be known and read by all; 3and you show that you are a letter of Christ, prepared by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts."
So here’s the point of all this: when you think about your ability to serve God, when you think about how useful you might be to the cause of the gospel, how successful you think you’d be in sharing the gospel with someone, stop and first think about how powerful God is. Think how God in his grace could use your puny efforts if you let him.
And on the other side of the equation, if you’re someone who tends to judge the performance of others, stop and think about who it is who’s at work in those people. Ask yourself whether the problem is that they’re weak, or could it be that you’re just unable to see the powerful God who might be working through them.
And may this always be our motto in Christian service: "whenever I am weak, then I am strong."
For more sermons from this source go to http://home.vicnet.net.au/~sttheos/
