Following the Follower V: Key Lessons from Paul's Example

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Welcome to the Whole Council Podcast. I'm Jon Snyder, and we are returning to the book of 2

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Corinthians, chapter 2, particularly verse 12 through chapter 6, verse 10, in which we're looking at following the follower, following Paul as he followed

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Christ. And normally Chuck would be with me, but we gave him the episode off. I wanted us to take this episode to reemphasize some things before we go any further in the series, because I think it's easy for us to hit some things quickly, as we have to in a podcast setting, and then to forget them, leave them behind, so to speak, and not to bring them with us each week.

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And if we do that, then I'm concerned that we may not benefit from what Paul says, particularly in chapter 4 and 5 and 6.

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The first thing I want to reemphasize is that Christianity is spread primarily from life to life, not from library to life, not from podcast to life.

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There are many tools that God has given us to carry the gospel to people, to bring truth to them.

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And in the hands of the spirit of God, truth is a wonderful thing.

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But at the heart of that, whatever method we're using, it is the life of a believer that is the vehicle of this truth to another believer.

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Now the life of the believer is not the source of the truth, the scripture is. But God brings truth to people through believers, carrying that truth to others, and whether it's through a book or a sermon or sitting down beside someone and talking with them about the

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Lord, or sitting on the edge of your child's bed and talking with the child about Christ and His claims and how that changes everything and why we would make the choices we make as a family.

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All of these things must include the life of the believer. And the believer, as the messenger, becomes part of the message.

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That is, what we are, what people see God doing in us, is part of the message that we're bringing.

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If our lives contradict what we say, to some degree, the message is blurred. It doesn't mean that a person can't be wonderfully saved or helped in spite of our lives, but that certainly is not the plan of God.

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The plan of God is that our life would not be something that confused the message, but affirmed or confirmed or illustrated and exampled what we're talking about.

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So when we talk about the great truths of the gospel, for example, and the fullness that's provided in the new covenant, there ought to be a fullness in us.

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And people ought to be able to see, even in our very flawed and common lives, some hint, at least, of the infinite fullness of the triune

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God flowing to us through the river of the new covenant. And they know that we are imperfect and they know that we're common.

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There's nothing special about us. So what they see that is uncommon and what they see that is beautiful, they recognize that that's coming from our

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God. And the things we say then are given a wonderful, perhaps a clarification.

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Now in the scriptures, we find Paul giving us this pattern. It's not just that that sounds like a good thing.

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Paul gives us the pattern. We saw it before Paul in the original disciples. You know, when someone would say to a disciple, can anything,

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Nathanael, for example, saying, can anything good come from Nazareth? When he heard that the Messiah was

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Jesus of Nazareth and the disciples reply is, come and see. And still that has to be our reply, not just come to the church, not just come and read or come and listen, but come and see.

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And again, our lives become the theater in some ways, the church, a gathering of believers, the way we live when we go home becomes a part of that display of the truth of the gospel.

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Paul follows that, especially as we see him dealing with the troubled people in Corinth, who while accepting his teachings are really struggling to follow his pattern.

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Twice to the Corinthians, Paul says, follow me or imitate me as I follow or imitate

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Christ. Paul says the same thing to the Philippians, a church that was not particularly plagued with errors and wrong patterns, but Paul warned them that there would be people who would come to them and they would be impressive teachers.

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And you know, maybe they would really be moving in the way they could communicate religious truth.

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But Paul said, if they don't follow the pattern that you saw in me, then don't listen to them.

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When he spoke to the Thessalonians, one of the earliest letters that Paul writes in the new Testament, the wonderful simplicity of this pattern of truth moving from life to life to life is seen not just with the apostle

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Paul, but those that followed the apostle Paul. And then they became a picture of that truth. So Paul is able to say to the

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Thessalonian church in that first letter, chapter one and chapter two, in various ways, he emphasizes the word of God came to you, not merely in words, but in power and in the spirit and with much assurance.

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So Paul notices that as he's preaching and teaching these people in Thessalonica, that it's not just the words of a man.

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There is something about that experience that Paul is aware that God is using what

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I'm saying. And it's not just human words. And I think that on the part of the listeners, the

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Thessalonians, they also realized these are not just the words of a man, but there is weight and reality and truth to these words.

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And then Paul says, and you became followers of us. That is of Paul, of Timothy and of Silas.

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They were accompanying him. I find that so encouraging because when I think of being a living example of truth to people that you're trying to teach, whether it's your children or coworkers or people that you go to college with or people in the church,

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I find that it's a very daunting thought. It's quite convicting. And we're not allowed to just throw our hands up and say, well,

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I'm not sufficient for that. That's the apostle Paul kind of a life. And I'm not the apostle

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Paul. But Paul doesn't just say to the Thessalonians, you remember that you saw how

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I lived. Now I'm not talking about Silas. I'm not talking about Timothy because they're great guys, but they're not on the same level that I am.

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I'm the apostle Paul. And my life was part of the message. And you remember, you recall, but he doesn't say that.

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He says us, you recall, you remember how we all, the three of us lived among you and what you heard from us and message and life together by the wonderful working of the spirit of Christ were brought to bear on the lives of those people.

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And they were wonderfully converted or saved.

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They became alive in Christ, embracing the gospel. And then Paul says, and you became imitators of us.

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You, when you thought about how to live the Christian life, remembering our pattern, you imitated us and the

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Lord Jesus Christ. Now, nobody in that Thessalonian church, as far as we know, had ever been in Jerusalem during the time of Christ and actually watched the pattern of Jesus.

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Well, I remember how he lived. I remember how he talked, how he ate, how he traveled, how he responded to friendship, how he responded to flattery that was false or open attacks.

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Well, they didn't have that benefit. What they had was the teaching and the lives of Paul and Silas and Timothy.

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And so Paul said, you became imitators of us. And then so amazing in imitating us,

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Silas and Timothy and me, you are also imitating Jesus of Nazareth. And that means that Silas and Timothy who were imitating

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Paul themselves and Paul who is imitating Christ, even though he did not get to live with Christ, we see this chain, this wonderful gospel chain, the river flowing through the riverbanks of gospel doctrine or truth, scriptural truth and example.

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We see this flowing from the apostles and the scripture and the accounts that Paul heard from eyewitnesses,

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Paul imitating the pattern of Jesus Christ, they're not having lived with him. He's imitating him based on what he had heard and the scripture.

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And then Timothy is imitating Paul and so is Silas. And by imitating Paul who is imitating

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Christ, they're imitating Christ. And then the Thessalonians by imitating Paul and Timothy and Silas are actually also imitating

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Jesus of Nazareth, not only in the doctrines they're supposed to believe, but in the life and how that's changed.

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When Paul talks to Timothy later in his epistles, he warns Timothy not to give in to the criticism of those who might look down on him as a young man and not to be seduced by the world and the lusts that really attack you when you're young, those youthful lusts, flee those things.

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Pay attention, give great pains, he says, to your doctrine and life.

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By doing so, you ensure that God will use you to bring real spiritual benefit to those around you.

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So with that in mind, when we think about following Christ, whether it's as a witness at work or a teacher in a church or a parent, the principles that Paul followed have to be our principles.

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And I'm not talking about the specific things where Paul is a traveler through the ancient Roman empire. We obviously are not called to do that, but I mean the fundamentals of Paul's life.

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How did the new covenant realities, the doctrines that are all united in the triune work of God for our rescue, how did those things find room in the soil of Paul's thoughts and his desires, his inclinations and his choices in every area of life?

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And then they bore fruit in how Paul was fueled to serve, guided in his service and sustained or preserved so that he persevered, faithful to the end, because that's life and death for every one of us who is a follower of Christ today.

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Well, how did Paul think about those fundamental areas, Paul and God? Paul and the truth about himself,

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Paul and people. And we find that in that autobiographical section that we've been covering and will continue to cover, particularly 2

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Corinthians 2, verse 12 through chapter 6, verse 10. One reason we chose this for our podcast is not just because it is the longest, most complete autobiographical portrait that we have of the apostle.

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But it is also written in a setting that just tears away the mask off of every empty excuse that we would offer.

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We might say, well, I didn't get to travel with Jesus of Nazareth. If I did, I would know how to imitate him in this situation, but neither did

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Paul. So there goes that excuse. And then we might say, well, I'm not an apostle and God hasn't given me the gift and the enabling to be an apostle.

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Well, neither was Timothy or Silas. So that excuse is removed when we think of following followers.

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But also there's this idea that Paul just glowed. And every day for Paul, you know, in the book of Acts, no matter how much we see the persecution or no matter how many times we see people lying about Paul or him being mistreated for the gospel, we can read the book of Acts and think that every chapter glowed with success.

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We think it's just one uninterrupted event in the greatest revival ever.

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And that is certainly not true. Read the book of Acts and take note of all the opposition, of all the times that this man by the power of the spirit is living and speaking the truth.

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And it is rejected by those who have Bibles in their hands, the Jews. And read his epistles and notice how many times those who have genuinely come to Christ, as well as those who are meeting with the churches perhaps, and are strangers to Christ, how many times

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Paul has to point out that these behavioral traits are not for the

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Christian. And he's saying that because some Christians are doing it. And so he has to guide them away from that, guide them back to Christ in repentance and faith.

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When we look at the life of Paul and we see what he writes in 2 Corinthians, it is so particularly encouraging because it is one of the low times of Paul's ministry and not one of those high water marks.

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It is when he fears that the Corinthian church may have turned its back on Christ and proven their profession of faith to be empty.

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And he has spent a long time with Corinth, longer than he did with almost any other group other than Ephesus.

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And here he is having invested himself so long with this particular group of people.

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And this particular group of people seems to be on the verge of following false teachers down a path of disobedience and disregarding some very strong letters

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Paul wrote. And so Paul mentions in chapter 2, verse 12 and 13, that he is so heavy hearted over this, not hearing back from Titus, whether or not that the report he was supposed to bring back, having checked on the

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Corinthians, have they followed? Have they repented after my last letter or have they turned their back on Christ?

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And Titus is not where he's supposed to be. He doesn't meet Paul where they plan to meet. And so Paul turns his back on that opening that God himself created for the gospel in Christ in the city of Troas.

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And God makes an opening. God gives Paul the opportunity and the abilities to preach the gospel there.

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And the greatest missionary ever, perhaps we could call him that, turns his back on this

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God -given missionary opportunity because his heart is too heavy. So he leaves to travel to Macedonia, as we've mentioned in the early episodes, to find

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Titus, to know whether Corinth has abandoned Christ or not. I want to know, surely you want to know, what a believer says about what he's thinking, the truths that he's grabbing hold of, that keep him fueled, that keep him guided and keep him persevering in everyday faithfulness.

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Well, when Paul talks about this over and over, he uses kind of a general picture.

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He says, because of these great facts, therefore, I don't lose heart. Therefore, we don't set aside our boldness and, you know, become kind of shy about our boasts in Christ.

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And he says this in chapter three, again in chapter four, and then we find it in chapter four again in chapter five and six, and we'll be looking at those.

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But before we get to those, I want us to stop and think, what is this whole issue? Because really, they all kind of speak of the same thing, of losing a confidence in the gospel facts or the kingdom truths, losing confidence in the power of God in the modern setting to really change people.

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And therefore, we are tempted to wrong choices. Some of the wrong choices you can think of, there is kind of a fatalistic approach.

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We say, well, I had a friend, a very godly, earnest friend that when he was young and in his first church, he was pastoring.

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And he said, well, I asked him how it was going, a little country church. And he said, well, I don't think anybody is elect in this church.

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And I said, wow, like, how do you know that? Because as far as I can see in scripture,

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God doesn't reveal that to us. He doesn't give us a list of the unelect. And so how have you come to that decision?

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And he said, well, when I preach, nobody's getting saved, so there's nobody elect here. What followed after that statement, eventually he shook that.

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But there was a season in his pastorate where he just kind of coasted and became fatalistic.

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And he started wasting a lot of his time in the week instead of going and really praying more and studying more and meeting with the people one -on -one and then going to the houses around him that didn't attend church, he kind of put it in neutral.

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And so while he was still preaching and still doing the required visits, the heart was no longer in it because of discouragement and the fatalistic option that he chose.

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It's fate that these people won't be saved, therefore, I don't want to really give my energy of life and time to the ministry.

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I'll just keep going through the motions without heart. Well, that's one way. Another is to become really bitter.

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And I've felt this temptation. I think I felt all of them and at times given into them. But there are times you think of with your children, you try from the earliest days, perhaps you homeschooled or you chose a church that you felt would be a healthy environment for them.

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And as they grow and they're little and they're memorizing their verses and maybe you're using a catechism and things are, they just seem on a wonderful course.

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But as they get older and they're allowed to make decisions on their own, you notice that their heart has no real attachment to Christ.

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So you speak to them and you pray for them. You redouble your efforts and things get worse, not better.

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And then they go to college and they become independent. They live away from home.

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Maybe they get married, they get their occupation. And every time you see them, you see more and more that they are drifting even from the most fundamental moral codes of Christianity, even of Judeo -Christian ethics.

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And they are more and more embracing the lives of the world and your heart is broken. And if you're not careful, you can, because of this sustained disappointment, you can begin to adjust your views of the scriptural truth, of the power of the gospel in the hands of the spirit.

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And you say, well, it didn't work with my son. It didn't work with my daughter. Maybe I haven't seen it work with any of my kids yet, or just a few of my kids.

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And you can become bitter, not a fatalist. You still seem to care.

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You're not indifferent. You're not blaming your own God in the sense that, well, it's up to God and he's not going to save them.

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So I don't need to worry about it anymore. But the heart is still there, but it's there in a way that's broken and bitter.

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And you blame God for not using your homeschooling and your church and your catechism and your

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Bible verses and your bedtime stories and your family worship. And the kids still aren't converted.

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So you blame God and you go off course. Let me give you one other wrong response.

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And this is very popular. And it's that we, since we lose confidence in Christ and the truths of Christ, the boasts that we made in the gospel, we no longer boast so loudly.

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The hope of the work of the spirit and the heart of the unbeliever, we no longer talk about that so clearly.

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We've backed away from that without openly denying these things. And we have become enamored, really impressed with new tactics.

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If you do this, your kids will love church. If you do this, your kids will embrace Jesus. If you do this, your church will grow.

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And you begin to use these, what Paul calls craftiness, adulterating the word.

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It doesn't mean you became a heretic. It just means you water down some spots of the Bible, which are offensive and that they don't seem beneficial to what you're trying to accomplish.

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Build a church, keep your kids happy with Jesus. So you kind of deemphasize and take the sharp edges off some passages and you overemphasize other passages.

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And you find that what we're going to talk about next week in chapter four, yourself, you find that you've lost heart.

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But instead of giving up like a fatalist or being bitter, you just switch tactics.

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You think, well, those old tactics don't work in modern day. So here's my new tactic. And what

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Paul calls that is choosing things that you should have put away. You're doing things that you kind of hide, manipulative tactics that you're hiding because you're ashamed.

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If someone saw them, you would be ashamed. You're adulterating the word. You're watering it down. You're being crafty.

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And this is what we do when we lose confidence in the truths of scripture and in the power of the spirit to use our witness, our lives.

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But we do still care. We do still want to see people come to church. We want to see the people in the church stay and grow.

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We want to see our children be genuinely converted and we want to see them grow. We want to see the people we work with.

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We want to see the town that we live in, the soccer team parents that we sit next to, you know, two nights a week.

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We want to see people helped, but having lost confidence in God, we despair and we choose other methods.

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I'm taking the time to reiterate these things because I feel that it's just so easy to do.

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And we are tempted that way all the time. So you have a paradox, just like Paul had.

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The task is not being lowered for us. We are to take the gospel to the world, whatever world you live in.

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It may just mean your next door neighbor and the soccer team. It may be the kids that play with your kids. It may be the people you work with or the people you sit next to at church.

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We are still given that task. We are to be an aroma of Christ to them.

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And we are not sufficient for the task, just like Paul wasn't. And yet, a sufficiency is provided for us in the same way it was for Paul.

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The sufficiency that comes from God, a sufficiency that comes from us being the partakers of and messengers of a new and far superior covenant.

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And with all of that rich supply, we are to do all that God commanded us to do.

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And we're not allowed to adjust it. We're not allowed to reduce our expectations below what the scripture says.

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Of course, everyone's not going to be saved and everything is not going to be easy and wonderful.

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But God will work. His will will be accomplished. His kingdom will spread and he will use the most common and insufficient feeling believer as they walk according to that pattern.

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Let me mention one tricky lie that is always there for us as we age as Christians.

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I became a Christian at age 20 and that was now 34 years ago.

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I had a few good Christian books before I was a Christian. I thought I was a Christian and I bought Spurgeon and Tozer and I'm glad I did.

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But I didn't have the same library I have now and I didn't understand the things I do now.

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34 years of walking with the Lord, 34 years of being educated and having good books.

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I have so much more experience than I had when

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I first came to the Lord. But that experience, which is valuable, is not sufficient.

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It is not sufficient that I have 34 years of experience of trying to speak to people about Christ.

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I need something more than that. If I'm going to fulfill the task I've been given to be a living picture of Christ to people, to be the aroma of Christ as God uses me and to bring the truth of Christ to people, to stay, keep my heart in that work and not to drift and not to give up in despair or fatalistic indifference.

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I don't have what it takes after 34 years of experience. It is easy the longer we walk with the

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Lord and the more our mind is stored with good truths and the more experience we have, which is all valuable.

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It is easy to believe the lie from the enemy that now you are sufficient. Now, you know how to talk to a young person.

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Now, you know how to answer the questions of an unbeliever at work. Now, you know how to grow a church.

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And all of that is a lie. It's valuable. And these are tools that God gives us, but they're not sufficient.

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Another thing that is not sufficient is the resources that we can gather. I have so many books now that if someone says to me, do you know anyone that talks about this topic?

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I can say, well, actually, there are a couple of books that I could recommend. And that's very valuable, but it's not enough.

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There must be the continual flow of the infinite riches of God through the finished work of his son being applied to my life experientially through the work of the spirit so that with this new covenant supply and the superior privileges that we enjoy, my words and my life together become the message.

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And the truths of scripture are presented with as little distortion as humanly possible as God is taking my words in my life and bringing that truth through that channel, bringing the scripture to bear on the lives of those around us.

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It's so easy to feel the more books I collect and the more authors I know, and the more chapters

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I can recommend that I am a little more sufficient than I was 34 years ago.

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Okay. Well, I'm not completely sufficient, but hey, I can do a whole lot without any of the help of God.

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It's a lie. There is so much that we can do without God, so to speak, but it is of no lasting value.

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The kind of work that must be done in a soul for them to go from death to life, for them to move from one level of glory to the next, as they are being transformed into the image of Christ, as they are growing and persevering that kind of work in the soul that God allows us to be a part of that will require

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God. And so we are still insufficient. Now, let me say one more thing before we close this kind of recap podcast.

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If I were a very poor man, I had lost everything. My business went under, I mean, everything.

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I don't know how I'm going to buy food tomorrow for me and my wife and my kids, much less how we're going to keep the house or how we're going to put gas in the car.

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I don't know how I'm going to get to work. It's hopeless. If I were that destitute and I had a very wealthy childhood friend that found out and came to me and said,

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I have opened an account for you at the bank. There is no limit. You may use all

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I provide and I can provide more than you can use for everything you need.

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What would I do if I believe that man and I saw my poverty, then laying down in self pity would be completely inappropriate.

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If I believed that man and saw my need and saw the bills that I couldn't pay myself, uh, me getting up and saying,

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Oh, thanks. I don't need it. I can walk to work. No gas in the car. No money for gas. Work is 15 miles.

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Don't worry. I'll just walk to work and we'll live under a bridge and we'll pull ourselves up by our own, you know, bootstraps and we'll just all do better.

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That would be inappropriate. But if I see my need and I see the generosity and the reality of the supply from my friend, then

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I see the task in front of me and I say, I can do it. I can work.

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I can get to work. I can pay the bills. We can make it. We can do what today requires by going today to the account that my friend has supplied and receiving today what

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I need from that to enable me to do what I'm supposed to do. Any Christian that says that, uh,

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God is sovereign and, and we're depraved and we don't have what it takes and you know,

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I'm not sufficient. Well, they're saying true things, but if they're also saying, and God is willing and God is able through his son to supply all

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I need to do the task in front of me, that's true as well. But when those come crashing together in a way that's biblical, fatalism is set aside, indifference is set aside, gloomy, complaining, bitterness is set aside.

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Having to find a new method is set aside and the path of Paul is clear.

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But it was also the path of Timothy and of, and of Silas and of the Thessalonians. And it was the path of Christ.

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It's the path for us. So as we pick up again next week with chapter four and see the second major application of the covenant fullness at where Paul says in chapter four, therefore, because of everything

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I've pointed out in chapter three, there's some things I refuse to do. And there's some things

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I always do. I'm determined to do them because of that truth. That can be the path that we're on as well.

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Well, may the Lord help us as we continue to move through Paul's autobiographical passages in second