Destroying Speculations – 2 Corinthians 10:3-6

Good morning and welcome to Kootenai Community Church, Adult Sunday School. We're in 2

Corinthians chapter 10. Let's open in prayer. Father, we look forward every day to look into your word because from there we get the truth, we get what you are intending for our lives.

Father, your voice is heard in scripture. Every time we enter scripture, we enter your presence in a special way so that we might know what you have by your

Holy Spirit. Father, we pray that we would be discerning that this morning you would impart to us your wisdom for living every day in a manner that will glorify you.

And we know we will find that in your word and we thank you for it in Jesus' name. Excuse me.

So let's start by reading chapter 10, 2 Corinthians chapter 10. And what

I wanna talk to you about this morning is a couple of informative items up front.

We will be dealing with the same thing that scripture very often deals with, even in narrative form it deals with it.

And that is the fight between truth and error. And the

Corinthians were dealing with a tendency to lean towards error, to lean towards the sensational, which is what the

Greeks did, to lean towards trusting themselves and trusting what they heard and what they thought they heard rather than the words of scripture.

And so that is an error that every age deals with, where we think we know something that scripture says isn't true, but because we feel it, it must be true.

It is not. And we will see that in the words of scripture this morning as we study chapter 10. Chapter 10, now

I, Paul, myself urge you by the meekness and gentleness of Christ. I who am meek when face to face with you but bold towards you when absent.

I ask that when I am present, I may not be bold with the confidence with which I propose to be courageous against some who regard us as if we walked according to the flesh.

For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses.

We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God. And we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.

And we are ready to punish all disobedience whenever your obedience is complete. You are looking at things as they are outwardly.

If anyone is confident in himself that he is Christ, let him consider this again within himself that just as he is

Christ, so also are we. For even if I should boast somewhat further about our authority which the

Lord gave for building you up and not for destroying you, I shall not be put to shame.

For I do not wish to seem as if I would terrify you by my letters, for they say his letters are weighty and strong, but his personal presence is unimpressive and his speech contemptible.

Let such a person consider this, that what we are in word by letters when absent, such persons we are also indeed when present.

For we are not bold to class or compare ourselves with some of those who commend themselves, but when they measure themselves by themselves and compare themselves with themselves, they are without understanding.

But we will not boast beyond our measure, but within the measure of the sphere which God apportioned to us as a measure to reach even as far as you.

For we are not overextending ourselves as if we did not reach to you, for we were the first to come even as far as you in the gospel of Christ, not boasting beyond our measure, that is in other men's labors, but with the hope that as your faith grows, we shall be within our sphere enlarged even more by you.

So as to preach the gospel even to the regions beyond you and not to boast in what has been accomplished in the sphere of another, but he who boasts, let him boast in the

Lord. For not he who commends himself is approved, but whom the Lord commends.

So last week, and we've kind of broken this section up because that's kind of what happens on a

Sunday morning when questions are asked and just the way things work out, which is fine, wanna keep doing that, but I'm gonna kind of try to keep tying this section together because this is a misused section of scripture that is often used to justify some of the most fanciful ideas when it is really straightforward.

Paul was dealing with people who weren't believing the truth. They weren't living the truth. They were believing error and living out.

You will, you will take to a logical conclusion the things that you believe. So if you believe wrongly, you may very well reason correctly, logically, to a conclusion that makes sense based on your belief, but it will be just as wrong as it could ever be.

But if you have as your basis the truth, the word of God, and by God's grace, you work through scripture the way he intended for us to be, as it says in 2

Timothy, you will work to the right conclusions by God's grace. So 2

Corinthians chapter 10, I'm just gonna kind of catch us up on verses one through, I think we finished up on verse four, we did.

So he urges them by the meekness and gentleness of Christ, and he uses those terms to remind the people that he's talking to that he is dealing with them the same way

Christ dealt with the world, meekly and gently, and he does not want them to confuse the word meekness with weakness.

He was not a weak man. He was a man of firm resolve when it came to defending the scriptures, and he would do that, and he's going to point that out, but he was meek, he was kind, he was deferential, he was less likely to use harshness unless there was no other alternative, and that is all how it should be.

He was gentle, and when he was face to face with them, he was gentle. Well, what happened was the issues arose when he was away, and he had to treat them in a letter.

So he sent a letter, and thus, one of the things that the false apostles in Corinth were accusing him of was being, if you will, chicken -livered when present, but tough as boots when he was away, and he said, that is not true.

So he says, I urge you by the meekness of Christ, the gentleness of Christ, I who am meek when face to face with you, but bold toward you when absent.

He was actually mocking their false charge against him, and then he said, I ask that when

I'm present, I don't have to be bold. Would you respond to my letter? Would you respond to scripture so that when

I come, I can come in gentleness and meekness, is what he's saying, because I propose to be courageous against some who regard us as if we walk according to the flesh, and that phrase there is an ancient phrase that simply meant walk according, we are of the world.

We are fleshly creatures, and so he says, for though we walk in the flesh, then he changes his direction a little bit.

We do not war according to the flesh, and he uses the word for war, so there's no, which is where we get the word strategy, so there's no, the false apostles in Corinth could not mistake what

Paul was saying. He was saying, I can come to you with authority if I must, but I would like for you to respond to the meekness and gentleness that Christ has dictated for us.

Then he says in verse four, which we finished with last week, for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, not of this world, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses, and the word fortresses is enclosed in, held in.

In this particular case, we're gonna be talking about ideas and untruths, so this is the weapon

Paul is referring to. He's referring to the word of God. He's not referring to all these esoteric and fanciful ideas that people have come up with.

He's referring to the sword of the word of God, this very word, which is sufficient and necessary to combat all the error that we will face in our lives, all the error that the

Corinthians would face in their lives, and then he takes it right to what is happening in Corinth.

There are people speculating about what Paul has done. They're thinking wrong thoughts. Have you ever had someone misunderstand what you said and what you did?

That is, especially when it's someone close to you, that is just not fun, is it? Sometimes with those folks, it's the most difficult to set the record straight.

People who actually care for you, but have misread you, and by the way, that behooves us as much as possible to speak as clearly as possible, but there are going to be times when you will be misunderstood.

That is some of what was going on, but much of it was false apostles who were trying to destroy

Paul's reputation and destroy the credibility of the gospel that he was preaching so that they could preach their own gospel, frankly, to enrich themselves.

Has that changed? How would you like to pay for a $60 million jet? Now, my 19, you're paying me enough to keep a 68, or what is my year, 98

GMC running. No, you're not, and you better not be.

So then what does he want to destroy? He doesn't want to destroy made up things.

He wants to destroy, and he says this in verse five, we are destroying speculations, and the word speculations is from the

Greek word from which we get the word logic. It is reasonings, it is reckoning, it is comparison and computation, it is judgment, it is decision, it is such as what your conscience passes on something.

The judgment your conscience will pass on something. Paul says the word of God as he preaches it in the gospel destroys false reasoning.

As the word of God goes out into the world, there will be those who will react to it, and there will be the elect who will respond to it.

It is the same word, and there are two different responses. Those who respond improperly will be judged by that word.

Those who respond properly will be delightfully judged by that word to remain in the presence of God, to come into the presence of God.

So he says we are destroying speculations and every lofty thing that is raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.

So these speculations are personal views more often than not completely unsupported by facts or scripture, or let me rephrase that, by scripture or facts or true logic.

They are the surmisings and viewpoints that emanate from a humanistic worldview that dismisses

God and scripture. These are the speculations that Paul is fighting against, that the gospel fights.

They achieve their lofty position simply by being regurgitated and emphasized by those who are deemed the respectable and reasonable intellects of the day.

And so the Carl Sagan's and the, well, I'm not gonna, I don't need to put names to that, and there's those in the church, the quote, see the air quotes, church, who are the same.

These speculations are personal views. They are not scriptural views. An interesting quote that I couldn't actually chase down to find out who it emanated from originally, but it's been regurgitated over the years.

It was probably Lenin, Hitler, or Joseph Goebbels, who was Hitler's propagandist.

It illuminates this idea. Quote, if you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.

The lie can be maintained only for such time as the state can shield people from the political, economic, and or military consequences of the lie.

It thus becomes vitally important for the state to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the state, close quote.

Replace the word state with false teachers, and you've got the gist of what was going on in Corinth.

If they repeated a lie often enough, and it came from enough people with authority, then people would begin to believe it, and that is terribly unfortunate, and those things are proven by just studying the internet.

Abe Lincoln said so. Well, this captures the essence of all the lies and false philosophies that have been cast up over the centuries to combat scriptural truth.

All of these lies are raised up, as Paul says, against the knowledge of God.

That's what the world is fighting against. They're fighting against knowing God, and if you know him, then they're fighting against him having the answers, which is embodied solely, solely in scripture.

I can't remember, was it Jonathan Edwards? I'm gonna see if I can, I should have written this quote down, but basically one of the early

Puritan writers said that if someone, and this is a paraphrase, if someone says something that agrees with scripture, then it was unnecessary, and if someone says something that disagrees with scripture, then they're just wrong.

Is that close, Jim? Yeah. John Owen. It was a John. I had the first name right, yeah. And so, when we study and expound and exegete the scriptures, we are saying the things

God said. We're hopefully doing it with historical context and the context of the book and the context of the scripture itself, because that is what

God intends, how God intends us to learn about him, not from something that came from someone's late night indigestion.

It is the knowledge of God, the true knowledge of God, that all heretics, all humanists, all atheists, all false religionists, seek not to promote.

More often than not, they believe their own lies. Now, isn't that interesting, that they believe their own press releases?

I think that happens. Now, there are probably a great many who don't, but most of them actually believe what they're saying, so I gotta give them that.

At least they're preaching their own version of the gospel. It's just dead, and I underline the word dead.

It's just dead wrong. By the power of scripture and the renewing of the mind that comes to a believer who immerses themselves in the word of God, Paul says of those thoughts, the false philosophies and heresies are taken captive, and the one who formerly believed in them becomes obedient to Christ.

That's what that verse is telling us. He says we are, by the word of God, by the gospel, by the truth, destroying speculations.

The only thing that will destroy those speculations, the false views, whether it's evolution or a false humanist view of man, false humanist view of the roles of men and women, false humanist views of anything that has to do with our lives, is the gospel, is the word of God.

That's the foundation from which we must work, and that is the structure from which we must work, and that is the end to which we must come, the conclusion to which we must come.

These are raised up. The scripture is raised up against the false knowledges of a false gospel of man.

Heretics and those promoting false doctrine must, like the state, shield their followers from the truth.

Thus the truth becomes hurtful, dangerous, and it must be suppressed, and so you see it especially today in spades online when people don't wanna hear things that hurt their ears.

They wanna tickle their ears. They wanna feel good about everything, and so don't say things that are true.

Say things that are nice, and Paul was trying to tell the Corinthians that he tried to say, he tried to do things that were nice in their presence by God's grace, by God's direction, and then he had to write, according to God's direction, a severe letter.

Remarkably, many, most, it seems like, in Corinth responded to that severe letter, and I can just imagine those false apostles feeling their grip slipping on the people because the word of God was cutting those cords of false reasoning.

Indeed, the main thrust of these two verses, verses three and four, is that scripture is to be trusted.

It is sufficient and necessary. It is perfect for destroying speculations.

There is nothing better. I love science, but science is subject to the word of God.

I love math, but math is subject to the word of God, and that is our thought process.

That is how we, as believers, have to think. Everything is subject to the word of God. Nothing is superior to it, nothing, and these people, often,

I know I struggle with it. Sometimes we think, well, I'm pretty smart. I know better than that. Why do

I know better than that? If it's in scripture, that's one reason. That should be the sufficient reason. We are not to become

Christian philosophers because the gospel is not a philosophy. There's nothing wrong with philosophy proper.

In its proper place, as a study and understanding of wisdom and the wise use of scripture, but our philosophy is the bare and perfect gospel.

We are not, necessarily, to become scientific debaters. Science most certainly has its place, but the gospel is what

God uses to change the hearts of men, not science, and so, while science and facts and especially trivia, which is fun, can be used to bolster, it's the gospel that God will use to change man's heart.

It's the gospel that Paul used to destroy the speculations that the Corinthians and the false apostles in Corinth were having.

There's nothing wrong with philosophy, but remember, or science, but it's the gospel. We are not to be intimidated by the learning of those who oppose the truth, for it is the simple truth of the gospel that even the unlearned can understand and be changed by.

Charles Hodge put it this way. He said, the success of the gospel depends on its being presented, not as the word of man, but as the word of God.

Not as something to be proved, but as something to be believed. It was on this principle that Paul acted, and hence, he was in no degree intimidated by the number, the authority, or the ability, or the learning of his opponents.

He was confident that he could cast down all their proud imaginations because he relied on not himself, but on God, whose messenger he was.

That is a confidence that every believer in this room can have, if you don't already. Who do you rely on?

If you rely on yourself, you will fail. But if you rely on God, as God directs, he will bring the victory.

True spiritual warfare is not necessarily a battle with demons. It is not necessarily always a battle against Satan.

In a very real sense, it is a battle for the minds of people who have been held captive by everything that is exalted against scripture.

Demons and Satan can be involved, but often our tendency is to focus on the silly machinations of the spiritual warfare group, and to miss the true battle, which is a battle of truth against error.

Scripture against essentially everything else. The only weapon which will yield success is the prayer -bathed gospel.

Paul pounds this truth home in Romans. He says in Romans 1 .16, for I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the

Jew first and also to the Greek. Whatever fortress people hide in, whether it be philosophy, psychology, misapplied science, other religions, cults, evolution, legalism, or any other idea that is raised up against the truth of scripture, it is the gospel that cuts through and opens the eyes of the captives.

Now I know we know this, but it's a good thing to revisit. This is not milk. This is meat being reminded.

It is the gospel that combats these errors. And so as we go on, we're gonna be continually,

I'm gonna kind of be continually be beating that live horse, that live horse. Any comments or questions about verse five?

Jim, you really took this section and opened it up. If you have any comments, I'd be glad. Okay, it's the gospel.

Verse six, now, now. Okay, you false apostles.

What are they doing? What is it really that they're doing? They're not just making mistakes.

They are lying. They are disobeying God's word. They're disobeying a constituted apostle of the

Lord Jesus Christ, and they're trying to compromise his ministry. That's evil and destructive.

People can face eternal consequences because of their wickedness.

And so in verse six, he lets them know. He says, and we are ready to punish all disobedience whenever your obedience is complete.

Here, Paul makes it very clear that he will unleash his apostolic authority if he has to, and probably will, but he will not do that until the

Corinthian church as a whole has made a decision based on his letters to stand with him in rejecting the unbiblical teaching of the apostate and the false apostles.

The word for disobedience is not, as one might expect, blatant rebellion against commands. Rather, it is a word that means a refusal to listen.

Nah, nah, nah, nah, I'm not hearing you. That's what it is. We can just disobey by refusing to listen, be disobedient by refusing to listen.

Rather, it is that word, which means a refusal to listen, inattention, and thus, by implication, disobedience.

Disobedience starts with refusing to hear correction. It starts with refusing to hear biblical correction.

The Corinthians had been admonished by Paul. Many of them had responded, but there were plenty, including the false apostles, who simply would not listen to Scripture or listen to Paul.

When he spoke, they plugged their ears. Their hearts would not look at Scripture.

They would not look at Scripture. They pretend they know it, but they really do not.

They really do not. It may very well be that they really do not. Their inattention to the word of God is disobedience.

Simple. We have been commanded in Scripture to study the word. Have we not? I am not ashamed of the gospel.

It is the gospel. 2 Timothy, study to show thyself approved. There, I revert back to the King James.

I read that book for a long time. To study to show yourself approved. A workman that does not need to be ashamed.

Rightly dividing the word of truth. And what is the word of truth good for? For correction, instruction, reproof, and what's the fourth one?

Correction, instruction, reproof. Training, thank you, thank you, thank you. Boy, it's real easy to copy and paste.

Why didn't I do that? So inattention is disobedience.

Not studying the word of God. Did you know that? Not studying the word of God as he has commanded us, that's disobedience. Well, I was busy.

That's disobedience. God's word is for our admonition, for our blessing every day.

Inattention to the word is the same as disobedience to the word. Paul was looking for those who would stand with him. Those whose obedience, a

Greek word that means the opposite, it means aligning up under and listening to, was perfected.

And that perfection would simply be hearkening to the word of God that had come to them in several letters from Paul.

So he starts out this mini section with verses three through six, agreeing that we all have human bodies.

We do not war in human terms. And this indeed is a war, a war of the truth against all error.

He then describes the weapons that we use, which are more fully described, if you will, in Galatians chapter six. He knows that those weapons are spiritual and that they are for the destruction of spiritual fortresses of false teaching, false prophecy, and false living.

False living results from false teaching. The word of God is offensive sword destroying their false ideas.

Anything raised up against knowing God and resulting in the salvation of many and then their very lives becoming blessedly captive in obedience to the

Lord Jesus Christ. And finally, in verse six, he starkly admonishes the Corinthians that disciplines are coming.

Discipline that he would much prefer not to have to level against them, but he will if he must.

And once the true believers in Corinth have settled the issue in their hearts and minds and come to obedience, they must stand with him.

They must stand with him. Matthew chapter five, when it deals with dealing with church, dealing with disobedience in the church.

And indeed by the grace of God, he knows they will stand with him. As we read through sections of scripture, we discover that there is local context, book context, and whole scripture context.

All of these must be kept in mind as we interpret and exegete the word of God. Unfortunately, the temptation is often too great to look at this section, isolating it from scripture as a whole, isolating it from the book of 2

Corinthians, isolating it from the historical context, isolating it from Paul's general revelation of scripture from the

Holy Spirit, and find things that are just not there. So this great section of scripture has been used to defend some wild concepts.

Paul was dealing with the recalcitrant church that had a number of false apostles in it. They were accusing him of being two -faced and fake.

And so in this little section, these three verses, and I'm not trying to isolate it, but just keep in mind we're looking at it in context, he reminds them of his specific apostolic authority and his willingness to use it if he has to.

If I might put this in more colloquial language, and that's what this is, this is not a translation, this is colloquial language.

As I was reading through this and thinking about what it says to me, and when you hear that, be careful.

What God is saying to a reluctant, to obey, reluctant, to a disobedient church.

Yes, I'm just a human, but I do not make war according to human concepts. The weapons I use to war against false teaching and disobedience are not human in origin.

They are divinely powerful and are used for the destruction of those false ideas and fortresses we build in our minds as we refuse to hear and obey the word of God.

That refusal results in the destruction of our lives and in the lives of others around us. Speculations, the lives of those around us.

These weapons that God provided to us, his word through his spirit and his grace, destroy those speculations by powerfully bringing the truth of his word to bear on them.

Those tools are divinely competent and sufficient for every need, including the destruction of false teaching.

I have the authority to bring down the wrath of God on you, but I will not use it unless it is absolutely unavoidable.

When those of you true believers in Corinth have settled this in your minds and have come to obedience, then I will punish those who remain rebellious.

To get more than that out of this is inventing. He would come if necessary and was gonna come.

He was gonna visit Corinth. He wants to visit Corinth. He wants them to respond to the word of God that he had sent them in previous letters.

And indeed, as we said, delightfully, many, I think most of the church did. And as I said,

I can just see those false apostles, what their faces must have looked like as they could feel their authority waning and slipping as the word of God came back in and exerted its truth hold on the hearts of those believers.

Paul was harking back to the teacher of the Savior in Matthew chapter seven. And the statement there, beware of false prophets means to literally hold your mind back from considering false teaching.

The road to developing a disinterest in the word of God begins here. When you begin entertaining false teaching, that is the same as refusing to hear true teaching.

This is the foundation of what happened to those false apostles in Corinth. And it is because there is already a penchant for disobedience that comes from the fall in the heart of man.

Penchant, it's a direction. Our hearts are unbelievably dark and evil.

And God has to come in and change that heart. He has to regenerate it before we can even come to faith. Before the word of God begins to work on our heart.

That's all a work of God. And so that had happened. All are depraved.

Yes, that sweet little baby that was just birthed is the sweetest looking little child, but it is a depraved child.

One man said, if a toddler had the strength of a six foot man, he would kill everybody. He would do everything in his way to get that toy. And he would.

He would. All are depraved. It is

God that turns that, that opens the heart to seeing and then saves the person.

So Paul was harking back to Matthew chapter seven where the Savior said, beware of false prophets.

Abstain from even considering hearing. There you get to plug your ears and say, I'm not hearing you, if you will.

This is the foundation of what happened to those people in Corinth and it's because there's already a penchant. In fact, people who listen to false prophets who are people who are long already on the road of disinterest to the word of God.

Disinterest in the word of God. Matthew 7, 15, beware of the false prophets who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves.

It's actually quite a study to learn to be able to spot false prophets, some of them are slicker and deer guts on a doorknob.

That just slipped right out. My dad had all these sayings, it's his fault.

They're slick, they're conniving, they're crafty and they can couch much of what they say in the words of scripture.

But they can be seen, they can be ferreted out. In these verses, he warns them, the

Lord Jesus Christ warns them to not even listen to them. When the false apostles in Corinth could not disprove

Paul's authority, disprove the word of God, they began to attack himself. They began to attack his person, attack his delivery, attack his looks.

You ever see that happen? This is nothing new. There is nothing, really nothing new under the sun.

It might happen faster now, but it's always been a method of false apostles. When they cannot, in the minds of those they are talking to, attack the word of God, then they will attack the character, the looks, the delivery, whatever, of those who deliver the truth.

Paul's severe letter initially dealt with this time -tested method of ruining someone's reputation.

And now, in this section of 2 Corinthians, he continues that response.

Any questions or comments about verse six? I just wanna read it again.

He's ready, we're ready to punish all disobedience whenever your obedience is complete.

There is no little corner of disobedience that's acceptable against the gospel. So then

Paul explains some of what's going on. He says, you're looking at things outwardly. You are looking at things as they are outwardly.

If anyone is confident in himself that he is Christ, let him consider this again with himself, that just as he is

Christ, so also are we. Here Paul begins his defense of himself in earnest.

This verse is best translated as an imperative. The translation of the Greek word but can be indicative or imperative.

Every other time Paul uses it in this form, it is translated as an imperative. And so this is a statement.

This is a statement of fact. The Corinthians who are falling prey to the false teachers were only looking at the outward form of things.

He wasn't asking a question. He was stating what they were doing. In his commentary on 2

Corinthians, John MacArthur gives seven characteristics of those false teachers and many of those characteristics can be seen down through time as archetypes of false believers.

Number one, first the false teachers came from outside the church. 2 Corinthians 11 .4

and 10 .14. Paul had been the first to preach the gospel in Corinth. Little was known of their background and the grandiose claims they made about themselves, their qualifications and their authority.

Therefore, their qualifications and their authority therefore could not be verified. As the saying goes, all experts are from out of town.

I heard when an expert is simply someone carrying a briefcase more than 25 miles from home. Second, they claim superior apostolic authority to Paul.

Disclaimer, nobody has superior apostolic authority to Paul and certainly no one today has it.

Certainly no one today has any apostolic authority. Those who saw the

Savior and were commissioned by him personally to deliver the gospel died in the first century.

And we have their bequeathal to us, the epistles in the word of God.

Okay, I'm getting off of the subject. In 2 Corinthians 11 .5, he alluded to those claims.

Sarcastically referring to them as the most eminent apostles. They attempted to support their claims with phony letters of commendation supposedly from the

Jerusalem church, which comes from 2 Corinthians 3 .1 and Acts 15 .24. Third, they were

Jews who claimed to truly represent the religion of the Messiah. They sought to impose

Jewish customs on the Gentiles in the Corinthian assembly. In reality, however, they were guilty of preaching another

Jesus and a different gospel. 2 Corinthians 11 .4. Fourth, they mingled elements of mysticism with Jewish legalism.

They claimed to have a secret higher knowledge which in reality amounted to nothing but empty speculations talked about in the previous verse.

Raised up against the knowledge of God, 2 Corinthians 10 .5. Fifth, they adopted the popular sophistry and rhetoric so highly prized in Greek culture.

Accordingly, they scorned Paul as unskilled in speech. 2

Corinthians 11 .6. Sixth, they were libertines promoting an antinomian ideology that bore the fruit of impurity, immorality, and sensuality in 2

Corinthians 12 .21. It bore that fruit among the Corinthians. And finally, like all false teachers, they were in the ministry for money.

They mocked Paul's teaching as worthless since he did not charge for it, contrasting his humility with their greed.

Paul wrote to, contrasting his humility with their greed, Paul wrote to the Corinthians. He says, or did

I commit a sin in humbling myself so that you might be exalted because I preached the gospel of God to you without charge?

I robbed other churches by taking wages from them to serve you, 2 Corinthians 11 .7 and eight. These false teachers were confident that they were

Christ's. Paul challenges them here in that same way, in the same way that they think that they are owned by Christ, so is

Paul. He has every right to claim the same relationship they are claiming. They had no grounds to challenge his salvation.

Their egotistical claims were designed to put into the Corinthian minds that they were special. And that happens today.

It happens all down through history. When teachers claim they're special rather than claiming they are of the same dust and cloth as everyone else and admonish those whom they are given the responsibility over to search out these things and see if they are so.

If they don't do that, they're not the teachers that God intended for a body. And they claim that Paul was not special.

He was halting in his speech. He was chicken in front of you. He wrote great swelling letters of, and we'll see that here a little later, but he couldn't take it in front of a group.

The claim they could make to be one of Christ was a claim he could also make. Their challenge was empty. All one had to do was look at the amazing story of his life up to this point and compare his teachings to Christ and the

Old Testament. There were many who could testify to his fidelity to the gospel and to the

Lord Jesus Christ. And they were also ministering in the church at that very time, the other apostles.

Peter calls Paul's writings scripture. Paul dealt with the churches that he taught in the same manner that the

Lord Jesus Christ taught him to deal, as a servant, not as lording it over.

And Paul did that faithfully. And we'll close with verse eight, unless there's questions on verse seven, suggestions, ideas.

And then he talks about boasting. For if I, even if I boast somewhat further about our authority which the Lord gave for building you up and not for destroying you, he's countering their claims and he's pointing out what they're doing,

I will not be put to shame. Paul, by virtue of the fact that his authority was given him to him directly by the

Lord Jesus Christ, could have boasted further about that authority. But his claims were limited to dealing with the false teachers.

The false apostles were wielding their authority to the destruction of the church. And Paul calls them out for that in this statement.

Our, my authority by the Lord Jesus Christ through the work of the Holy Spirit in my life was given to me to build the church up.

It's where we get the word economy, which is an entire concept of service and building up, to build the church up.

Properly used, the authority that God gives to a responsible one in the church, a leader in the church is for building up.

It is not for tearing down. Now there may be some need for church discipline in cases, but that discipline will always be wielded according to scripture, according to the dictates of the sufficient word of God.

In any given case, it should not go too far, and it must go far enough.

The false apostles were bringing discord, disunity, and in the word that Paul used, destruction.

Paul had a deep desire to restore that unity, a proper unity that finds accord around the word of God, not around the surmisings of men, not around the teachings of men, but around the properly understood word of God.

When church leadership exercises their authority in a manner that builds themselves up, they are exercising that authority in an unbiblical manner and should be summarily dealt with.

The proper use of the responsibility and authority that God gives to leadership will always result in the edification of individuals in the church and in the church at large.

Remember, God has put the church in this age to deal with the false so that the truth can be given, but it's individuals that are dealt with.

Churches aren't saved, people are saved, and that's a blessed thing.

Those who think in terms of groups and are hampered by that kind of ideology can never bring the gospel to people properly because the gospel is to be brought to individuals, more often than not, one -on -one, but often in a setting like this.

So Paul is going to deal, as I mentioned, he's gonna be going through this next section all the way to the end of this book, defending himself against these false apostles.

And again, we never really have a bill of complaints. We never have a list of their allegations against him, but we can see and we can surmise what they are as we read his responses.

So he's dealing right now with their claims that he is bold by letter, but meek, weak in present.

And we're gonna see more of that as we go on. So those of you who, just looking at verse nine, we won't study it because we're done, but he uses the word terrify.

I don't wanna terrify you by my letters. And so he's gonna respond to another allegation that he was attempting to terrify people, and we'll see how he responds to that.

These are good, good, solid teachings for those who are in positions of responsibility in the church today, how to use any authority that you've been given to build up, to edify, to bless, sometimes to deal in a manner that brings people back into line with the word of God and back into obedience, but always for the purpose of building up and strengthening the unity in the body of Christ.

Let's pray. Father, thank you for your word. Thank you that every single thing that ever needed to come to our attention for living godly lives in Christ Jesus has been carefully and blessedly dealt with in your all -sufficient word.

We look to it for truth. We look to it for correction, for instruction, for reproof, and for training in righteousness that we all might be about the works that you have prepared for us before the beginning of time that will glorify you and bring great glory to your name and to the