2 Corinthians 10:7-18 (Lands Taken and Lands Beyond, Jeff Kliewer)

This morning, because we are commissioning the Lady Saints prison volleyball team, let's begin the sermon with a sports analogy. How about that? So my kid, my son, plays soccer. And they have a great team.

They hadn't lost all season until yesterday. But yesterday, they finally lost a game on the soccer field. And a big reason for that is their star defender wasn't there. And he anchors the center of the defense.

And he just kicks everything out. And one of the things that I noticed is it wasn't that they were giving up a lot of goals without him. But because he wasn't there, there was no one to give that big kick to spur the offense.

Sometimes the best offense is a good defense. And vice versa, sometimes you need good offense to keep the pressure off of your defense. Now, this morning, we're going to see Paul talk about his desire to go on offense to the lands beyond.

But he has to defend his territory where he's already been. When you think of Paul's three missionary journeys, how do you picture it going? Does he head out in one direction one time and travel far to a land unknown, and then another time in an opposite direction, and in each case, go and conquer new territory?

If that's how you picture Paul's three missionary journeys, you're slightly mistaken. He was more like a mouse traveling along the same path that he had done before, only he would extend it a little farther.

Why was that? Because the churches that he established on his first missionary journey were not forgotten. He was defending them. He went through and appointed elders and leaders. He went back to encourage and strengthen the works that he began in the first place.

He was as much on defense as he was on offense. And that's very important for us today. I know in my case, when I was a missionary in inner city, I was all about offense. I was a pioneering missionary reaching lost souls for Christ.

Now, I'm more of a defender. I'm in the pulpit. I'm trying to feed the sheep, care for the flock. And sometimes what I recognize is I need to go on offense. You know, in soccer, sometimes the goalie comes out.

Sometimes if you're down and you need to get a goal, you'll find the goalie on the offensive end of the field because unless you score a goal, the game is over. I need to go to a prison and preach the gospel.

Wait, wait, you're not supposed to say amen to that, brother. Someone's going to just edit this on YouTube and take that clip out and completely malign me for that. Good one. I need to go because I need to be on offense.

I need to feel aggressive. I need to know that I'm going and taking the gospel where Christ isn't known. And I think many of us in this room have a similar situation where you're defending your family.

You're defending your loved ones. You're defending the gospel. But sometimes you need to go out beyond your comfort zone. Take a step of faith. Go to a nursing home like some of our people do and preach the gospel there.

Go to a prison. Go work with that halfway house in Camden with Stan and John to step out of your comfort zone and take an aggressive, offensive step for the gospel. That's important for us in our Christian lives.

Paul’s Defense of His Ministry in 2 Corinthians

Let's see this now. In 2 Corinthians chapter 10, we're picking up where we left off last week, verse 7. The context here as you find it. The book of 2 Corinthians is really a book of defense. Paul is defending his ministry.

He's planted a church in Corinth. But having left, some false prophets moved in behind him and tried to commandeer the work that he started. In fact, they malign him and try to pull the church not only to themselves, but away from Paul.

So he has a battle on his hands. And the first seven chapters of 2 Corinthians are Paul's defense of his ministry where he lays out many other principles of ministry as he addresses the whole church. Then in chapters 8 and 9, he tries to collect from the church a gift, a financial gift, to help the poor saints in Jerusalem.

And then finally, you think the letter might be over at that point, but no. He comes back in in chapters 10, 11, 12, 13, all the way through to the end here. He comes back at those false prophets. He comes in hard because he realizes even though the church has been won over by his teaching, there probably remains that root of rebellion.

A few people who in their hearts are opposing him. And he knows that he is defending not just his own reputation, not just his own name. He's defending the very gospel that he brought them. So let's pick up here in 2 Corinthians chapter 10.

He's going to say, look at what is before your eyes. And what that means is, look at me and look at these who have come to you. And you make a discerning call who you're going to follow. Who are you with?

We'll read 7 through the end, and then we'll take it verse by verse. Look at what is before your eyes. If anyone is confident that he is Christ, let him remind himself that just as he is Christ, so also are we.

For even if I boast a little too much of our authority, which the Lord gave for building you up and not for destroying you, I will not be ashamed. I do not want to appear to be frightening you with my letters, for they say his letters are weighty and strong, but his bodily presence is weak and his speech of no account.

Let such a person understand that what we say by letter when absent, we do when present. Not that we dare to classify or compare ourselves with some of those who are commending themselves, but when they measure themselves by one another and compare themselves with one another, they are without understanding.

But we will not boast beyond limits, but we'll boast only with regard to the area of influence God assigned to us to reach even to you. For we are not overextending ourselves as though we did not reach you, for we were the first to come all the way to you with the gospel of Christ.

We do not boast beyond limit in the labors of others, but our hope is that as your faith increases, our area of influence among you may be greatly enlarged, so that we may preach the gospel in lands beyond you without boasting of work already done in another's area of influence.

Let the one who boasts boast in the Lord, for it is not the one who commends himself who is approved, but the one whom the Lord commends. So you see in verse 7, he says, look at what is before you. In other words, look at me, look at these false prophets, choose a side.

See with discerning eyes. Make a judgment. Look at what is before your eyes. In verse 7, we notice that a false prophet still identifies as Christian. Did you hear that? False prophets do not walk into your local seminary and apply for a job and say, oh, I hate the deity of Christ.

I'm a follower of Muhammad. I follow Baal or some other god. They walk in and they profess to be Christian. False prophets claim to be Christians. And Paul acknowledges he's not even going to make a judgment whether or not they're saved.

He leaves that as an open question. If anyone is confident that he is Christ, let him remind himself that just as he is Christ, Christ, belonging to Christ, so also are we. So also are we. He knows who he is in Christ.

In Romans chapter 1, verse 1, he identifies himself as Paul the apostle, a servant of Christ Jesus. He knows to whom he belongs. He knows his identity in Christ. And he remembers what he had said in the six verses prior to this passage, that the weapons that he fights with are not carnal.

They're not mere fleshly weapons of human argument and opinion and eloquence and bodily presence and credentials. No, he knows that the living Christ lives in him. He has the power of God dwelling inside of him.

And the weapon that he wields primarily is the sword of the spirit. He brings the word of God. So he has no fear of the false prophets. It's them who should be trembling in their rebellion. But they're brazen.

They don't look at the world that way. Verse 8 through 11, false prophets blatantly, brazenly disregard Paul. And I've noticed this. False prophets generally are happy to confess Christ. And they'll talk about how Jesus is a great example and how they love Jesus.

In fact, Muhammad claims to love Jesus in the Quran. And yet will say, say not Trinity, desist. It will go better for you. Not understanding, denying the truth of the gospel. False prophets claim to be Christian, but they disregard Paul.

Muslims will tell you that it was Paul who perverted the gospel. Red-letter Christians will say, trust the red letters. Don't worry so much about the black. Essentially, the Pauline theology that establishes the meaning of the Bible, tying it all together in the New Testament.

Notice this, verse 8 to 11. For even if I boast a little too much of our authority, which the Lord gave for building you up and not for destroying you, I will not be ashamed. I do not want to appear to be frightening you with my letters.

Now, here's the voice of the false prophets. For they say, his letters are weighty and strong. But his bodily presence is weak. And his speech is of no account. I don't know why I picture that in like a British accent.

Or more like C -3PO or something. But I picture these guys just arrogant in how they speak. They're so proud of their eloquence. And also kind of like Hans and Franz. I think they're kind of flexing while they say this, pointing out the bathroom with a, you know.

His bodily presence is weak. But they, evidently, they work out a lot. They do a lot of push-ups. And Paul's just this little scrawny guy that they can push to the side. That's their outward view of the world.

They don't see the spiritual power and the authority that comes with apostleship. Verse 11, let such a person understand that what we say by letter when absent, we do when present. That ties back to the punishment he mentioned in verse 6, which would be church discipline if it comes to that.

Now, verse 12, just verse 12, false prophets also have another annoying habit. And that is, they love to commend themselves. They love to puff themselves up and compare themselves with others as they're doing here with Paul.

Verse 12, not that we dare to classify or compare ourselves with some of those who are commending themselves. But when they measure themselves by one another and compare and measure themselves by one and compare themselves with one another, they are without understanding.

I think of Colossians 2, verse 18, where Paul is warning about false prophets who love to go on and on and on about the visions that they've had. And they're puffed up about their asceticism. In other words, they fast a certain number of days a week.

And they will let you know about their spirituality. They have dreams and visions, and they'll tell about their amazing spiritual life. They will commend themselves to you. When you see that, when you hear that on TV, watch out.

Because the one who is so hungry for fame, so hungry for glory, is not a true servant of Christ. John the Baptist said, I must decrease that he may increase. But false prophets are commending themselves.

They're touting their own ability. Now let's turn in verse 13 and following to the genuine. We see the opposite in Paul, verse 13 and 14. But we will not boast beyond limits, but will boast only with regard to the area of influence God assigned to us to reach even to you.

For we are not overextending ourselves as though we did not reach you. For we were the first to come all the way to you with the gospel of Christ. So much to say there. Paul's the one that brought the gospel to Corinth in the first place.

And yet these teachers have probably come from Athens or some center of learning with their credentials. Remember earlier in the book they say they have letters of recommendation. Paul says, I don't have a letter of recommendation.

I only have you, the very church that I brought to Christ. You are my letter of recommendation. He's saying the same thing here. I don't have a credential to prove my right to be here. These false prophets are commandeering the church and yet Paul says, no.

Genuine Christians refuse to cede the ground to false prophets. And there will be false prophets trying to steal your children, your sheep out from the fold. Genuine Christians are willing to go to war.

Paul in his humility did not just surrender the flock to the false prophets, to the wolves in sheep's clothing. He is willing to stand up and fight. And brothers and sisters at Cornerstone, each one of us should do the same.

Be a sheepdog. You be willing to fight off any wolf that will come near your family or come near your church with a false teaching, preaching a doctrine other than what was taught in the scripture. Be willing to contend for the flock, to fight the false prophets.

They boast beyond limits. Paul says, I will not boast beyond the area of influence assigned to us. In Jude chapter three and four, well, chapter one, verses three and four, Jude says, beloved, although I was eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.

Contend for it. He didn't want to have to go negative, but he had to because certain men had creeped in unaware whose condemnation was sure. Paul was willing to fight for the flock, to fight for the gospel.

So what is our gospel? He says in verse 14, he came with the gospel of Christ. Write this down, the gospel is one, the person of Jesus Christ. Two, he is, he is the son of God who came in the flesh, the Messiah, God and man.

Number two, it's the work of Christ that he died on a cross and rose from the dead to forgive us our sins, to wash us of our sin, to set us free. He died as a substitute in our place. This is gospel truth.

Number three, that it's according to the scriptures that the prophets had foretold all of this and Jesus is the fulfillment of the entire Old Testament. Number four, it's forgiveness of sin and eternal life.

That's the good news of our gospel. Your sin, brother, sister, or maybe one here who's not yet believed in Christ, you think your sin is so great that God could never forgive you. The good news of the gospel is that his blood is so valuable that being offered on a cross, it washes your sin away regardless of what you've done.

If, number five, you'll repent and believe the good news. Repentance and faith, the person of Christ, the work of Christ, according to the scriptures, forgiveness of sin, eternal life, and repentance and faith, that's Paul's gospel.

This is the heart and the meat of it. False preachers will have nothing of it. We must defend this gospel. But here's where we started this morning. In my opening intro, I could potentially err in this area.

I'm passionate about apologetics because I hate to see sheep stolen from the flock. And so I will fight with all of my heart against social justice ideology that perverts the gospel into a Jesus as a revolutionary rather than Jesus as the savior from sin.

But here's the danger for me. I could spend so much time doing apologetics that I would forget to go on offense. And all of us are prone to a similar danger. You can spend so much time fighting the lies that you are distracted from the mission field.

Look what it says in verse 15 and 16. Paul doesn't lose sight of the offensive end of the field while he's playing defense. We do not boast beyond limit in the labors of others, but our hope is that as your faith increases, our area of influence among you may be greatly enlarged.

So that, circle those words so that because that shows the motivation behind what he's saying. So that we may preach the gospel and lands beyond you without boasting of work already done in another's area of influence.

The heart of the apostle was always to go and tell people who do not know who are dying and going to hell to tell them that there is a savior, there is a Messiah who's come. His heart beats for this. And he says that's why he's defending, that's why he does what he does.

That's why he wants the church and his influence there to be enlarged so that they then would launch him out to go beyond. We learn in Acts 19 that what he's looking at here is to get to Rome. He wants to go to that great Roman city.

And then when he finally makes it to Rome, if you look at, we don't have time to really dig into it here, but I put it in your notes. In Romans 15, he's writing back to Rome after having gotten there, and he says his desire, what his heart beats for is to get to Spain.

You see, he's always looking to the lands beyond. He's the missionary who has a heart for the lost. Remember his heart in Romans 9? I could even give my own salvation for the sake of his brothers. When's the last time your heart broke for a lost soul like that?

It's been too long since mine did. I need to be stirred up to go and to be sent. And that's why this morning we're gonna do a commissioning here in about five, 10 more minutes. To stir up the brothers and the sisters that all of us would have a mission field ahead of us, a heart that burns to go and tell.

Because when we go and tell, we're saying to the world how valuable he is to us. We value him by laying down our time. We say he's more valuable. When we make a sacrifice, when we go into harm's way, in danger for the sake of the gospel, we say that we do not count our very lives worth anything to us.

If only I may finish this race to win the prize. We value him more than life itself when we go. Missionaries that go to foreign lands, to dangerous places, you say in that that you love him more than you love your life.

And we commend you for that example. To go to the prison, that stirs all of us up. To go and do likewise. This is Paul's heartbeat. To take the gospel to the lands beyond. So my sermon title today was Lands Taken and Lands Beyond.

We must defend what the Lord has already given us. Every one of our children, not one of them be lost. The enemy cannot have one of them. And yet we're going for more because there are lost children in the city, in Kensington.

Orphans that we heard about this morning that are just waiting for a home. To remember the lands beyond. We watched a movie last night and I like recommending corny Christian movies. I recommended, what was that one, Rob, that I recommended that you liked?

Time Changer, Cindy. Time Changer, it was kind of corny, but it was a story of a guy from 100 years ago who comes into modern America and is just blown away by the depravity of this culture. And it kind of opens your eyes to see the kind of things we're used to because we grew up in this culture.

Well, there's another one that's called The Secrets of Jonathan Sperry. And here again, I recommend a low budget, but important Christian movie. The Secrets of Jonathan Sperry. What I loved about this is this old man in the last year of his life reached out to a little boy mowing a lawn.

And that kid comes to faith and then brings some of his friends to this Bible study at this guy's house. And he ends up leading many of them to Christ. And then in his last year of life, he dies as it goes.

So Jonathan Sperry, this old man, in the last year of his life, leaves behind this small group of disciples. And we find out at the end, I don't wanna give a spoiler because there are, a spoiler, there are a number of other things that I'm not telling you that are worth watching the movie for.

But what I love is when they're showing the credits at the end, you find out it's a true story. And one of those young men, the one he first reached became a pastor and has been pastoring the same church for 15 years now.

And another one who was a troubled teen runs a ministry for troubled teens. And another one who was kind of the nerdy one, he's become a scientist and he works for a creation ministry. And another one's a youth pastor.

And all because this man didn't just look at his own home, but looked out to the lands beyond. And he left that legacy. And it calls us to do the same. So we're gonna close here in just a minute, but we do have one more section, verse 17 and 18.

Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord. For it is not the one who commends himself who is approved, but the one whom the Lord commends. So genuine Christians desire the exaltation of God and no other.

Their boast is not in their own work, it's not in the things they've done. They're, a genuine Christian is so unlike the false prophets who build themselves up with their bodily presence and their eloquence and their credentials from some Athenian school of philosophy.

We don't need any of that. Our boast is the Lord. Christ, the son of the living God. And everything we do is for his name and his sake and his glory, not for our own. I love how John MacArthur talks about these kinds of things.

I don't think MacArthur wants glory for himself. And yet when I say his name, everybody here knows his name. Most of you know John MacArthur. If you don't, shame on you. No, just kidding. MacArthur's great, but I love when he talks about this passage, I listened to his sermon on this.

He doesn't want glory for himself. He wants the name of Jesus to be lifted up. That's what we're here to do. Not to exalt in ourselves, not to be prideful about the things that the Lord has called us to do, but to lift up the one name that is above every name.

So keep an eye out for the wolves. Defend the land taken. Fight off every false teacher the way Paul the apostle did here. And yet keep your heart and your mind on the lands beyond. Good defense leads into that good offense.

If we train up these children in the way they should go, these are the next generation of missionaries, missionaries from among us, pastors, teachers, leaders, Sunday school teachers. Let's raise them up and that defense as we defend them in their younger years and send them off to do the same.

So now we come to a point in the service, a great privilege, where we get to commission a group of lady saints who are going to go into the prisons for, I think, the next two Saturdays and preach the good news of Jesus Christ to some who are without hope in the darkness waiting to hear about the Savior Jesus.

Let me close the sermon in prayer and then I'm gonna call on Jay to come tell us a little bit about it and we'll pray over this team.