2 Corinthians 11:16-33 (Suffering Servants, Jeff Kliewer)

The Costly Faithfulness of William Tyndale and John Bunyan

The 1500s, a man named William Tyndale translated the Bible into English and did so at the cost of his own life. He was put to death, strangled to death, because he translated the Bible into English. But before they killed him for doing it, he told the bishop, there will come a day in the not too distant future, I'm paraphrasing here, where even a plow boy in England will know more of the Word of God than you theologians.

One of Tyndale's plow boys was a man named John Bunyan. About a hundred years later in the 1600s, Bunyan was a tinker, not a plow boy, but he was a tradesman. And as a young man making whatever fixes need to be made, when you're tinkering around the house, you're kind of just doing little things.

Well, a tinker was actually a profession that was able to fix like pots and pans or whatever was needed. So God's tinker, John Bunyan, became a believer in his early 20s and began to preach the gospel in his 30s.

But it was a difficult life even before he became a preacher. When he was only 15 years old, his mom died and his sister also in the same year. And that was particularly difficult for him because Margaret, his little sister, used to go down to the lake with him and they would go swimming.

And she was his best friend. And at age 15, she died. That year, he also had to go to war. Oliver Cromwell had led a kind of a revolution, a civil war in England. And John Bunyan was fighting in that war.

When he was in around age 30, he had a child, his firstborn, named Mary. And sadly, she was born blind. It took a little while for them to realize that she couldn't see, but she was blind. And then they had a few more kids and then his wife died.

So this here is a life of suffering, many difficulties. He was able to remarry and Elizabeth, his new wife, was able to care for this blind girl. But there came a day in the back and forth persuasions of England, wrestling with the Gospel versus the Roman Catholicism that was fighting against the preaching of the Word of God, Sola Scriptura, and the distributing of the Scripture to all the common people.

In that back and forth political movement of England, John Bunyan was caught up in it. He was a preacher and he was told that if he continued to preach, the King Charles said, you will be thrown in jail.

And so they came to his church one day and he was preaching to a small group, 30 or 40 people, and they waited outside the door and arrested him. Now, they told him, Bunyan, if you will promise not to preach, you can go free.

But Bunyan could not promise not to preach. He could not promise not to preach, and yet he had a blind daughter at home. And so the choice became, preach the Gospel or go to prison. And it rested squarely on his shoulders.

He wrote about this feeling in his heart and he said, I saw in this condition, I was a man who was pulling down his house upon the head of his wife and children. Yet thought I, I must do it. I must do it.

He had a fear that he would be hung and his children would have to endure the loss of their dad and his wife would have to endure the loss of her husband. And that thought, he said, wounded him to the quick.

He was not afraid to die. He was afraid to leave a vulnerable family behind that could suffer a similar fate that he did. Yet it was in those years in the prison, choosing to suffer with Christ rather than to enjoy the pleasures of this life for a time.

Suffering with Christ, he was given in a vision, in a dream, the book that has been the second most best-selling book. That's not the right way to say it. The second best-selling book in the history of the world, The Pilgrim's Progress.

He never worked on that book when he was out of jail. There were times when he came out of prison and he was so busy preaching the Gospel, going from town to town, that he no longer worked on writing The Pilgrim's Progress.

But being thrown back in jail a second time, he finished it and eventually had that published and delivered to the world. This is a servant of God. Here's how you know. He's marked by a couple of marks that demonstrate a true servant of God from a pretender and a false servant.

One is that he worked as one who served the king. He toiled with all that he had, continuing on till his dying day at age 60, exhausted from the work, from the wear and tear of prison, traveling in the rain to another preaching event.

He got sick. And for 12 days in the death throes, he had flashbacks to those days with his sister by the river and to seeing Margaret when he got out of prison. And then he died. You know him by his work.

You know him by the risk he was willing to take. When given the choice of the Gospel or comfort, he took Gospel and risked his very life, preaching the Gospel at the risk of his own neck. The same faith that had overtaken Tyndale and Huss and so many martyrs for the cause of Christ was hanging over him his entire preaching career, and yet he would not be silent.

He continued to preach. You knew him by his suffering, by the wounds on his body, and the face at age 40 that looked like an old man, the grayness of hair, because of the suffering that he endured for the sake of the Gospel.

True servants of Christ are not those better at speaking or presenting themselves or boasting, but true servants of Christ are the ones more willing to work and risk and suffer for him. That's the message today from 2 Corinthians 11.

Paul’s Defense of His Ministry in 2 Corinthians

So let's read it from the apostle. We're picking up where we left off last week. 2 Corinthians 11, verse 16. As we find that, remember where we are in the book of 2 Corinthians. The first seven chapters are a defense of Paul's ministry, but he doesn't hit bare knuckle.

He's wearing kid gloves in a sense that he's trying to work with the Corinthians and bring them around to his persuasion, and he teaches them many lessons in the first seven chapters of 2 Corinthians, lessons about ministry, loving well, about maturity, being willing to suffer and suffer well.

And then in chapters eight and nine, having kind of won back their devotion to him and to his ministry, he collects an offering from them. He asks them to give generously to help the poor saints in Jerusalem.

That's chapters eight and nine. And then in chapters 10 to 13, the kid gloves come off, and he realizes the false apostles who have been deceiving the Corinthians are still there, and he takes them to the mat.

Last week, we saw the harsh things he said about them. They are deceitful workmen. They are false apostles. They are like Satan who disguises himself as an angel of light and yet is masquerading and deceiving people.

He calls them out, and he tells the Corinthians not to be led astray to another Jesus or another spirit or to believe another gospel, but to believe the true gospel that he delivered to them. It's where we pick up in verse 16.

I repeat, let no one think me foolish, but even if you do, accept me as a fool, so that I too may boast a little. What I am saying with this boastful confidence, I say not as the Lord would, but as a fool.

Since many boast according to the flesh, I too will boast. For you gladly bear with fools, being wise yourselves. For if you bear it, if someone makes slaves of you or devours you or takes advantage of you or puts on airs or strikes you in the face, you do gladly bear it, he says.

Verse 21, to my shame, I must say, we were too weak for that, but whatever anyone else dares to boast of, I am speaking as a fool, I also dare to boast of that. Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites?

So am I. Are they offspring of Abraham? So am I. Let's stop there and notice what's happening in the text here. It's kind of a strange turn of events, isn't it? Paul the apostle, Paul the humble has begun to boast.

Well, notice this is a rhetorical device that Paul is using and there's a reason why he's doing it. Put yourself in his shoes. He's left this church behind and in his wake have come these false apostles, these false teachers, and with them came wonderful and big and grand stories of visions that they've seen and angels who have visited them.

Many of the false apostles that I talked about last week claim to have seen Jesus face to face. Well, that's hard to compete with, isn't it? They have direct visits from the Lord Jesus Christ, allegedly.

They have dreams and they have visions and they have maybe come from some school that gives them a credential that Paul doesn't have. They've been with the Athenian philosophers down the road and have been schooled and credentialed by the establishment.

So they have this bragging right when they come to Corinth and many people are impressed by that. Their stories sound plausible. They're good storytellers. And so what does Paul do with this? It is okay to use rhetorical devices in our battle against false apostles.

That's what he's doing. He's using language in such a way like a serrated edge to cut to the quick, to bring the Corinthians back to devotion to the pure and true doctrine. So notice what he says. He says, I too will boast.

He is not himself boasting but rather rhetorically matching what the false teachers are saying. He's meeting them head on. There's a context to this boasting. In fact, time and again, notice he calls himself a fool for boasting like this.

He says in verse 20, for you bear it if someone makes slaves of you or devours you or takes advantage of you or puts on airs. So he's picturing them puffed up in their spiritual talk about how great they are or strikes you in the face.

Verse 21, to my shame, I must say, we were too weak for that. But whatever anyone else dares to boast of, I am speaking as a fool. In other words, I'm using a device. He himself does not commend boasting, but he's doing it for a reason.

Not to boast in things about himself, about the visions and the encounters and the wonderful people who have commended his ministry. Maybe some of these other false apostles have been with the king or the emperor and they tell stories about how wonderfully they were received by him.

Paul doesn't care about those credentials. He gives three credentials in verse 23. Earlier he had said, you yourself are my credential. You're my letter of recommendation. The fact that I planted this church Corinth.

But now he mentions his work, his suffering and his risk. Verse 23, are they servants of Christ? And when he says servants of Christ, he means, are they truly belonging to him? Are they actually genuine?

He says, I am a better one. So he's a better servant, not in the sense of, well, they're good servants and I'm better. He's rhetorically meeting their claim to be better than Paul and identifying himself as true.

A better servant in this context is actually belonging to Christ. Are they servants of Christ? I am a better one. I'm talking like a bad man. Don't you love how Paul uses language? He's sharp like that for the gospel.

But he doesn't appeal now to how good looking he is, how formidable his physique is. He doesn't talk about his presentation skills or his eloquence. Earlier he said, I'm not very good at talking. He appeals to what?

Verse 23, far greater labors, far more imprisonments with countless beatings and often near death. How weak he is, how much he's suffered, what he's endured for the sake of the name. So first the suffering in verse 24 and 25, there's a list of things he'll go through here.

Five times I received at the hands of the Jews, the 40 lashes less one. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked. A night and a day I was adrift at sea. So suffering sometimes indicates Christ's favor, not his disfavor.

In our culture, we love to see successful people. The more money, the more power, the more we think they must really have it together. They're admirable. And when we as Christians suffer, we wonder, is God punishing me?

Have I somehow come under his disfavor? Well, the prosperity theologians would say that is in fact the case. If you do good, you will prosper. And they sound a lot like Job's friends in that. Here in our text, suffering can be a mark of God's favor upon the teacher, upon the false, not upon a false teacher, but genuinely commending him.

So what kind of suffering did he endure? These are the countless beatings. He gives a few examples that he can count. Five times I received at the hands of the Jews the 40 lashes, less one. There was a Roman practice when delivering the 40 whips across the back that they would subtract one because this punishment was so severe that people could die from it.

And the executioner did not want to be left open to the charge that he took an extra hit and that's what killed him. It's not meant to be a death penalty, but if someone dies, let's take one away in case there's some miscounting.

39 lashes, 39 stripes across the back. This is a stinging pain. This is a sharp pain. A cat of nine tails, some metal shards or bone in the end of a whip taken across the back removes the flesh, pulling away flesh in each stroke.

It's often to the point of death, but Paul endured it five times. I say that's a miracle that he endured that without infections taking root and taking over his body, that he healed each time and got up again.

Three times I was beaten with rods. This is more of a pulsating, aching kind of pain. Being hit with a rod that could break a bone. I remember one time I was playing basketball after having not played for a long time.

I jumped up to get to catch a rebound. So I was fully extended and someone took an elbow right into my rib. And that pain was so, well, first of all, it knocked the wind out of me. So I crumpled down to the ground and no one saw that I got hit.

So they just thought I was just like totally out of shape and just what is this guy doing out here? But here's the problem with getting hit in the rib. That thing will hurt and ache for months. If you damage some cartilage or maybe a broken rib.

When Paul talks about being beaten with rods, these are the kind of blows that he felt for months. And he endured this three times. And once he endured a wound, which was kind of a combination of the two, a stinging sharp pain and a dull ache.

And that's being stoned and left for dead. That's what he says in verse 25. Once I was stoned. When the stone hits the flesh, it cuts it open and he would have been pummeled by many, many stones. And so bleeding and the sharp pains of those wounds, but also the thud of stones hitting him.

The pulsating and aching pain in his body. Three times I was shipwrecked. This is a different kind of pain. This is the exhaustion of trying to keep your head above water. Many of us have a fear of drowning.

Maybe you've dreamt of drowning and you wake up trying to catch your breath. Paul endured a night and a day at sea. And mind you, this is before Acts 27, where he shipwrecks again. So it was evidently a common thing for Paul when traveling for the ship to go down.

And he would spend a night and a day at sea. Imagine the sufferings that he had endured and yet never died. Prosperity gospel is a horrible lie. Christians who serve the Lord and to the degree that we serve the Lord are often the ones that suffer most.

Now, of course, there are people in our culture who have co-opted that truth and wanting to gain capital from their suffering, identify as a victim or a martyr in every situation in order to gain capital.

And that's by deceit, claiming to be a victim where a person is not and yet the principle is even proven true by that, isn't it? That when someone is willing to suffer for the sake of a cause, you recognize that that cause has great value to them.

They're not just talkers. They're willing to take a beating for this. It commends the teaching. And that's the case with Paul. God allowed him to be struck. Now, Jesus was the one that opened the door for us to understand this.

Cursed is anyone who hangs upon a tree. In the Jewish understanding, for someone to be hung to death was a curse. And yet in Galatians 3, we're told that Jesus became a curse for us, taking the curse off of us and upon himself.

He suffered vicariously in our place. And so the reason for his suffering is not that he sinned, but that he stood in and took the place of us who deserve it. So not all suffering is because of God's discipline upon our lives.

There are reasons that we don't know. Job, of course, discovered that. The most righteous man on earth and blameless in all his ways endured the loss of all 10 of his children and the loss of all of his possessions and his wife telling him to curse God and die and boils breaking out on his body such that he had to scrape them with a pot shirt.

And yet this was to open our eyes to understand that suffering is not necessarily a curse from God. Not necessarily, because the suffering Messiah, Jesus, suffered by the predetermined plan of God. Acts 4, 27 and 28.

There are reasons for suffering. And guys, I know there's many of you that are going through intense sufferings and all of us do from time to time. Don't believe the lie that God is against you, that he's punishing you.

There are times in our lives where God will discipline us as a father to correct something in our lives. But very often, there's spiritual warfare behind the scenes that we know nothing about. There is suffering for the sake of the name that people would see how you suffer and recognize that you suffer well because you suffer with Christ and they will want the Christ that you suffer with.

And so enduring suffering becomes part of your gospel witness. Very often the case for us, this is the case here. Why is God lifting that hedge of protection and letting Paul endure suffering these five times the 40 lashes minus one and the three times beaten with rods and once stoned and left for dead and shipwrecked three times, once a night and a day adrift at sea?

Why would God allow that of the one he commends? Because he's commending the gospel through suffering. So what you're going through has a purpose and I don't know what it is in any given case, but there's many different reasons.

And so the key is not to turn away from your only comfort and help. To whom would you turn? Turn to Christ, draw near to him in suffering and recognize God has a plan for whatever it is you're going through.

Gospel Witness Through Risk and Suffering

Next, we move on to danger. Danger will be referenced eight times in one verse and the point ties back to verse 23, often near death. The idea here is taking risk for the gospel. Now it doesn't mean taking unnecessary risks or doing stupid things just so that you can suffer.

It doesn't mean putting yourself in a harm's way because you want to have the badge of honor that you are now a victim and a martyr, not at all. We take every precaution to try to avoid it, but the point is as we go out for the sake of the name, it's bound to come and this cannot deter us in our gospel journeys.

So the key term here is on frequent journeys, verse 26. So Paul is going out to preach the gospel and with that will entail risk. In danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers.

We must be willing to take risk for the gospel. Risking personal safety for Christ demonstrates our highest love. If we're willing to risk our own personal safety for the sake of the name, we say that this life is not worth more to us than the life to come.

That Christ himself is more valuable than our very lives. Acts 20, 24, Paul says, I do not account my life of any value nor is precious to myself. He's willing to lay down his life for the sake of the name, taking a risk.

In 2 Samuel 23, we have a beautiful story of devotion to a king. David had some mighty men who ran with him and followed him along and they so much valued the king that when David said, oh, how I wish I could get a cup of water from the well that is in Bethlehem.

Because Bethlehem had been overtaken and overrun by Philistines, by an opposing army. Or was it Saul's troops? It was an opposing army. Rich would probably know that. Whatever the reason for Bethlehem being overtaken, they didn't have access to that well.

But you wanna know what his mighty men did? They went in the night and they broke through the ranks and drew water from the well and brought it back to give it to their king. They took a risk like that of their very lives because they valued their king so much to give him a drink of cold water.

And that's why missionaries go. That's why people lay down their lives for the gospel. It's not about glory. No one leaves the American dream behind. To go to a country where you would be hated for the sake of the name and where you will have less and you will not be known.

You might minister and labor in obscurity. You go to bring cold water to King Jesus. That's an offering of your life, pouring out your life for the sake of the name. Somebody took a risk this week from this congregation and posted on Facebook, they wrote a small description of our movie, Sweet Social Justice.

Because in that movie, we commend the gospel. But this movie also allows the Bible to call sin, what sin really is, to identify sin. And so this movie has a politically incorrect overtone. In order to post that movie on Facebook, this person had to count a cost and say, you know what, some of my friends will be offended to see this.

They'll misunderstand. They might dislike me. They might stop talking to me. The gospel is more valuable to me than worldly love. The risks we have to take for the gospel. Paul was willing to do it. Danger, danger, danger, danger, danger.

Yes, we see the warning lights, but we're going anywhere. We're going any way. I forget the name of that island that the missionary went to last year. And everybody told him, man, nobody goes to that island, you will be speared to death if you go there.

That's danger. They don't know Christ, they're going to hell, but leave them because if you go to them,.

They will kill you.

And he said, okay, danger, danger, danger, and I'm going. And he went and he died for the sake of the name. But that's how the gospel has gone for 2 ,000 years, always advancing into new territories by the blood of the martyrs.

And another will go before too long, and another until they hear and believe the good news because we're told this gospel must be preached in all nations, ponta to ethne, every ethnic group, and then the end will come.

So the risk, when you take it, shows what you value. Next, and the last main point, work. Working wholeheartedly for Christ shows heartfelt love for him. Look at verse 27 through 29. These are not attacks from the outside per se.

This is the result of wholehearted work. Being so devoted, he says, in toil and hardships. So what kind of hardships follow here? Through many a sleepless night. That's that mom who's praying at two o 'clock in the morning when your body says sleep, but there's something in you that says, no, pray.

My kid needs to be prayed for right now, and you stay up all night praying for your child. That's a sleepless night for the sake of the kingdom and hunger and thirst. Because on this journey, as you're working, you're hungry.

You're hungry because you're fasting. You're hungry because you don't have time to go and grab lunch because instead, you got into a conversation with your friend and you decided, you know what, this conversation's more important than my lunch.

In hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure, because you're still knocking on a door when it's 40 degrees outside. You're not waiting only for the summer month. And apart from all these other things, every minister understands this, every elder, and all of you who are part of ministry, you understand this.

There is the daily pressure on me of my anxiety for all the churches. Who is weak and I am not weak? Who is made to fall and I am not indignant? Every person who gets into ministry sees someone that they love begin to backslide, begin to fall, and this indignant feeling comes up inside of you that is just more painful than pain.

When you see people, you know they know better, you know that they see the path of life and you want them to walk in that path, but you see them wandering and you know that's gonna lead to destruction if they don't turn back.

This is a burden that we bear when we love people. Now, if we don't love, we don't feel that pain. But to love in ministry means you will suffer in ministry. So suffering here, brothers and sisters, is not a sign of God's disfavor, it's a sign of his pleasure.

Paul boasts in it in the sense of saying, Corinthians, stop looking at who's the best speaker, who is the most talented and impressive and credentialed. Stop looking at that and look at my back because it looks like the back of an alligator.

My skin has been torn so many times and healed over, it looks like scales. And that's my commendation to you. Suffering, work, sleepless nights, taking risk for the sake of the name. This proves a true apostle, not the one who boasts in dreams and visions, not the one who speaks in the most impressive way.

Boasting in Weakness and the Escape from Damascus

So finally, look at the rhetoric that Paul uses kind of to conclude this section. It's not so much rhetoric as just a clear illustration, a clear example that just gets stuck in your mind when you hear it.

Verse 30 and following. If I must boast, I will boast of the things that show my weakness. The God and father of the Lord Jesus, he who is blessed forever knows that I am not lying. Now notice he tells a story that's detailed,.

Descriptive, and interesting.

And I think he's adding this one last suffering, this one last, it wasn't even the most intense thing he suffered. It's not being whipped 40 times, 39 times. It's not being stoned and left for dead, but you can picture this in your mind.

I love how he does this because I think it's a helpful reminder for us that language is important and it is good to learn to use language and give illustrations. Look what it says. He finishes with this.

At Damascus, the governor under King Aretas was guarding the city of Damascus in order to seize me. Can you picture that? The king, we're talking about King Aretas. So he's giving details to say, look, you know, I'm not lying about this.

This is the name of the king. It's King Aretas. He has the whole city on lockdown. They're guarding every gate. They're looking for me. And when they find me, it's death.

But what?

But I was let down in a basket through a window in the wall and escaped his hands. Can't you picture that? This husband and wife Christian family that lives right along the wall. They believe the gospel and Paul sneaks into their house and you can picture this man trying to hold a hundred and eighty pound man and his wife is behind him.

They're hanging on just lowering the rope little by little and then the weight lets loose. Okay, he's on the ground and they're being totally silent. And then he slips off while the guards are still looking.

A deliverance at the hands of the Lord. You'll never forget that story having read that. I just wanted to make a point of this because as Christians who care about other people believing the gospel, learn to use illustrations like this.

I got to speak at the chapel at Baptist Regional School to the elementary kids. I didn't know what to talk about. So I actually called my wife and I said, what should I tell these kids today? And she said, talk to them about how they speak to one another.

Not to tear each other down and make so many jokes, but to build each other up. And I said, boom, that's it. I know that's the Lord. I could just tell that was God's plan. So I'm thinking, well, what's an illustration that I've seen of people misusing their language?

Just tearing people down with their tongues. And I thought of an illustration I had that the day before. I was driving John's car, which is a nice car and I was going through the Chick-fil-A line. I was on the right side.

You know how they have a double lane? And I was on the right and the guy on the left, I guess he was hangry, so to speak. He was so hungry that he was angry. He rammed the car in front of him. And the guy got out and just started berating him, just cutting loose.

His tongue was just filled with the poison of vipers. Got back in his car and left. But now the guy who did the ramming was angry. So he pulled up and gave his order to the Chick-fil-A worker. And the Chick-fil-A worker said, can I have your name for the order?

And he mumbled, Jerry.

Excuse me.

Can I have your name for the order, Jerry?

Excuse me. I can't understand.

My name is Jerry!

He yells at the top of his lungs. So now I've pulled up in front. I'm thinking, please don't let Jerry be behind me in this line. Unfortunately, the next car on the right got in between us. So I had a buffer.

Guard your tongue. This guy had no control of his tongue or his car. So I tell this story to the kids at Baptist Regional. And they, it latches in their brains because somehow that just connects with the way they think.

It's an interesting story, right? I mean, just something strange that happened. But the kids began to make comic books about Hangry Jerry. They talk about it all the time. Hey, Pastor Jeff, guess what?

I wrote a story about Hangry Jerry today. And so they're guarding their tongues and the teachers use that to reinforce the teaching about how important is James 3 to guard your tongue. See, in teaching, in Christian teaching, this is for all you Sunday school teachers.

This is for free. Look for illustrations. Things that can just drive these gospel truths into the minds of the kids and adults. We're all kind of kids at heart when it comes to stories like this. Use language the way Paul does.

I didn't know why. I was looking at this passage thinking he's already listed all of these sufferings. Why does he end with this story? I think he did it just because it's so graphic and vivid and.

Interesting.

To make the point he's making. It's not just a random story. Sometimes I've told stories. I thought later, you know what? I think I just told that to get a laugh, which is not the point. When the gospel truth is illustrated, look for a chance to tell that kind of story.

And that's what Paul does here. And so we close with these kind of big ideas. What are we commending today? One is that language like this is useful. Paul is a master rhetorician. He's boasting, but he's not.

He's mocking their boasting by boasting. And he's using this as a tool to refute them and to show the folly of their boasting. He does that to win the hearts of the Corinthians back to him. To win their affection.

But he doesn't say that the most eloquent or articulate or the funniest or the best storyteller wins the day. No, he says a true Apostle is known by what? Suffering and work and risking your life for the sake of the name.

So you picture John Bunyan and now after all those years of suffering, he sees Margaret. The same one he saw in the death throes, his little sister who died young. It broke his heart. Now they're together in glory.

And he sees his little daughter Mary. He looks on her face. He couldn't see that face in prison for the sake of the name, but he sees her now and she sees him. She saw him for the first time in glory.