Paul's Defense - 2 Cor 11: 21-25

Welcome to Adult Sunday School, Kootenai Community Church. We are in 2

Corinthians this week. Jess is teaching in 1 Samuel as we tag team throughout the

Old and New Testament. We will be studying in 2 Corinthians chapter 11 today.

Let's open in prayer. Father, we come before you this morning again, this

Lord's Day to hear from you. Lord, might the teachers this morning be out of the way so that the word of God may come through clearly and forcefully and blessedly, because we know it is through that that you make your people like Christ so that they might be a beacon to the world to draw to the glory of the

Father, to draw people to Christ. Lord, might we be used of you today as we study your word and understand it so that we can honor

Christ in all that we do and all that we say, and in bringing his gospel to the world that needs it so desperately.

And we'll thank you for all you're going to do this morning in Jesus' name, amen. So, let's look at 2

Corinthians chapter 11, and we're gonna read from verse 16 to the end of the chapter. Not that we'll make it that far, but we can pretend.

2 Corinthians 11, 16 through 33. Again, I say, let no one think me foolish, but if you do, receive me even as foolish that I also may boast a little.

That which I am speaking, I am not speaking as the Lord would, but as foolishness. In this confidence of boasting, since many boast according to the flesh,

I will boast also. For you, being so wise, bear with the foolish gladly. For you bear with anyone.

If he enslaves you, if he devours you, if he takes advantage of you, if he exalts himself, if he hits you in the face.

To my shame, I must say that we have been weak by comparison, but in whatever respect anyone else is bold, I speak in foolishness.

I am just as bold myself. Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they

Israelites? So am I. Are they descendants of Abraham? So am I. Are they servants of Christ?

I speak as if insane. I more so, in far more labors, in far more imprisonments, beaten times without number, often in danger of death.

Five times I received from the Jews 39 lashes. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned.

Three times I was shipwrecked. A night and a day I have spent in the deep. I have been on frequent journeys, in dangers from rivers, dangers from robbers, dangers from my countrymen, dangers from the

Gentiles, dangers in the city, dangers in the wilderness, dangers on the sea, dangers among false brethren.

I have been in labor and hardship through many sleepless nights, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure.

Apart from such external things, there is the daily pressure upon me of concern for all the churches. Who is weak without my being weak?

Who is led into sin without my intense concern? If I have to boast, I will boast of what pertains to my weaknesses.

The God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ, he who is blessed forever, knows that I am not lying.

In Damascus, the Ethnarch under Aretas, the king was guarding the city of the Damascenes in order to seize me, and I was let down in a basket through a window in the wall, and so escaped his hands.

So last time I was with you in August, early August, we looked at verse 20, where Paul is talking about the fact that it appears that the

Corinthian church will tolerate people in an improper way, tolerate them when they enslave them, tolerate them when they take advantage of them, tolerate them when they devour them.

We're not to tolerate that kind of thing, is the antithesis of what Paul is getting at here.

If those who have been given spiritual responsibility over a body are doing these kinds of things, they are forsaking the call that God has placed upon their lives, which is to instruct, to teach, to care for, to love, to embrace, to provide for the sheep, to protect the flock, not to devour, not to enslave, not to exalt themselves, and not to, especially, and it looks as if Paul was speaking physically here, literally, to hit in the face.

I'm trying to imagine how that could come about at Kootenai. Nah, it's not happening.

But apparently, in first century Corinth, the Corinthian church was enduring these kinds of things, and they should have known better.

They had had good teaching. They had had the apostles, they had had the likes of Paul and Apollos and others teach them there, and they were following a philosophy of false tolerance.

Do you see that happening today? There is truly nothing new under the sun, nothing.

Nothing new when it comes to human nature. Maybe the way we do it changes from age to age, from generation to generation, but people without the gospel, people without the

Lord, and even some with will do foolish things. So Paul spends a bit of time, as we looked at earlier, in the first part of this chapter, chapter 11, talking to the

Corinthians about the foolishness of boasting, and then saying that if this is how it must be, then

I'm gonna have to work through this medium to get through to you. So that's what he's doing now. For the next several verses and on into chapter 12, he will recite a litany of, it's interesting, he'll recite a litany of what he considers foolish boasting to get to the

Corinthians so that they'll recognize what they have put themselves under. They put themselves under false teachers, and false teachers are the worst.

They're just the worst. They're wolves in sheep's clothing. They're people who come in, who portray themselves as having a concern and a love for the flock, for the church of God, when in reality what they're trying to do is fleece them, enrich themselves, increase their standing, become more well -known, become more famous, et cetera, whatever the false teaching of the day is, and Paul doesn't wanna do that.

It doesn't matter to him all the things that he's done, not truly. What matters to him is that the gospel is preached, and that should be the foremost aim of every teacher of the

Scriptures. And so in verse 21, he says, to my shame, I must say that we have been weak by comparison, but in whatever respect everyone else is bold, anyone else is bold,

I speak in foolishness, he keeps saying that foolish word. He wants to remind them that this is a foolish path they're going down, trusting to the accolades that people make for themselves.

Well, I'm so special. That's what these false teachers were doing. So he says, but in whatever respect anyone else is bold,

I speak in foolishness, I am just as bold myself. Now, we're gonna get a litany of things that Paul has endured here, and many of them we don't read about.

You remember that, I was gonna look it up and I forgot to do it, but in the end of the book of John, John says if everything had ever been written about what had transpired in the life of Jesus, the books would have filled the entire earth.

Remember that? Well, that's pretty much, and that's a wonderful thing, but that's pretty much true of just about anybody if you stop and think about it.

If somebody wrote a book about your life second by second, and they had to describe out every event that happened in your life, say in the 25 years you've been alive,

Lanny, or 50, yeah, it would fill a lot of books, especially with the editorial commentary and explaining what was going on and who was involved and all of those things.

They wouldn't just be saying, well, he did this and, well, he did that. It would be a book much like the Bible or any other, well, there is no other book like the

Bible, but as well as other books of nonfiction that explain the happenings of the day.

So we necessarily, at the hand of Luke, the Dr. Luke who wrote the book of Acts, were given the highlights, the most important things, those things deemed by the

Holy Spirit most effective for us to know in the book of Acts about the history of the founding of the church.

So that to say that Paul is going to retail to us here some things that he endured that we don't read about.

And that's simply because the Holy Spirit deemed those details not necessary in the book of Acts.

So he says, in whatever respect anyone else is bold, I speak in foolishness, I am just as bold myself.

Throughout this entire section, Paul builds up to his defense of his apostolic authority.

He continually uses irony and sarcasm other than that section from verse 13 to 15, where he was very direct, they're false apostles, they're evil men.

Here again, he speaks as though acknowledging what others are saying about him, that by comparison to the self -proclaimed false apostles, he has been weak.

But this final statement, I am just as bold myself, is the preface to his upcoming, if you will, defense of his apostolic authority, which he has plenty of.

He just chose to use it in a different way. He chose to use it to build up, to encourage, to bless, to teach, whereas the false apostles used it to control, to advantage themselves and to devour.

So verse 22 is where he begins his defense. He says, are they Hebrews? And he's gonna ask some questions that have obvious answers.

Are they Hebrews? They were. So am I. Are they Israelites? They were. So am

I. Are they descendants of Abraham? They were. So we know now that this oblique reference, or maybe not oblique, but this reference to what they were doing and what they were saying tells us that they were

Jewish converts, or not converts, I guess I should say. They were Jewish false apostles.

Are they descendants of Abraham? So am I. So here begins Paul's systematic and vigorous defense of his apostolic authority.

He has spent 10 verses making it very clear to the Corinthians that he has an extreme distaste for boasting, and in that it is not the

Lord Jesus Christ's preferred method of dealing with wicked people. Anybody recall Jesus boasting?

And when he said, I am, in John 8, 58, when the

Pharisees said, who do you make yourself? And he said, before Abraham was,

I am. He wasn't boasting, he was simply declaring that he was God in flesh. That was not a boast.

So boasting is not Christ's preferred method, but he must put to rest these false apostle statements from their mouths.

Otherwise, the Corinthians will continue to be led astray and will miss the truth.

Are they Hebrews? He asked, so am I. This is the national designation of the people of God.

Paul was of that national designation. This designation sought to distinguish

Palestinian Jews with Hebrew or Aramaic as their native language from the Hellenistic Jews who were

Greek -speaking of the diaspora, or the scattered Jews. The false apostles probably told those in Corinth that Paul was not authentic because he was from Tarsus and could not speak

Hebrew. His opponents, therefore, were clearly Palestinian Jews with an incredible and false sense of superiority.

The Bible implies that Hebrew was Paul's native language, although like most educated men of his day,

Paul did speak Greek. In Acts chapter 21, verse 40, it says, when he had given him permission,

Paul, standing on the stairs, motioned to the people with his hand, and when there was a great hush, he spoke to them in the

Hebrew dialect. Paul was not saying, he talked to them in Hebrew. And then in Acts chapter 26, verse 14, and when we had all fallen to the ground,

I heard a voice saying to me in the Hebrew dialect, this is when he's explaining to those listening how he was converted.

When the Lord spoke to him out of the heavens, he spoke in Hebrew. Saying to me in the

Hebrew dialect, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads.

Also, he studied under Gamaliel, a famous Hebrew teacher of the day, under whose tutelage

Paul would have studied the Old Testament in Hebrew. So they just lied. That doesn't happen today, fortunately.

Nobody lies today in the news. But it happened then. They just lied.

He probably didn't speak Hebrew. He spoke Hebrew, it was his native language. He studied under Gamaliel, who they studied the

Old Testament in Hebrew. So, that was false. Next statement, are they

Israelites? So am I, declares Paul. This is the theocratic designation of the people of God expressing as well their descent from Jacob, so named

Israel by God. This was specifically a reference to the concept that the

Jews were God's chosen people. Paul emphatically declares that he is a member of that group despite the declarations to the opposite of the false apostles.

Then he says, are they descendants of Abraham? So am I, Paul thunders in reply.

This is a reference to being the heirs of Abraham, those waiting for the coming Messiah, who would be one of them.

This defense is reminiscent of another time that Paul had to defend his Jewish heritage to a

Judaizing bunch. He did so in both the books of Galatians and in Philippians. In Galatians 1, verses 13 and 14, he says, for you have heard of my former manner of life in Judaism, how

I used to persecute the church of God beyond measure and tried to destroy it. You can be certain, let me stop there for a second. You can be certain that the false apostles brought that up in Corinth as well.

Don't you know this guy was killing Christians? He was a murderer. Paul never divorced himself from that information.

As a matter of fact, it was one of his badges of calling from the father, that the father took him from that former life and made him a teacher of the gospel.

How I used to persecute the church of God beyond measure and tried to destroy it. Verse 14, and I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my contemporaries among my countrymen, being more extremely zealous for my ancestral traditions.

He acknowledges that to the Galatians, the Judaizing Galatians. And then in Philippians chapter three, verses four through seven, he says, although I myself might have confidence even in the flesh, if anyone else has a mind to put confidence in the flesh,

I far more, circumcise the eighth day of the nation of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a

Hebrew of Hebrews, as to the law, a Pharisee, as to zeal, a persecutor of the church, as to the righteousness which is in the law, found blameless.

But whatever things were gained to me, these things I have counted as loss, as trash, as rubbish for the sake of Christ.

So thus Paul details his heritage credentials, which the Corinthians should have known about.

They should have known about them. It's interesting that in the wisdom of God through the inspiration of the

Holy Spirit, it is here that we learn more about Paul than we do in almost the book of Acts, in most of the book of Acts, which describes his missionary trips.

In these few verses, we find out much about the difficulties Paul endured in bringing the gospel to the known world of his day.

Now, just because a faithful teacher of the scriptures hasn't endured these kinds of difficulties, as long as they are being faithful to the text of the word of God, as long as they exalt the

Lord Jesus Christ above all else, the Father and the Holy Spirit, they are suitable teachers.

You don't have to have had 14 shipwrecks and been beaten to death, almost beaten to death nine times, and et cetera.

What Paul is doing here is showing the Corinthians that the claims that the false apostles were making about him were untrue.

And by extension, those claims that those false apostles were making were their introduction to their own gospel, which was a false gospel.

Paul had to show that what they were saying was untrue to begin to undo the damage that those false apostles were doing in Corinth by preaching another

Jesus, another gospel, which is no gospel, which is anathema, as Paul said in Galatians.

So, we're gonna learn quite a bit about the difficulties he endured. Any questions or comments about those verses before we move on?

Verse 23, are they servants of Christ? Now, he's been telling the

Corinthians for quite some time now that not only are they not servants of Christ, they are false apostles, pseudopostolos, a word he probably made up that indicates that they are wicked beyond degree.

They are bringing a false gospel. To the teachers of the word of God, there's nothing worse than bringing a false gospel because it undermines the power of God in the lives of his believers, and it undermines the evangelistic efforts that were being made, especially in those days and today, in bringing people to Christ.

So, he says, are they servants of Christ? I speak as if insane. You know they're not servants of Christ. This is an insane statement that they're servants of Christ.

They're not. That's all implicit there. I'm more so, in far more labors, in far more imprisonments, beaten times without number, often in danger of death.

Why would he keep doing this? Every time, he seems like every time he opened his mouth to preach the gospel somewhere, someone was trying to kill him.

Not just calling him names and bad -mouthing him on Facebook, but trying to kill him. So badly that at one time, we're gonna see, he was left for dead.

Everybody thought he was dead. I wonder if his friends saw him laying there in a heap. Well, I'm getting ahead of myself. We'll talk about that in a minute here.

Following quickly upon his heritage, Paul begins a defense of his apostolic authority in an unusual way.

He could have listed the things that God had done through him. Well, I've taught here and I've taught there.

I put the people in Athens in their place and I know what I'm talking about. And I spoke in prestigious institutions and he could have elevated all the things that he had done, great things that he had done.

Here's what he does. He could have listed the things God had done through him. His original persecution of the church, which would validate his

Jewishness, his living among the Jerusalem elite, among other things. But he walks through a litany of historic events that are validated especially by what the

Savior said his followers would endure. Remember what Jesus said. He said, Jesus warned his followers.

He warned you, you've been warned. He said, he told that if they were faithful to him in bringing the word of God to the world, the things that they should expect were the very things that Paul endured and detailed here.

In Matthew chapter 10, verses 16 through 25, we're gonna read that.

This is the Savior's ordination sermon for those of you who have decided to follow him.

Have you sung the song, I Have Decided to Follow Jesus? Okay, and you are, I know you are. Here is your ordination sermon.

Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves. So be shrewd as serpents and innocent as doves, but beware of men, for they will hand you over to the courts and scourge you in their synagogues.

And you will even be brought before governors and kings for my sake as a testimony to them and to the Gentiles. But when they hand you over, do not worry about how or what you are to say, for it will be given you in that hour when you are to say what you are to say.

For it is not you who speak, but it is the spirit of your father who speaks in you. Brothers will betray brother to death, and a father his child, and children will rise up against parents and cause them to be put to death.

You will be hated by all because of my name, but it is the one who has endured to the end who will be saved.

But whatsoever they persecute you, whenever they persecute you in one city, flee to the next. For truly I say to you, you will not finish going through the cities of, you will not finish going through the cities of,

I might have to go to that chapter, I think. Maybe I'll look up here. Of Israel until the

Son of Man comes. A disciple is not above his teacher, nor a slave above his master. It is enough for the disciple that he become like his teacher and the slave like his master.

If they have called the head of the house Beelzebul, how much more will they malign the members of his household?

So, there is your sending off sermon as a follower of Christ.

Some of it specific to the apostles, some of it to the church at large, to believers at large. You will be mistreated.

So Paul expected this. He had studied what the master had said. He expected it.

But quite frankly, we expect it, do we not? To some degree.

But isn't it still a little bit startling when someone you thought was your friend maligns you for the gospel?

It still hurts. And that's okay too. The hurting is not the problem, it's what we do with the hurt.

It's who we go to with the hurt. But so imagine if you will, a confirmation and ordination sermon so being delivered.

Yes, thank you for deciding to take my teaching into the world. Here's what you can expect. You will be sued, you will be beaten, you will be brought before authorities and denounced.

Your brother will betray you, your sister will betray you, your mother will betray you, and your father will betray you. Even your children will betray you.

Nearly everyone you encounter will hate you and will partake in persecuting you. In fact, you may be killed. They will liken you to Satan, even though they probably don't even believe in him.

The truth that you speak will be mischaracterized as gross evil that needs to be dealt with harshly.

There's your sending out sermon. Have a nice day. Go be killed.

But I speak with my tongue in my cheek. The Lord Jesus Christ walks among, is in the world today.

And he uses his church to bring the gospel to the world. So this, but this would also be followed up by this.

Don't worry what you will say, for I will give you the words that will most effectively defend the truth, which will win out in the end. What do we have to, what should we be studying so that we have those words?

I'll get to you in just a minute, Peter. Is there, do we just kind of stand around and say, okay, Lord, speak through me.

Give me some words. Where are his teachings most faithfully, it's an easy question, in the

Bible. That's what our responsibility is. So if we study and spend, study to show ourselves approved, we will not be left wordless in that day.

Peter, through his church.

He is the second person of the Trinity, though. It's not a difficult thing for him to be more than one place at a time, his spirit to be more than one place at a time.

I guess I was equating the Trinity there. So let me speak clearly. Yeah, the

Holy Spirit who indwells believers is in the world today. And by that, we have the word of the Lord Jesus Christ, the spirit of Christ is in the world today.

And through you, through you, and you are his tools, his good tools, if you will, to win the day.

We write, the last chapter says that we win. It's just that there's a lot of battles to go through before that last chapter is going to be written.

So, but this will be followed up by don't worry about what you will say, for I will give you the words that will most effectively defend the truth, which will win out in the end.

Those words, and these are my, this is my little, I wrote this. Those words will be written down by my followers who have been especially inspired by the

Holy Spirit. And these are the words that we will be, that we have been given to use today to convict, that the

Holy Spirit will use as we convey them to convict the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment.

And that will continue until the end, until he comes back. Here's first question.

Are they servants of Christ? Christ uses the word for servants, by the way, that translates in our language as deacon.

This is a person who executes the orders of someone else. He executes the orders of his authorities.

This would be both a badge of honor for Paul, who delighted in executing the orders of his savior, the

Lord Jesus Christ. But it would be a denigration or denigrating to those false apostles who like to consider themselves as their own authority.

They're not executing someone else's orders. They're doing their own thing. And that is a good indication of whether or not someone is a true or a false teacher.

Whose orders are they executing? Who are they responsible to?

Paul was responsible to Christ. If in the past section,

Paul describes boasting as the act of a fool, here he says that calling the false apostles servants is insane.

He uses a far stronger word in the Greek here, which means to be beside himself or to be out of one's mind.

It was a crazy guy. Someone who should be wrapped up in a very nice long arm jacket that's white.

For Paul, this entire situation where he has to defend himself, this entire situation is one of foolishness.

And it is the foolish Corinthians that put themselves into this position so that he has to detail to them the reasons they should follow the

Lord Jesus Christ. He's not telling them to follow him. He's calling them back to Christ. He's calling them back to the

Lord Jesus Christ, not to himself and not the false apostles. He says that he is far more so a servant.

What a way to describe yourself. Here I am, he says, someone who needs the Lord more than anyone else.

I'm a servant. That's what Paul was calling them to be. They all wanted to be, if they were imbibing the teachings of these false apostles, and many of them were, they wanted to be their own master, their own person.

That is not who we are. We are servants, bond slaves of the Lord Jesus Christ. So then he says, in far more labors.

Just what did he mean? Paul was converted somewhere around 36 AD, and he worked tirelessly for the gospel through his death in about 68

AD. He spent 32 years spreading the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ throughout the known world in a time when the average life expectancy was between 28 and 35 years of age.

The average age you lived in first century Palestine, Rome, the known world, was somewhere around 30 years.

And then you died because of disease, because of famine, because of wars, because of whatever.

The world was not a very conducive place to living back then, to living a long life.

Old people were rare, really rare. I would be considered really old back then. How come you're not dead, old man?

And why was the life expectancy so short? Lack of medical facilities, poor sanitation, imperfect access to food and water, brigands and gangs, shipwreck, et cetera.

There was much against living very long in the first century Rome, and yet the father sustained Paul through a litany of abuses and near -death experiences to bring the gospel to the world that should astound people who are looking at his life story.

You just didn't survive these things. And he survived them again and again and again because the father had a plan for him.

Be careful how I use that little term, but you understand what I'm saying. Paul refers to many imprisonments by this time, at this time, but by this time

Acts records only one. Similarly, similarly, Paul speaks of beatings without numbers, but by this time, the book of Acts had also recorded only one.

Paul says that he was often in danger of death, but by this time again, Acts records only the stoning at Lystra.

Clearly, in the same way that John said that the books that could be written about the life of the Lord Jesus would fill the world, so the same is the true of just about any of his servants.

Thus, Luke hit the highlights, those incidents most likely best designed to convey to the readers, you and me, and everybody who's read the book of Acts since the time it was written to the marvels of God's grace.

It would show us the marvels of God's grace. Paul worked to spread the gospel to the point of exhaustion.

He uses the word toil and striving, which is a translation of the word agonizing.

I know mothers understand these terms. They agonize sometimes over their children.

They don't just work. I'm not talking about sweat. I'm talking about that internal turmoil of concern for the children you're rearing, fathers too, but concern for the children that you're rearing that they trust

Christ, that they do the right thing, and Paul is gonna talk about having that concern over the churches. So the words he uses, striving and agonizing, regarding imprisonment, we glean from the book of Acts that Paul spent between five and a half and six years in prison at various times.

Clement, in his first epistle written in 95 AD, says that Paul was imprisoned seven times.

I'll read that to you in a minute. It's not scripture, but it is interesting. It's historically, as far as we know, historically accurate, but it's not scripture.

It's one of the apostolic fathers. In 1 Clement 5 .5, he says, "'By reason of jealousy and strife, "'Paul, by his example, pointed out "'the prize of patient endurance.'

"'After that, he had been seven times in bonds "'and had been driven into exile and had been stoned, "'had preached in the

East and in the West. "'He won the noble renown, which was the reward of his faith. "'What was that noble renown?

"'He was put to death by Caesar, "'and he went to be with the Lord, "'whom he served so faithfully "'all of his 36 years in ministry.

"'The jealousy and strife that Clement mentions "'would have come from his own countrymen "'and often from false converts "'in the churches that he planted.'"

That's the hardest to endure. I mean, when your enemies malign you, you go, well, wait, that's what enemies do.

But when your friends do it, how hard that is. And so the people in the church of Corinth that he had agonized over,

Peter, you're gonna have to help me figure out how to stop that. So the jealousy and strife came mostly, the one that hurt him the most,

I'm sure, came from the churches that he planted, especially the one in Corinth. So then he says in verse 24, "'Five times

I received from the Jews 39 lashes.'" 39? I thought the

Torah said 40 lashes. Well, by this time in his life, Paul had been scourged at least eight times, five by the

Jews and three by the Romans, as mentioned in the next verse. Hebrew law prevented more than 40 lashes for any given offense.

By the way, if the wielder of the whip accidentally hit you 41 times, now he gets the lash.

So they wanted to be very careful not to have someone say, I counted 40, 42, I counted 41.

They wanted to be very careful that that wouldn't happen. In their Pharisaic zeal, the

Jewish leadership made certain they did not even accidentally inflict more than the legal maximum, so they only inflicted 39.

One of the more enterprising and creative whipmasters, if you will, used a whip that had three lashes, and they only hit you 13 times.

And the lash had to go around the back and at least to the navel. Yeah, I mean, they had all these.

The Jewish, the Pharisees had all these extra rules built in, these implementation rules, if you will, for the law.

You know what I'm talking about, Alexandria. Their rules became the law, more important than the original law.

So I looked at some of that. I thought I would share it all, but it's kind of redundant. The basic idea was is that Paul was beaten badly, eight times, very badly, eight times.

Usually, you didn't survive them. Often, you didn't survive these beatings, and he was beaten eight times.

Three times, I was beaten with rods. Once, I was stoned. Three times, I was shipwrecked.

A night and a day I have spent in the deep. Now, we have record of only one of these beatings in Acts.

Let's see if I'm at the right spot here. Yeah. Excuse me, we have record of only one of these beatings with rods in Acts chapter 16.

Acts 16, 22 through 24. The crowd rose up together against them, and the chief magistrates tore their robes off them and proceeded to order them to be beaten with rods.

When they had struck them with many blows, they threw them into prison, commanding the jailer to guard them securely. And he, having received such a command, threw them into the inner prison and fastened their feet in the stock.

So they got beaten badly with hardened sticks, the kind of thing that you would use on large livestock.

And then, they didn't treat their wounds or anything, they threw them into the inner prison into stocks. Acts 16, 37.

But Paul, this is what happened afterwards when the Romans tried to just kind of sweep this under the rug.

But Paul said to them, they have beaten us in public without a trial. Men who are

Romans and have thrown us into prison, and now they are sending us away secretly? No, indeed.

But let them come themselves and bring us out. And it speaks also of it in 1

Thessalonians chapter two. But after we had already suffered and been mistreated in Philippi, as you know, we had the boldness in our

God to speak to you the gospel of God amid much opposition. So he's explaining to the

Corinthians some of the reasons that he should be given credence. And they weren't accolades about his excellence, about his education, about his upbringing, about the things that he had done for Christ.

They were the mistreatments that he had endured. Had those false apostles endured any kind of mistreatment to lie to the

Corinthian church? An attempted stoning occurred in Iconium. By the way, he was attempted to be stoned in Iconium.

Later in Lystra, the Jews came from Iconium in Antioch and stoned him. This attack was so severe, so severe, that the mob thought he was dead and left him there.

Acts chapter 14, verse one. In Iconium, they entered the synagogue of the Jews together and spoke in such a manner that a large number of the people believed, both of Jews and of Greeks.

And then in verse five. And when an attempt was made by both the Gentiles and the Jews with their rulers to mistreat and to stone them, that's the attempted stoning.

Verse chapter 14, verses 19 and 20. But Jews came from Antioch and Iconium and having won over the crowds, they stoned

Paul and dragged him out of the city, supposing him to be dead. But while the disciples stood around him, he got up and entered the city.

The next day, he went away with Barnabas to Derbe. So he was stoned so badly that it appeared that he was dead.

It does say that his disciples stood around. And I don't know what that means. We don't have a lot of detail. They just stood around and looked at him.

Did anybody walk up and check his pulse? I don't know. That'll be an interesting question to ask when we get to heaven.

Regarding the shipwrecks, the only one we have recorded comes much later on his journey to Rome. The night and the day he spent in the deep refers to the time that he must have spent clinging to shipwreckage, at least a full 24 hours.

He must have spent clinging to the wreckage of a ship that sank. Shipwreck was common in ancient times for those who spent much time on the ocean or the seas.

There was an ancient concept that someone who survived many sea voyage must have been under some sort of divine protection.

It was that dangerous. Barclay speaks on the dangers of shipwreck. He speaks about the dangers of shipwreck and traveling by sea in his commentary in 2

Corinthians. He says this, again and again, Paul speaks of the dangers of his travels. It is true that in his time, the roads and the sea were safer than they had ever been.

The Roman roads, interestingly enough, the Lord used those, the Holy Spirit used those to spread the gospel to the far reaches of the known world.

But they were still dangerous. On the whole, the ancient peoples did not relish the sea. How pleasant it is, says

Lucretius, to stand on the shore and watch the poor devils of sailors having a rough time. How nice that must have been to say.

Seneca writes to a friend, you can persuade me into almost anything now, for I was recently persuaded to travel by sea.