WWUTT 1703 Bear With Me in a Little Foolishness (2 Corinthians 11:1-3)

There are a lot of people out there who will say that they believe in Jesus, but when you ask them to define who this Jesus is they believe in, they give you a definition. That's not what we have in Scripture when we understand the text.

Introduction to the True Christ of Scripture

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Here's your teacher, Pastor Gabe. Thank you, Becky. We're jumping into a really sharp chapter today as Paul is going to go hard after the false teachers in Corinth. This is 2 Corinthians chapter 11, and I'm going to read verses 1 through 15 out of the Legacy Standard Bible.

This is the Word of the Lord through the Apostle Paul writing to the church in Corinth. I wish that you would bear with me in a little foolishness, but indeed you are bearing with me. For I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy, for I betrothed you to one husband, so that I might present you as a pure virgin to Christ.

But I fear that, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your minds will be corrupted from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ. For if one comes and preaches another Jesus whom we did not preach, or you receive a different spirit which you did not receive, or a different gospel which you did not accept, you bear this beautifully.

For I consider myself in no way inferior to the most eminent apostles. But even if I am unskilled in word, yet I am not so in knowledge. In fact, in every way we have made this evident to you in all things.

Or did I commit a sin in humbling myself so that you might be exalted because I proclaimed the gospel of God to you without charge? I robbed other churches by taking wages from them to minister to you.

And when I was present with you and was in need, I was not a burden to anyone. For when the brothers came from Macedonia, they fully supplied my need, and in everything I kept and will keep myself from being a burden to you.

As the truth of Christ is in me, this boasting of mine will not be stopped in the regions of Achaia. Why? Because I do not love you? God knows I do. But what I am doing I will continue to do, so that I may cut off opportunity from those who desire an opportunity to be found just as we are in the matter about which they are boasting.

For such men are false apostles, deceitful workers, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ. And no wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. Therefore it is not surprising if his ministers also disguise themselves as ministers of righteousness, whose end will be according to their deeds.

Paul’s Boast and the Shame of False Apostles

So again, this final section that we're looking at here in 2 Corinthians, this is Paul making an impassioned appeal to the members of this church so that they would not go after false teachers, but they would return to the sound word of the gospel that was first proclaimed to them.

This section, this closing section, goes from chapters 10 to 13, and this one here in particular is where Paul really lays it on, really goes after the false teachers and defends his own ministry from those who are attempting to malign him, attempting to say that they're greater than Paul.

So at the start of the chapter in verse 1 here, Paul says, I wish that you would bear with me in a little foolishness. Over the course of this chapter, he's going to lay out those things that he has accomplished.

Now, if you'll remember, as we talked about this earlier in the week, in chapter 10, Paul says that these super apostles, now I've been calling them super apostles because that's the translation I'm used to.

That's in the English Standard Version. This one you'll notice when I got to it, Paul called them most eminent apostles. That's the way that the legacy standard has translated it. But anyway, so these super apostles have come boasting in themselves, right?

They're like walking resumes. They just go down the list of I've done this, this, this, and this. Look how much better I am than Paul. And Paul says we're not going to compare ourselves with them. We came proclaiming to you the truth.

So measure who's right and who's wrong by what the truth is, not a person who boasts in themselves. So down to, this is chapter 10 again, down to verse 12, we do not dare classify 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. So they were claiming to speak the truth since they did it so eloquently. Look at how flashy I am.

Listen to how convincing I am. Look at all this stuff that I've been able to do. And so they're trying to verify their message based on themselves, not on the fact that the message that they spoke was actually true, where Paul is saying what we have comes from God.

So it's not from ourselves. We don't boast in ourselves. We boast in the Lord. That was at the conclusion of chapter 10. So these men boasted in themselves. Paul says we don't boast in ourselves. We boast in the Lord.

But since the Corinthians appear to be persuaded by flashy resumes, in chapter 11 here, Paul is going to lay out his resume. He's going to lay out those things that he has done as an apostle for Jesus Christ.

And he calls this foolish. So previously he said, hey, those guys that are trying to justify themselves in themselves, they're fools. So now he is going to lay out. Okay, fine. You guys are convinced by a person's resume.

I'll lay mine out. Bear with me in a little foolishness. And what Paul is going to lay out here is going to put these guys to shame. So he's doing this, but he's doing it so very humbly, not to exalt himself.

He's doing it because of how much he cares for these Corinthians, how much he cares for these Christians in this church. That's why he's doing it, because he does not want them to be led astray by these false teachers and go to hell.

He's trying to save the souls of these persons from being wooed by the flesh. Listen instead to the gospel of Jesus Christ and those whom Christ has appointed to deliver this message. And, of course, what do we mean by the message of the gospel?

But the news of Christ, the good news of Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but he emptied himself and took on the form of a servant, the likeness of sinful man, and became obedient unto God even to the point of death on a cross.

Therefore God has highly exalted him and given him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

That's the Carmen Christi, the hymn of Christ that we have in Philippians 2, verses 6 -11. The good news of Jesus Christ, God in human flesh, who dwelt among us, who died on the cross for our sins and rose again from the grave, and whoever believes in him will not perish under the judgment of God that we deserve, but we have everlasting life in him.

What is our confidence? What is our commendation? Not our condemnation, our commendation. Our commendation is Christ. So I had asked this question of you yesterday as we finished up chapter 10, where Paul says,.

But he who boasts is to boast in the Lord, for it is not one who commends himself that is approved, but the one whom the Lord commends. How do we know that we are commended before God? Because we have Christ.

And this must be the true Christ. The Christ of the Scriptures. The one foretold in the Old Testament and the one fulfilled in the New Testament. The one who fulfills what was prophesied. The true Christ of the Bible.

Not a different Christ. And there are different Christs out there, right? The Mormon Jesus. Different Jesus. Jehovah's Witness Jesus is a different Jesus. Even the Muslims speak of a Jesus, but it's a different Christ, because they do not believe that he is the Son of God.

So here in chapter 11, Paul is saying what he's saying because he cares for these Corinthians. He does not want them to be led astray by a false gospel, by a false Christ, a message from these false apostles that does not save, but leads to destruction.

Godly Jealousy and the Bride of Christ

So he says, bear with me in a little foolishness. Indeed, you are bearing with me. For I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy. Now, typically we think of jealousy as bad. If you're jealous, you're not supposed to be jealous, right?

But there is a jealousy that is a godly jealousy. And in fact, Jesus says, the Lord says, that he is a jealous God. Consider in the Ten Commandments, in Exodus chapter 20, beginning in verse 4, you shall not make for yourself an idol or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water under the earth.

You shall not worship them or serve them. For I, Yahweh your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and the fourth generations of those who hate me, but showing loving kindness to thousands, to those who love me and keep my commandments.

And if we love God, our passions are not divided. Well, I love God, but I also love this other thing in the world. So, God is not enough to really make me fully satisfied. I have to have this other thing in order to feel fulfilled.

And whatever that other thing is, you've made that your idol. That's your God. Because God was not enough for you, this other thing is the one that completes me. You might try to put percentages on it.

I give 99 of myself to God, so he gets the majority. I just, you know, 1 of myself to this other thing. That's okay, right? Well, then that other thing is the thing that you need for fulfillment. You've really given all of yourself to that little 1%.

It's not that God has most of you and this other thing has the little bit of yourself. You need that other thing in order to be satisfied. There was a sports columnist that I used to read from years ago, and he used to talk about his Baptist upbringing.

You didn't really see any Judeo-Christian ethic come out in his writing, but he every once in a while would reference his Baptist upbringing. And his Baptist upbringing declared to him or taught him that gambling was bad and scantily clad women, so women who were wearing really revealing clothing, pornography was bad.

He decided that he was going to compromise on one of those things. So he's going to decide with his life, gambling is all bad, and he's not going to allow himself to gamble or give himself over to that desire at all.

Gambling's bad, so he was full-on opposed to gambling. He did not gamble, and he would tell other people not to gamble. But the one that he compromised on was scantily clad women, and he would openly talk about this.

It wasn't like I pieced this together from the columns of his that I read. He would say, because of his Baptist upbringing, he's opposed to gambling, but he's all right with these women who are dressed in very revealing clothing.

So he would talk about how good-looking certain cheerleaders were or women in swimsuit editions that certain sports magazines would put out and stuff like that. So he would compromise. Gambling's all bad, but as long as I say gambling's all bad, then I can flex on this other thing, right?

And I can be good with women, ogling at other women that are not my wife. This was a married man with kids, and yet he's ogling at other women and encouraging other people to do so as well. This is a man who has decided that all of God's commands are not good.

They're not good for me. I'll obey some of them, but not all of them. And God helped that man on the Day of Judgment, because he's openly saying to people, it's okay for me to bend this rule a little bit, and I can sin here, and I feel better about myself.

My life feels more complete as long as I can have this other sin. My friends, we cannot bargain with God in this way. This is to make that sin, that fleshly desire, God, so that I can have this thing in order to be satisfied.

God, you and everything that you want for me, everything that is said in your word, that's not enough for me. I don't feel good with that. I have to have this other thing in order to be satisfied. And as long as you keep going back to that, you are exalting that to the place of God.

The Lord says, I am a jealous God. I am not going to share you with anyone or anything. But this is not to oppress you. It's not to make you feel bad or not let you have any fun. God says in Exodus 26, 20 verse 6, I show loving kindness to those who love me and keep my commandments.

Obey the commands of God. Jesus himself repeated this to his own disciples, John 14, 15. You will show me that you love me when you obey my commands. The apostle Paul as well, demonstrating this same godly jealousy for the Corinthians that God demonstrates or God expresses for us.

So Paul says to this church, I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy. I'm not going to share you with a teacher peddling any other kind of word, a false gospel, a false Christ. I'm not going to share you with them.

They will lead to your destruction. The word that Christ has given Paul to give to this church leads to everlasting life. And he cares for these Corinthians too much to listen to anything else that will not be to their glorification.

I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy, he says. I betrothed you to one husband so that I might present you as a pure virgin to Christ. In other words, Paul is saying, we preach one gospel to you.

It's one message. It points to one man, one God man, the Lord Jesus Christ. He is whom you worship. He is whom you honor. And this is the Messiah who has come in fulfillment of the Old Testament scriptures.

And now what he has done, we proclaim to you. And the word of the apostles is the same as the word of Christ. Any other word is not going to lead to your salvation, but to your destruction. So Paul says, I betrothed you to one husband.

By preaching the gospel, believing in the message of Christ, the Corinthians turn from their sin to the Lord Jesus Christ, and they become the bride of Christ. As the church, we are the bride of Christ.

So we are betrothed to one husband, that is Christ. The true Christ of the scriptures. So that, Paul says, I might present you as a pure virgin to Christ. When we read about the wedding feast of the Lamb, or the new Jerusalem coming down as a pure bride out of heaven, we read about in Revelation chapter 20, we are dressed in white, the church being presented to Christ in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing.

Also talked about in Ephesians chapter 5. We are a pure virgin unto Christ. We have been made clean. We've been washed, and have been sanctified, and presented to him in purity, in holiness, wearing his righteousness, white garments, as Jesus calls them, in Revelation chapter 3.

They have been washed white in the blood of the Lamb. So we are presented to Christ as pure virgins, unstained by the world, but cleansed in his righteousness. We are not to be adulterers with the world.

James said, in James chapter 4, you adulterous people, do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore, we must not be aligned with the world. We must not be in fellowship with the world.

We are in fellowship with Christ, putting off the works of darkness, we walk in the light as he is in the light. And then Paul goes on to say in verse 3, but I fear, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, Now again, we're continuing the metaphor of being presented as a pure virgin unto Christ, right?

So the church is being presented as a woman in this particular metaphor. So a pure virgin unto Christ, but I fear that as the serpent deceived Eve, so now we have another woman. The church is to be the bride of Christ.

If we're being deceived by the serpent, then we're behaving as Eve. I fear that as Eve was deceived by the serpent, by his craftiness, your minds will be corrupted from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ.

The Simplicity and Purity of Devotion to Christ

Now, I love that Paul describes that devotion as simple. It really is simple. There's all kinds of complexities to the gospel, but when we first believe it, it's simple. Turn from your sin to Christ, repent, believe in Jesus, confess your sins to him, follow him, and he will forgive you and make you new.

That is a message even a child can understand. Even a child can obey that. To repent and follow Jesus Christ, how beautiful that is. And I do believe even little children, when they understand this message can be saved, that they can repent of their sin and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.

It's simple enough that even a child understands it. It's simple enough that shepherds, tending their flocks in a field by night, understood it when the angels proclaimed it to them. For born to you this day in the city of David is a Savior who is Christ the Lord, and this will be a sign for you.

You will find him wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger. And the shepherds listened and they went and found the Christ child and they rejoiced in God because what the angels had said to them had indeed come true.

Shepherds, tending flocks out in the field, can understand the declaration of the gospel. Anybody can understand this. So it is so simple to understand the purity that we can have in Christ. Now, there's a lot of complexity to it as well, which is why I've given so much of my life studying it and then teaching it to others.

And I'll never get to the end of this. Even the day that the Lord takes me home, there still will have been so much more I could have taught that I never got to. That's the wonderful depth of the Word of God.

And it's not that we're trying to discover things that have never been discovered. I think that pretty much all the teaching that can be done on the Bible has been done, but you're never going to hear it all, right?

So all of that teaching, I mean, there's plenty of books I will not have read and other men that I've not have learned from revealing things to me that I had not yet seen, all in the Holy Spirit, all from the Word of God.

We can spend a life diving into this and never get to the end of it because the knowledge and wisdom of God is just that deep. It's astonishing. We have this book, 750 ,000 words, and even spending a lifetime studying it, you will still never have plunged the depths of everything that you can get to out of this Word.

Jesus said in Matthew 5, heaven and earth will pass away, but my Word will never pass away. Or I take that back, that's, well, in Matthew 5, he says not even a dot or an iota will pass away until all of it is fulfilled.

Mark 13 31 is what I'm thinking of. Yeah, heaven and earth will pass away. My Word will never pass away. We can even go on exploring these things for eternity. Oh, the depths of the riches of the knowledge of God, as Paul says in Romans 11.

And yet how deep it is and how deep we can go and all this deep theology that is here, it's simple right on the surface to be told, repent and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ.

It must be the true Christ though, the Christ of the Bible. And we'll talk about that more as we continue an exploration of this chapter next week. Let's finish with prayer. Heavenly Father, thank you for saving us.

Someone came to us and declared to us the simple and true gospel. And by the power of the Holy Spirit working in our hearts to turn us from sin to Jesus Christ, we have come to faith and we are saved.

And so may we understand the simplicity of this gospel message that we go out to others and preach it to them so they too may turn from sin to Christ and live. Keep it pure for us, God. Not corrupted by the desires we have in the flesh or in the world, not corrupted by anyone's false teaching, but we hold fast to the trustworthy word as taught, giving instruction and sound doctrine and rebuking those who contradict it.

Titus 1 .9. Keep us in the faith this day and deliver us into your kingdom. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

Program Sign-Off and Weekly Schedule

You've been listening to When We Understand the Text with Pastor Gabe Hughes. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, Gabe will be going through a New Testament study. Then on Thursday, we look at an Old Testament book.

On Friday, we take questions from the listeners and viewers. Tomorrow, we'll pick up on an Old Testament study When We Understand the Text.