The Minister's Authority & His Critics - Part 1

Thank you for listening to this message from the ministry of Morse Corner Church in Leverett, Massachusetts. Morse Corner is a non-denominational church that is committed to the preaching and teaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Our church was founded in 1896 by two students of the famous evangelist D .L. Moody. We seek to encourage and edify the body of Christ through the proclamation of God's word through the ministries of the local church.

If you'd like more information, visit our website morsecornerchurch .com. We hope you enjoy the message. Alright, last time in chapter 10, we looked at the subject of spiritual warfare and the spiritual battle that was going on within the church at Corinth.

And how the apostle Paul had to contend with and battle against the false teachers. And we had talked about that every Christian to a varying degree were all involved in the spiritual war. As a believer, I think we can say based on the teachings of scripture that the world is against you.

Your own flesh wars against your spirit. And certainly the devil is against you. But the encouragement is that if God is for you and we seek to remain faithful, he will give us the strength that we need.

So we need to rely on God's strength because the pressure and the spiritual deception only increases. We never see it decrease. It only increases. So just with Paul, you consider by the end of his ministry, he wrote to Timothy and he told him, all who are in Asia have forsaken me.

And for this message, I want to try to make some applications for some of the things that we face, some of the things that we see in our day and age. Paul was a faithful soldier. We need to remain faithful soldiers in Christ's army.

Paul remained faithful, but many around him fell away. They back down. They compromised. And we see this all around us. Not only do fellow Christians sometimes cave in. We see more and more in our day and age where well-known Christian leaders are collapsing.

I mean, I like to say they fold quicker than a cheap lawn chair, some of these guys. You know, some of them will apologize for the truth. They're apologizing for the truth that they profess to believe.

Why?

Well, God knows each and every heart, but I think oftentimes it's to avoid hardships, to avoid hardships. But what did Paul tell Timothy? That we need to endure. Timothy, you need to endure hardships as a faithful soldier in Jesus Christ.

So Paul saw these things all around him. We see the same thing today, right? Because why? There's nothing new under the sun. There's a verse along this thought. There's a verse in James chapter 4. Friendship with the world is enmity with God.

Whoever, therefore, wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. You cannot serve two masters. Jesus talked about this. What did he say? No man can serve two masters. You will either hate the one and love the other, or else you will be loyal to the one and despise the other.

A soldier cannot fight for both sides. He needs to make a choice. And in Christianity today, what do we see? We see people wanting to straddle the fence. They want one foot in the kingdom, the other foot in the world.

And what did Joshua tell the children of Israel? He said, choose this day whom you will serve. So in fighting the spiritual war, what you are fighting against, what you are battling against, it needs to be defined.

We're fighting against sin, temptation, vain philosophies. Christian leaders are contending with false teachers and false doctrine, false ideologies that seek to mislead people and to confuse and to undermine the truth and the truth of the gospel.

Paul says in verse 4, look at it, 2 Corinthians 10 verse 4. He says, for the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty in God for the pulling down of strongholds. Last week we talked about our weapons.

What are our weapons? We know the weapons that the world has. They have knives and guns and bombs and tanks and planes and all the rest. What's our weapon? Our weapon is the truth. Our weapon is the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God.

And with that, verse 5, we are doing what? We're with our weapons of our warfare. We are casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ.

Then in verse 6, Paul basically says, after you have become fully obedient, he says, we will punish everyone who remains disobedient. You don't get a lot of talk like that from Christian leaders today.

They're too afraid to talk like that. Last week in verse 6, I had said that Paul was warning them, you know, get things right now. Because when, when I come, he was going to clean house.

Okay.

He was going to clean house and that inevitably makes some people upset. So let me just say this and talking about the subject last week and now again this week, and we're going to get into Paul's words against the false, the false apostles in the weeks to come.

Somebody is probably thinking pastor, but I just want to hear a sermon about the love of God. Well, I preached that in first Corinthians when we cover chapter 13, or I want to, I want to hear a sermon about how God comforts us.

Well, I went back to the first few messages in second Corinthians few months ago. The first message was the God of all comfort. The second message was God will still deliver us. The third message was all the promises of God are yes.

And in him, amen. These are all very comforting, uplifting, encouraging messages. So we've, we've done that.

All right.

And then in the middle of second Corinthians, there were some sermons that were more doctrinal, right? Absent from the body present with the Lord, which is also uplifting. And then there was the judgment seat of Christ and how Christ died for all.

So those sermons are more doctrinal. But here's the point. When you go through the scripture verse by verse, you get a little bit of everything. And I think I know that that's the way God intends it to have a healthy diet and needs to be a well-rounded diet.

Well, the scripture is spiritual food. So we need a well-rounded diet to be healthy spiritually. So now we need to cover what I'm going to call these chapters, chapters, 10, 11, 12, and 13. These are kind of the fighting chapters of second Corinthians.

Paul's taken his gloves off.

Okay.

He's going to try to level a knockout punch to the false teachers and the false apostles. I had said last time that second Corinthians 10 through 13, we start to see a shift.

Right.

So far in the book, Paul's been praising the church up. They've made a lot of strides and a lot of progress, and he's praising them. But now chapters 10 through 13, he's directing these chapters towards the holdouts, right?

The false teachers, those who have been deceived by them, because Paul was under attack. Not just Paul, the man, but his ministry was under attack, which means the truth was under attack. The gospel was under attack.

Look at verses 7 through 10. He says, do you look at things according to the outward appearance? If anyone is convinced in himself that he is Christ, let him again consider this in himself, that just as he is Christ, even so we are Christ.

For even if I should boast somewhat more about our authority, which the Lord gave us for edification, not for your destruction, I shall not be ashamed, lest I seem to terrify you by my letters. For his letters, they say, are weighty and powerful, but his bodily presence is weak.

In his speech, contemptible. Can you imagine this? I mean, really, can you imagine saying this about one of the greatest men who have ever lived? Love him or hate him, even secular scholars are forced to admit that Saul of Tarsus, the Apostle Paul, is one of the most influential men in human history.

Nobody did more to spread Christianity through the Roman Empire than the Apostle Paul. He wrote the majority of the New Testament books. So Paul, without question, was a great leader.

Amen.

Paul was a great leader.

What do they say? His bodily presence is weak. His speech contemptible. Basically, they're saying we despise having to listen to him. He has nothing of value to say. Well, the same thing is happening in Christianity today.

A faithful preacher rightly handling the Word of God, people are like, meh. I learned that word this year, M-E-H. But the false teachers who spew their garbage, there's always somebody ready to eat it all up.

You walk into any Christian bookstore, if that's even a thing anymore, I'm not sure. But you walk into any Christian bookstore or the religion section or Christian section at Barnes Noble, what are you going to find?

False teachers galore. So, many opposed Paul in favor of the false teachers. And this is nothing new. Israel, in Israel you had what? The true prophets like Jeremiah. And Jeremiah, by and large, was hated, despised.

And the false prophets, on the other hand, people, they always had an audience. Jeremiah got tossed in a well. False teachers had an audience. In the New Testament, there were the Pharisees and the Sadducees.

They were the ones running things, right? You know this. They're the ones in charge. They're the ones running things.

They had a platform.

John the Baptist ended up in prison. Peter ended up in prison. Paul ended up in prison. John ended up in prison. You seeing a pattern here? There are some faithful Christians today. I'm not going to get into all the details.

I could.

It could be a whole sermon in and of itself. There are some faithful pastors right now that are either in prison, or there's a lot of people who call themselves Christians. They think they should be in prison.

Throughout church history, it's always been this way. Who's been in charge the majority of the past 2 ,000 years?

Who had all the power?

Rome had all the power. And they, like the Pharisees, taught a works salvation. Men like Martin Luther had to run for his life. John Calvin was run out of Geneva. Jonathan Edwards, right here almost locally, was run out of Northampton.

There's nothing new. And considering the false teachers within the Corinthian church, you better believe in this rebellion they were trying to run, the Apostle Paul, out of Corinth once and for all. Nothing new.

It's always been this way. So, this is all part of the spiritual battle. It's the battle over the truth, the battle over the gospel. Now, turn in your Bibles to the book of Numbers, chapter 16. Speaking of rebellion, it's not at all uncommon.

You remember, I made reference to this already, I think, how Paul told Timothy, warns him that he might face adversity. First, he says, don't let anyone look down on you because you're young. You will have to endure hardships as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.

You say, well, but a faithful minister, everybody should love him. Well, Jesus, there's a verse for that too, you realize. What did Jesus say? Woe unto you when all men speak well of you, for so did their fathers to the false prophet.

You find a Christian minister that the world loves, that everyone loves? Jesus said, false prophet. Let's close in prayer. Father, we thank you for every faithful believer who wrestles not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers.

Lord, encourage your people and strengthen us to live and live to fight another day, knowing that in the end, good will triumph over evil. Lord, help us to overcome temptation. Fill us with your spirit.

As the psalmist wrote, the steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord, and he delights in his way. Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down for the Lord upholds him with his hand. We pray all these things appealing to the powerful name of Christ our Lord.

Amen.

Thanks for listening. I'm Pastor Michael Grant from Morris Cornick Church. If you'd like to listen to the complete message, or if you'd like more information about the ministry, visit our website, MorrisCornickChurch .com.

We'd love to have you join us some Sunday morning here in Leverett. Until next time, may the grace of God be with you.