Content with Grace Alone

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If you have your copy of God's Word, please open it with me to 2 Corinthians chapter 11 and find your place at verse 30.
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We are going to, by God's grace, finish this chapter today and move into chapter 12.
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So we'll be reading chapter 11, verse 30 through chapter 12 and verse 10.
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And while you're turning in your Bibles, I just want to give a few preliminary comments. John Piper is a pastor many of you probably know.
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He's one of the men who many people attribute to their becoming reformed in their theology because about 25 years ago, he and Sproul and MacArthur and many others were loud voices in the reformed community and giving to the church solid teaching and powerful teaching on the
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Word of God and so we can be grateful and thankful for such men. And one of the things that John Piper popularized, for lack of a better term, was a phrase that I continue to this day to get more and more out of.
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This simple phrase has become somewhat of a help in my life, especially in times where things are difficult or things
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I'm trying to do what I believe God wants me to do in times that are hard to discern.
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And the phrase is simply this. God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him.
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God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him.
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And as I said, the longer I study the Word, the older I get, the more
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I realize what he was saying. Because we're often satisfied in things that are not
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God. We're often satisfied in worldly things and often we are seeking out worldly things for our satisfaction.
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When we are discontent, when we are disappointed, when we are struggling, rather than finding our contentment in God, we find our contentment in so many other things and we have a hard time being satisfied simply by God Himself.
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But that is the very thing to which He calls us. God calls us to satisfaction in Him.
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God calls us to be satisfied particularly by His grace.
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And in today's study, we're going to see one of the most quoted passages in the
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Bible. In fact, if you've ever been to Hobby Lobby and you walk in and you see all the
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Bible verses put on placards and wall art and pillowcases, one of them that you will see often is the verse we're looking at, or one of the verses we'll look at today.
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My grace is sufficient for you. Well, we say it.
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We put it on our placards, our wall art, and our pillowcases, and our t -shirts. But today
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I want to ask, do we believe it? Are we satisfied by God's grace?
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Are we content with grace alone? Let's stand and read
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God's Word. Paul, beginning again in verse 30, he says,
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If I must boast, I will boast of the things that show my weakness. The God and Father of the
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Lord Jesus Christ, He is blessed forever, knows that I am not lying. At Damascus, the governor under King Aretas was guarding the city of Damascus in order to seize me.
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But I was let down in a basket through a window in the wall and escaped his hands.
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I must go on boasting. Though there is nothing to be gained by it, I will go on to visions and revelations of the
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Lord. I know a man in Christ who 14 years ago was caught up in the third heaven. Whether in the body or out of the body,
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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,
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I do not know. God knows. And he heard things that cannot be told, which men may not utter.
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On behalf of this man, I will boast. But on my own behalf,
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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.
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But I refrain from it, so that no one may think more of me than he sees in me or hears from me.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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For the sake of Christ, then I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities.
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For when I am weak, then I am strong.
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Father in heaven, I pray your mercy upon us as we open your word today and examine this text.
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I pray, almighty God, that you would keep me from error as I preach.
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I pray that that which has been prepared like a meal would be distributed by your spirit, that we may feast upon your word.
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And Lord God, that those who are believers would be comforted and pointed to the contentment of trusting
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Christ alone and resting in grace alone. And Lord, for those who do not know
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Christ, that they would know that there is a place of contentment available. Your word tells us that in Christ there is a peace which passeth understanding.
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And Lord, we understand that it's in no other person but Jesus himself.
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Father, I pray throughout this message, Lord, undergird me, strengthen me, fill me with your spirit.
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May I decrease. May Christ increase. May you be glorified in the preaching of your word.
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In Jesus' name. We continue to walk through our study of the book of 2
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Corinthians, now making our way down the final hill, if you will, toward the final verses of this book.
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And as I have noted over the past few weeks, and if you wonder why I repeat things in messages, it is because I truly believe that repetition is the key to learning.
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And when we look at a book of the Bible, sometimes it's easy to get caught up in one verse and to become very myopic about that one verse, but it's important to step back and look at how that verse fits within the context of the paragraph, the chapter around it, and also to step back and look at the whole of the book.
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And remember, the whole of the book is Paul's defense of his ministry. For there are those in Corinth who have called
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Paul's ministry into question, specifically men who have come and said that Paul's gospel was inadequate.
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And if it's inadequate, it's false. If it's inadequate, it's not the true gospel. And they have come in and declared themselves to be super apostles.
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They have declared themselves to be those who are eminent in their teaching, in their proclamation. They are men of great oratory skill, men who came with letters of commendation, men who came in to announce and declare themselves to be the greatest of teachers.
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And they look at the apostle Paul with disdain, and they encourage the Corinthians to do the same.
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So in the first seven chapters of the book, Paul defends his ministry. He explains that all of these accusations that have been brought against him, that his suffering and his not coming to Corinth when he said he would, and all of these things which have been made accusations against him, saying that he's an untrustworthy man, a fickle man, a man who is not going to...
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He's going to say one thing and do something else. He has declared that that is not true. And he has said, defending his ministry, that he in fact is
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God's minister. He's a minister of the new covenant, a minister of reconciliation.
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In chapters 8 and 9, he described the offering to the church of Jerusalem, which the church in Corinth had promised some 18 months before.
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We read about this in 1 Corinthians, which was written about 18 months prior to 2 Corinthians.
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He talks about this gift, and apparently this gift had not yet been collected and ready to go. So in chapters 8 and 9, he talks about the need for that gift and the need for them to do that.
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But then we get to chapter 10, and as I've been saying over the last few weeks, chapter 10 to 13 is
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Paul's full -on assault against his adversaries. And it is a reminder to us that as Christians, we are called to be kind, we are called to be loving, we are called to be those who are compassionate, but we are never called to be those who bow down in the face of false teaching.
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You don't give up into false teaching merely to be nice. And by the way, nice isn't a fruit of the
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Spirit. Even though it's okay to be nice, I'm nice, I hope. But the idea of niceness to a fault can be very faulty.
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That you're never willing to speak the truth, never willing to state what has to be stated.
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Paul is kind, but he is not weak. He's compassionate, but he is not willing to see his people be mistreated.
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And he considers Corinth to be among his people. You'll remember just a chapter ago when he talked about that God had put him in a sphere of influence.
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And it's interesting because next week, next Sunday night, I'm going to begin teaching church history in our academy.
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And I'm going to be teaching through the first 500 years or so, from the fall of Jerusalem to the rise of Augustine. And one of the most interesting things is when you go back into the first century, you'll see the
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Apostle Paul gets so much attention in the last part of the book of Acts. But he's not the only one doing missions work.
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He's not the only one going out into the world. The apostles are going in all different directions. Thomas likely going out into India, and others going down south and through Egypt to different places.
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This is what was happening. The gospel was going out throughout the world. The mission was going out throughout the world.
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And as this mission was going, as these churches were being built up,
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God's word was flourishing. It was happening all around.
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But Paul gets our attention. Paul is, of course, declared to be the apostle to the
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Gentiles. And so his sphere of influence was the Gentiles. Specifically, the
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Gentiles going towards Greece, Macedonia, and even into Rome.
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Paul's sphere of influence specifically included the Corinthian church. He had planted the church.
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He had been with them, ministered alongside them, working with his own hands to supply his own needs, and receiving his means from other churches so as to not even take a penny from the
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Corinthian church to demonstrate his love toward them, and so that no one could ever call into question his integrity in ministering to them.
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Paul says, you are my area of influence. You are my lane, to use a modern term.
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We say, stay in your lane. Well, this is Paul's lane. The Corinthians are his people.
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And he said to them, He said, you are like a virgin daughter that I have betrothed to a husband, picturing them as the bride of Christ, betrothed to Christ, the great husband of the church.
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And he says, you're like a virgin daughter. And these false teachers have come in, and as I've said in the weeks prior, they're like rapists who have come in to despoil you, to mistreat you, to take you away and bring you down into the very sludge that they are themselves in.
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These are dangerous men. These are not men to be coddled.
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These are not men to be negotiated with. These are not men that we can sincerely agree to disagree with.
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These are men who need to be corrected. They need to repent, or they need to be removed. So Paul is serious about his challenge to them.
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And as I said last week, in chapter 11, he challenges them beginning in verse 22.
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Well, back in verse 16, but then in verse 22, he begins to challenge them regarding his qualifications.
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We said that verses 22 down to verse 29 is Paul's resume. Paul gives his stock.
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I'm a Hebrew. I'm an Israelite. I'm from the tribe of... I'm from Abraham. He gives a reminder of his service.
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He says, I'm a servant of Christ, and a better one. Paul is not here being prideful, but rather reminding them that his service, in fact, has made an impact throughout the world.
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And that is to say it as an understatement. And then he lists his suffering from chapter 23 down to chapter 29.
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And as Brother Mike has already alluded to this morning, he lists all of those sufferings. That he was beaten mercilessly.
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That he was shipwrecked. That he went through all kinds of physical pain, and even cold and exposure, under the threat all the time of all of these various physical maladies.
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And, not the least of which, he was constantly concerned with the churches, which were under the threat of false teaching.
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That was the thing I think bothered him the most. Was that he would go and plant a church, and he wouldn't have his foot out the door before the false teachers had their foot coming in the door to turn around and destroy everything that he had done.
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Again, these are not good men with whom we can simply agree to disagree. These were agents of Satan.
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According to Paul, we read this in chapter 11. Agents of Satan. Satan himself disguising himself as an angel of light, and his ministers disguising themselves as ministers of righteousness.
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These men are not simply good men with a bad message. These are bad men.
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Amen. And Paul is not unwilling to say those very words.
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He addresses them as super apostles, which I tend to believe is an offensive term to call them such a thing.
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It's meant to be sarcastic. Showing that they boast in themselves.
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They boast in themselves as the ubermensch, the superman, the super apostles.
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That's the way they see themselves. But Paul does not boast in himself in that way.
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If you read through Paul's resume that we did last week, that we studied last week, and we continue today, because again, last week moved right into this week.
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I just had to stop for the sake of we couldn't continue to go. There was just too much to do. But we're continuing the same argument, and the argument is this.
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They will boast in their accomplishments. They will boast in their rhetoric. They will boast in their oratory skills, and they will boast in their letters of commendation.
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But I will boast only in this. I am weak, and God's strength has been displayed in me, and His grace is sufficient.
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That's my boast. Nobody wanted the life of the apostle
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Paul. Nobody wanted shipwrecks, beatings, cold, imprisonment.
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I mean honestly, how do we sell Christianity today? I don't mean us specifically, but churches in general.
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How do they sell it? Better life. Come to Jesus.
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He'll give you a better life. He has a wonderful plan for your life. I spent this week, Thursday afternoon,
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I had the opportunity to go have lunch with a missionary. Wonderful young man. He was here for the conference downtown, and he invited me to come down and have lunch with he and his wife and their four children.
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In about two months, they're going to take their whole family, and they're going to move their whole family to India.
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To minister among the Indian people. To live among them.
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To learn the language. This was what he told me. This was his purpose. That his desire is to go into one of the unreached communities, where their dialect does not even have the communication of the gospel yet, so that he can learn how to speak to them, so that he can learn to give them the gospel.
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And I'm sitting there just, I ain't never lived more than 30 minutes from where I was born. I'm humble. I'm sitting there listening to him, thinking, wow, that's a superhero.
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That's a superhero. That's a man that I can look to. He's half my age.
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He's already lived in Mexico, China, now wants to live in India. Taking four of his children.
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One of them, I see him, I got to look into his little blue eyes. Beautiful little boy. And I said, that's a man who's willing to die for Christ.
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Because he knows the potential of his life. And you know what he doesn't do?
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He doesn't go around selling people a bill of goods, that Jesus will make your life better. No, he'll give your life meaning.
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But it doesn't make your life Bill Gates better. Doesn't make your life
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Elon Musk better. Jesus may call you to give up your life. In fact, he does.
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He says, take your cross and follow me. Beloved, this is what
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Paul did. And he was comparing himself to those who exalted themselves. And he, rather than exalting in himself, he exalted in the grace of God.
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So today I have the outline of the message. We're going to look at five parts today,
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Lord willing, and time will allow. We're going to look at his honest boasting. A harrowing escape.
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An incredible vision. A perpetual thorn. And an ultimate contentment.
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And if we don't move on, we won't ever get there. So let's begin with his honest boasting. Look with me at verse 30.
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It says in verse 30, If I must boast, I will boast of the things that show my weakness, which is what he's been doing.
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All of these things don't show my greatness, they show my weakness. My beatings, my shipwreck, being almost frozen, being worried about the churches.
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I'm boasting of the things that show my weakness. And you say, well why must he boast?
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Well, he talked about this earlier, and we expressed this last week, that he's boasting simply to mirror back what the men in Corinth were doing.
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These super apostles were boasting of their accomplishments. Paul says, well if I must boast, I'm going to boast differently than you.
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I'm not going to boast like you. I'm going to boast of my weakness. You boast of your strength. I'm going to boast of my weakness.
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Because when I boast of my weakness, I'm pointing to the strength of God and Christ in me. So I'll mirror it back to you, and I'll do what you're doing, but not the way you're doing it.
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And then he says in verse 31, The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, He who is blessed forever.
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By the way, oftentimes you'll notice that throughout the New Testament. Anytime God's name is mentioned, it's never mentioned flippantly.
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It's never just God. But it's the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who is blessed forever.
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Why? Because God's name is great and greatly to be praised. So oftentimes when
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Paul is mentioning God, or he's mentioning Christ, he'll say the Lord Jesus Christ. Or the blessed Lord.
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Or He who lives forever. His name is mentioned here as the one who is blessed forever.
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And notice what he says. The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, He who is blessed forever, knows that I'm not lying.
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Now why is he saying he's not lying? Because quite frankly, Paul's testimony sounds unbelievable.
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If you think about it, think about all that Paul has already said. Beaten 40 times, less one, on five different occasions.
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Caned, or beaten with a rod. Shipwrecked, frozen. This would sound like a fictional tale.
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This sounds like more than any one person could endure. I mean honestly, if you didn't know
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Scott Phillips, and Scott Phillips just happens to be the missionary our church supports. He lives among the
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Tao tribe in Indonesia. And he comes here when he comes to America. He comes and he preaches to us. If you didn't know he was an honest person of integrity, it would be hard to believe his stories.
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Because they're so amazing, the things that he has been through. Dinghy fever, and malaria, and his children.
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He's got a thousand. All of his children all get the same diseases every time they go.
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It's hard to believe that someone has been through that, even though I believe every word Scott says. It's such a hard thing to imagine that somebody would go through that.
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And then say to us, and I know he said this at least to me and Brother Mike, I want to go back and I want to die there.
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He didn't like being here. I don't want to speak for Scott, but ultimately the American church is not appealing to him.
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He wants to be among the people who have not heard Christ. He wants to preach among the people who have not heard Christ. And that's where he wants to be and that's where he wants to die.
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That's his heart, is to go and do that. And so Paul is saying, he's saying look at all that I've been through, and I am not lying.
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The Father, God, stands and bears witness, and is my witness to my testimony.
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I'm not lying. All that I've been through, I'm not exaggerating one bit.
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Every testimony of Paul is absolutely true. Now, that is his honest boasting.
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But then he moves right into his harrowing escape. And what's interesting,
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I thought about this as I was studying this week, I was like, well I could have included this in last week, because this is just one more occasion where he went through something difficult.
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But I thought it was a good place to break it, verse 30, so we did. But this is just a follow -up to what he's already said.
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He's already given us this list of things that he's went through. He says, oh yeah, let me tell you something else that happened to me.
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At Damascus, and you guys remember, Damascus in the life of Paul has a very important relevance, because that's where Paul was on the way to when he was struck by the
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Lord Jesus, when he was struck down and he had the vision of the Lord Jesus Christ, and Jesus spoke to him, he was on the road to Damascus.
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And then after that occasion, he went into Damascus and he was met by Ananias and stayed in his house until he regained his sight.
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Remember this occasion in the life of Paul. Well, Paul tells us that during that time, while he was there, and we don't know how long he was there, we know the
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Bible says he was there many days. So while he was at Damascus and he began to preach and he began to make somewhat of a spectacle of himself for proclaiming the gospel there in Damascus, he says here the governor under King Aretas was guarding the city of Damascus in order to seize me.
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So the governor called for Paul's arrest. And King Aretas was ready to arrest the apostle
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Paul for his proclamation of the gospel. Now I just want to mention very quickly this king,
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King Aretas, he was the father -in -law of Herod Antipas. You know that name.
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He was the king of Nabatea, a kingdom whose capital was Petra. And Nabatea included the city of Damascus before the city was incorporated into the
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Roman province of Syria. And Aretas was able to appoint a governor over Damascus because the emperor
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Caligula gave Aretas control over that city. So that's just a little history behind who this man is and why
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Paul would mention him. He was an important name at the time. And this is what he says.
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He says, this was all happening. This conspiracy to arrest me was happening. So I was let down in a basket through a window in the wall and I escaped his hands.
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Now we all know that story. How do we know that story? It's mentioned in the
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Book of Acts. But guess what wasn't written when 2 Corinthians was written? The Book of Acts.
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The Book of Acts hadn't been written yet. So Paul is telling the Corinthians something that otherwise they wouldn't have known unless the story had made its way out into the community.
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Hey, guess what happened with Paul? They were about to arrest him and we went Mission Impossible style. Right? We put him down at the window so that he could run away.
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So again, they may not have ever heard this. We hear it. We say, yeah, we know about the basket. It's in Acts 9.
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It says in Acts 9, verse 24, but their plot became known to Saul. So they were watching the gates day and night in order to kill him.
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But the disciples took him by night and led him down to an opening in the wall, lowering him in a basket. We know that because it's in Acts.
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And we read Acts typically before we get to 2 Corinthians if we're reading through our Bible. But that's not the order the books came in.
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Remember, Paul's letters were earlier than the Gospels. In fact, the earliest account of the
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Lord's Supper doesn't come to us through the Gospels. The earliest account of the
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Lord's Supper comes to us in 1 Corinthians 11. Paul's first letter to the church at Corinth is where Paul recites what
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Jesus said on the night before the crucifixion. This cup is the new covenant in my blood.
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Those words that Paul recites in 1 Corinthians 11, that's the first recording that we have of that event.
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And then later the Gospels are written to give us that. So don't always think that the order of the books of the
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Bible that your books are in are the order they got to us. They're not. They came to us in a different order.
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In fact, I believe the first New Testament book written was probably the book of James, and the next one was probably the book of Galatians, written possibly as early as 48, and James possibly as early as 44.
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So just to give you an idea of what I think as far as the order of the books. So Paul's giving this account.
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He's giving the account of having been let down in the basket. They may have never heard this story. We don't know.
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It could have been popular in Christian discussion at that time, but we don't know that. We know this is the first time it's written down, and Paul is saying,
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This is what I endured. A harrowing escape at the hands of a king who wanted my life.
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This is what I have endured for the cause of Christ. And now we get to chapter 12.
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And in chapter 12, Paul says, I must go on boasting, though there is nothing to be gained by it.
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And I think what he means, I'm not receiving any personal glory from this. I'm not seeking any type.
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I don't want this to be, Oh, look at what Paul has done. And in a moment, we're going to see how that works out. But he's simply saying,
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I'm going to continue to do this because this is my mirroring back or responding to the foolishness that you guys have endured and not only endured that you've been satisfied to put up with.
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Remember we talked about that last week. They've been willing to accept the foolishness of the super apostles.
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And so Paul is mirroring this back to them. And he says this,
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I will go on to visions and revelations of the
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Lord. Now, the word vision and revelation here, vision literally comes from the same root as the idea of the eye, something that is seen a vivid appearance of something.
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And the word revelation is, many of you probably heard the word apocalypse.
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Well, it comes from the Greek word apocalypsis, which means to reveal or to uncover something. And so Paul here says,
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I'm going to talk about things that I've seen and revelations that I've experienced of the
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Lord. And I want to give you an insight as to why that may be.
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There is a very good possibility, and I would say not even a possibility, a probability, that the super apostles boasted of their own visions and revelations.
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I want you to think of today, and I know we don't exegete the scripture through the lens of today, but false teachers have been pretty consistent for the last 2 ,000 years.
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And one of the things that false teachers will often boast of is those things that they have seen and they have had revelations of.
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And they'll say, well, you know, I met with Jesus. I saw
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Jesus. And they often come up with these most spectacular types of stories.
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Some of them ridiculous. Jesus was at the end of my bed playing a saxophone. I didn't make that up. Some dude said that.
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It's crazy. It's foolishness. But, hey, somebody said it. People talk about seeing a 90 -foot
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Jesus. They got caught up into heaven. Jesus, 90 -foot tall. They talk about having dinner with Jesus and all these different types of revelations, all of these types of amazing stories, most of which are just straight -up fanciful fiction.
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But Paul is going to tell a story that is not fiction.
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He's going to tell a story of a man who did, in fact, get caught up into heaven and have an opportunity for an audience with the
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Lord. Now, this is a difficult part in the text.
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In fact, today's text has two parts that commentators love to speculate and argue about.
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The two parts is this one, who is this man? And the second one is what's the thorn?
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We'll get there directly. Who is this man? Well, I believe
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Paul is circumspectly and, in a sense, humbly speaking of himself when he says,
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I know a man in Christ who 14 years ago was caught up to the third heaven. And you say, well, why would you come to the conclusion that it is
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Paul speaking of himself? Well, later in this same section, he will turn inward in regard to this revelation, and it will seem as if he's talking about himself and say, well, why would he try to be confusing?
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I don't think he's intentionally trying to be confusing. I think he's intentionally trying to reduce the impact that this might have in regard to his pride.
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Because the very thing he says after this is about the thorn in the flesh. He's going to talk about this tremendous revelation, then he's going to say, oh, yeah, by the way,
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I have a thorn in the flesh. Even though I have this great revelation, I also have difficulties, too. In fact, this interpretation that this is
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Paul speaking about himself is so well recorded and understood throughout church history by commentators that some
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Bibles have even taken the mystery out of it. Some even translate this as saying,
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I was 14 years ago caught up in the third heaven. If you have a New Living Translation, that's what it says. Now, I disagree with that.
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I do not think we should change the words of the Scripture simply to understand our understanding of it.
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I don't think that's the way translation should happen. But that's what the New Living Translators chose to do. When I read that,
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I went, wow. Even though I agree with the interpretation, that's a bridge too far when it comes to translation for me.
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Just to say. Again, I don't think it's wrong, but I think it's wrong to translate it that way. There's a difference between translation and exegesis.
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An exegesis is coming to the text and trying to discern the meaning. And when the translator discerns the meaning for you, they've skipped a step.
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So, have to be careful. But he says, and again, I think this is Paul speaking of himself in the third person.
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He says, I know a man who 14 years ago was caught up to the third heaven. Now, it's interesting that he gives us a time stamp.
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He says, it's 14 years ago. This book was probably written around 46. This would put the event around 42.
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I'm sorry, the book was written around 56, which would put this event around 42. I don't know when this happened.
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I can't say for certain when it happened. There are those, and I would tend to favor this, would say this possibly happened during Paul's time in the
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Arabian Desert, where Paul went, according to Galatians 1 .17, where he went and was there.
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And I think it's Paul's time studying. Paul didn't get three years with the Lord on the earth. So, when he was saved, he had time away in the
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Arabian Desert where he was alone with the Lord. This could be that time. The only issue is the 14 years seems to be later than that.
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So, I don't know. But that would be my thought, was that it could be then maybe the 14 years, maybe there's a bit, maybe there's a bit,
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I saw a hand go up. I thought somebody had a question. But maybe the 14 years is simply meant to be somewhat of an approximation.
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We don't know. There are other times. Some people believe this happened when Paul was stoned. Remember, we know
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Paul was stoned. Could it be that in that stoning that he had an opportunity to be caught up to the third heaven?
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That's another possibility, right? We know there are these different events that happened. But the point is this.
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It says that he was caught up to the third heaven. Now, this has been, by speculators, this has been run rampant with.
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Well, what is the third heaven? Are there degrees of heaven like Dante, you know, talked about there being seven levels of hell?
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Well, are there three levels of heaven and Paul got to go to the third level but there's different levels? That's not what
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Paul is referring to here. Paul is identifying, by using the phrase third heaven, he is identifying what we would simply call
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God's heaven or the abode of God. In fact, he says it in the very next line. He says,
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I know a man who was caught up to the third heaven. Then, in verse 3, he says, I know a man who was caught up into paradise.
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Paradise is the abode of God. That's the phrase that Paul wants us to know.
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You say, well, why does he call it the third heaven? Well, understand, when we think of heaven, the word heaven is used multiple different ways in the
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Bible. Specifically, three different ways. Heaven is used to describe the abode of the flying animals like the birds and the clouds.
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That's what we call the atmospheric heavens. And then there is the heaven which is the abode of the sun, the moon, and the stars.
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We refer to that as the stellar heavens. Right? And Paul is telling us,
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I didn't get caught up to the clouds and I didn't get caught up to the sun, moon, and stars.
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I got translated. And that's the word here, caught up. It's interesting. There's rapture fanatics among us.
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In Latin, rapturo, it's where we get the word rapture. I was caught up not physically where the birds are, not physically where the sun, moon, and stars are, but I was caught away spiritually where God is.
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This is not elevation. This is interdimensional travel because God does not exist in a dimension that we can see or taste or touch or feel.
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This is why no matter how far we send the Hubble telescope or the new one,
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I forget the name of it, the new telescope that they sent out, that one that can see further than anything's ever seen before, when we send that telescope out, it's never going to look out and see a throne where God's sitting hundreds of billions of light years away because God does not exist simply further away than the sun, moon, and stars, but God exists in a different dimension than us, a dimension that we cannot experience in this flesh, but he can bring someone to himself, and that's what he did with Paul here.
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He brought him to himself. He caught him away to be with him there to give him this special revelation, and here's what's amazing, and David Guzik points this out in his commentary, which
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I think was very helpful. He said, isn't it amazing that in 14 years,
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Paul, we don't know that he mentioned this to anybody, if you got caught up into God's heaven, wouldn't you tell everybody everywhere every time you went anywhere, which is another expression of his humility, right?
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He's telling, yeah, 14 years ago, I was in heaven with God. What? That's the greatest story ever, but he simply includes it in this moment.
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Well, they're talking about revelations. Let me tell you about a revelation. Let me tell you about a vision, and I love the fact that he says, was
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I in the body or out of the body? I don't know. He's leaving some ambiguity, partially because it seems like he truly doesn't know, and he doesn't want there to be a lot of investment in trying to figure out things that even he doesn't know.
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How much time do we waste arguing over things that we don't know for certain?
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A while back, Mike and I were sitting at his house, and he asked me if I was infralapsarian or superlapsarian, and I said,
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I don't care, and he stopped and laughed for a while, and if you know anything about Calvinistic theology and why that matters, a lot of debate over whether you're superlapsarian or infralapsarian, and there are good men on both sides.
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I tend to take Warfield's position of infralapsarianism if you want to know, but at the end of the day, that's not where we need to be spending all of our time arguing.
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That's not where we need to be investing the vast majority of our mental and spiritual thought, and I think
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Paul is giving us the idea here whenever he says, I don't know. It's okay to say you don't know.
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It's okay to say, yeah, there's some theological things that I have not wrapped my head around yet, and that's fine.
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That's fine. It's okay to say
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I don't know, and he says this, and this man who went, again,
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I think it's Paul, but if it's not, he's telling a pretty great story about someone else. He says, and he heard things that cannot be told, which man may not utter.
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Paul had experienced a revelation which was too powerful to be repeated, which may have been the very thing that expanded his faith for the mission that he was about to endure.
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Paul says, on behalf of that man, I will boast, but on my own behalf, I will not boast except in my weaknesses.
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Again, Paul expressing he does not want the exaltation that goes along with this revelation.
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That's what those men want. They want to be exalted for their revelations. I'm not even going to identify with that.
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I'm going to say I want to boast only in weakness, though if I should wish to boast,
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I would not be a fool if 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.
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I don't want you to see this revelation and make that why you exalt me. Rather, what
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I say and what I do, that should be why you understand my ministry is true, not because I had some special revelation from God.
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So to keep me, and this is where we get to the thorn, so to keep me from becoming conceited, why would
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Paul be conceited? Well, any man who experienced such a revelation might find himself in a position of pride. Look at what
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I have accomplished. Look at what I have. I got to sit at the throne of God. Any man with that type of resume might consider himself to be the cream of the crop.
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Well, to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations.
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Again, this is why I think the revelations were his because he's saying keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations.
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What revelation? The revelation of glory. He's identifying himself now with that revelation, which is again why many, many commentators have thought this is
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Paul speaking of himself. A thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited.
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Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. Whoo! Y 'all go ahead and hang with me for a minute.
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I know I'm knee deep in this sermon, but I ain't stopping because this is important.
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The question of what this thorn is has filled more pages and spilled more ink in theology textbooks and commentaries than just about any other subject because everybody wants to come up with what the thorn is.
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But I want to give you a hint about the thorn.
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If God wanted you to know, He'd have told you. Just like there was ambiguity regarding the revelation, there is also ambiguity regarding the thorn.
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Where God's word is clear, we preach it clear. And where God's word is ambiguous, it's ambiguous for a purpose and we preach the ambiguity.
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False teachers try to take the ambiguous and make it a demand and they take the clear and ignore it.
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But I'm still going to tell you what it could be. Because it's a fun exercise in consideration.
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What in the world could it be that Paul would mention? Here's the thing I do think. I think the Corinthians probably knew.
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I think the Corinthians probably knew what the thorn was because of the ambiguity.
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He didn't say what it was. Probably they knew. There are many speculations about what it could be.
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Some people believe it was a physical issue. In fact, the first person to speculate on this text that we know of in church history was the early church father,
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Tertullian. And Tertullian argues that it was an ear and head pain.
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That Paul experienced ear and head pain. I don't know where he got it, but that's the first one to make an argument.
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Paul had persistent ear aches and headaches. Okay. Sir William Ramsey, who was a later historian, argues that Paul dealt with a physical form of sickness, much like we would call malaria, which existed at that time and in the places where Paul would go and minister, and that that sickness, once it entered the body, it would be exacerbated by stress.
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So just like today, if you've ever had shingles, shingles can become worse or better depending on the state of your body.
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And in certain times, stress can cause things to flare up, right? Well, this particular type of sickness in that particular time, stress would cause flare -ups.
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And they said, well, this was Paul. Every time he got stressed out over the churches, he would experience this flare -up, and that was the thorn in the flesh.
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Other people believe it was Paul's eyes. Paul mentioned several times having eye issues.
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In the book of Galatians, when he's speaking to the Galatian Christians, he talks about the fact that they would have gladly plucked out their eyes and given them to him, an indication that they understood he had eye problems and they would have been willing to take out their own eyes and give them to him.
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We know that many of the New Testament books that Paul wrote, he didn't actually write them, but he used what's called an amanuensis, which was like a secretary, to write for him, likely because it wasn't because he was unable to write, but probably because of his eyes, where it was difficult for him to sit down and write things.
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So he would dictate it, and it would be written down. All of this is speculation, though.
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Is the thorn in his flesh physical? We don't know. Some have conjectured that it could be a spiritual sin issue,
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One man even said, Paul may have had a lust issue, and he was saying to God, God, you know,
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I've got this thorn in the flesh, and it's this sin issue. That's the least likely for me. Not that Paul didn't deal with sin, but I don't think that's what he would have identified as a thorn in the flesh.
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I tend to be moved by a different idea, though. Any one of these is possible.
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I think the sin is the least potential. I tend to be moved by it was a person.
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It says it was a messenger of Satan. And I tend to think that more than the physical maladies that Paul dealt with, more than the things that he dealt with in the physical,
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I think he dealt with the people that were opposed to him, and he took great pain in that.
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And he talks about some of these people. Do you remember Alexander the coppersmith? Did me what? Great harm.
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This man did me harm. Now, I'm going to share something Brother Mike told me the other night, and he said
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I could. I said, Paul, who do you think? Paul. Looked like Paul.
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I said, Mike, who do you think, or what do you think the thorn in the flesh is? He said, I think it's his ex -wife. Oh, don't get mad.
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He was being serious. I laughed, too. Was Paul ever married? We don't know, but as a
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Pharisee, he was likely. And we don't know what happened to his wife. Did his wife die?
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We don't know. Did she leave him when he became a Christian? We don't know. Could it be that if there was a departure of his wife, that there was this person that was a perpetual thorn in his flesh?
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I think that's an interesting speculation. Write your own book.
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But as I said, the term messenger does lend to me the idea that this could be a person in his life that is bringing perpetual pain and sorrow in his life.
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I'm going to get a little personal on this. Physical pain hurts, but emotional pain brought on by people who are trying to destroy you is so much worse.
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So much worse. No, amen. When there are people in your life who are trying to destroy your ministry, that is a difficult thing to overcome.
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That is a difficult thing to deal with. And it hurts to know that they're out there, that they're doing this.
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And again, I can point to at least one in Paul's life. Alexander the coppersmith did me great harm.
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Great harm. Think about it. We know a man who's named in the scriptures as being an opponent of the apostle
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Paul. He's not the only one. There are others who are named as well. Again, we don't know what it was.
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But I will say this. I think that's for a reason. Because the very next thing he's going to say, and it's interesting that I'm not going to get to say much about verses 9 and 10 because I'm actually going to be back in 9 and 10 next week.
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9 and 10 is about grace being sufficient. You understand that was the whole heart of the
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Reformation. It was not the necessity of grace, but the sufficiency of grace. So next week
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I'm going to be back in verses 9 and 10 talking about why the Reformation was necessary, talk about why the Reformation needs to continue, and why we need to continue to trust in the sufficiency of grace.
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So we're not getting into much of that today. But ultimately Paul is saying, I've got this thorn.
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And here's the great truth. He asked God to remove it three times.
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So whether you think it's physical, whether you think it's some kind of spiritual lapse, or whether you think it's a person, no matter what it was,
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God asked for it to be removed, and God did not respond in the positive.
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In the sense that he didn't say, Okay, Paul, this thing, or this person, or this ailment, this is causing you pain.
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I'm going to take it away. No, instead what God said was,
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My grace is enough. I'm not going to take it away.
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I'm not going to remove it. Because with it, you will learn better to live under the sufficiency of grace.
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How often do we plead and beg for God to remove something, not realizing that whatever that thing is may be the very thing that God is using to draw us closer to him.
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Paul said, I asked three times. Some commentators think that the three times doesn't mean he only prayed three times, but maybe that in Jewish idiom, to say something was three times is to speak of continuation or fullness.
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I don't know. I think this, I think Paul did come to a point where he realized,
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I'm going to stop asking that it be removed. I'm going to stop asking that God take it away.
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And rather, my prayer is going to now be, God, teach me to be satisfied by your grace.
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Teach me to be content with grace alone. Every one of us probably has things in here that we would pray that God would take away, that God would change, that God would make better.
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But maybe that's the very thing that God is using to draw you closer to him.
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Sometimes it's hard to think about it that way. But keep in mind this.
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Verse 9, if you have a red letter Bible, I'm not a big red letter Bible fan myself, but if you do have a red letter
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Bible, most of them put, my grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. They put that in red because that is
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God speaking. Notice what it says.
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Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me, but he said to me,
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God did answer Paul's prayers, but he didn't answer his prayers the way he wanted. He didn't give him what he asked for.
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He asked, take it away. He said no. My grace is sufficient for you.
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My power is made perfect in weakness. So Paul says, verse 10, for the sake of Christ and I'm content.
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Weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, calamities. I'm content. I'm content with grace.
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I'm content with grace alone. It might be all
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I have. It might be all I ever have, but it's enough.
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It's God's grace enough for us. Father, I thank you.
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Thank you for your word. I pray, oh God, that we would learn to be content with grace.
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I know, Lord, that is a lifelong learning process. It doesn't happen in a day or in a moment, but Lord, we must learn to be content.
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We must learn contentment, as the scripture says. Learn to be satisfied in you.
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As the scripture says, Lord, let us be content in you.
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And I pray, Father, if there are those who are outside of Christ today, who have heard this message, and they have found their contentment in something else, something that the world provides, some type of satisfaction provided outside of Christ, Lord, I pray for a spirit of discontentment in them, that they would cease to be content with what the world offers, and that they would only find their contentment in the grace of Christ.