WWUTT 1717 It is Necessary to Boast (2 Corinthians 12:1)

When Paul boasted in himself, it sounded quite different than the kind of boasting that you usually hear from people.

Like Paul didn't boast about all of his great accomplishments, he boasted about his weaknesses when we understand the text.

This is When We Understand the Text, a daily Bible study in the Word of Christ. For he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

Tell your friends about our ministry at www .wutt .com. Once again, it's Pastor Gabe.

Thank you, Becky. We come back to our study of 2 Corinthians today, and now we're up to chapter 12.

If you want to open up your Bible and join with me there, I'm going to read verses 1 -10 out of the

Legacy Standard Bible. This is the Word of the Lord. Through the Apostle Paul who wrote to the church in Corinth.

It is necessary to boast, though it is not profitable, but I will go on to visions and revelations of the

Lord. I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago, whether in the body

I do not know or out of the body I do not know, God knows, such a man was caught up to the third heaven.

And I know how such a man, whether in the body or apart from the body

I do not know, God knows, was caught up into paradise and heard inexpressible words which a man is not permitted to speak.

On behalf of such a man I will boast, but on my own behalf

I will not boast, except in weakness. For if I do wish to boast,

I will not be foolish, for I will be speaking the truth. But I refrain from this, so that no one will consider me beyond what he sees in me or hears from me.

Because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, for this reason to keep me from exalting myself, there was given me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me, to keep me from exalting myself.

Concerning this, I pleaded with the Lord three times that it might leave me.

And he has said to me, My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.

Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast in my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me.

Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions and hardships, for the sake of Christ.

For when I am weak, then I am strong. We're going to be looking at these ten verses between today and tomorrow, and it will be tomorrow when

I tell you exactly what is Paul's thorn in the flesh. It's in verse seven when he says that there was a thorn that was given to me in my flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me.

Now many people think that because Paul doesn't say what that thorn is, well, we're just going to have to come up with our own theories as to what it is.

But Paul did say exactly what that thorn in the flesh is. And I will tell you tomorrow.

You'll have to come back to tomorrow's lesson to hear what is Paul's thorn in the flesh.

Well, let's come back to the start of the chapter here. Chapter 12, verse one, where Paul says it is necessary to boast, though it is not profitable.

It's necessary to boast. Remember why it is that Paul is boasting. He has been boasting because the

Corinthians have been listening to boasting. So if that's what it is that's going to convince you, Paul says, then

I'll do a little boasting myself. What is the boasting that the Corinthians have been listening to?

Well, they've been listening to false teachers and those false teachers have been listening or they have been boasting about themselves.

These are teachers that Paul is sarcastically referred to as most eminent apostles because they're super apostles.

They're even greater apostles than Paul is, or at least they've said that about themselves. And some

Corinthians have come to believe it. So since they in their flesh are listening to boasting to win back the

Corinthians to the truth, Paul does some boasting in himself. But the boasting that he does doesn't sound anything like the boasting that these most eminent apostles were doing.

Their boasting where they were boasting about things like how great they were, what kinds of things they had accomplished, their oratory skills.

They had presented these letters of commendation. You know that we're the real deal.

We're the genuine article because look, we have certificates. Paul had addressed that back at the beginning of the letter.

They probably had flashier clothing. They were more charismatic in their delivery.

All the ways that they were connected to all these different people. They probably went on and on about their genealogy, so on and so forth, which was why

Paul said, are they Israelites? So am I. Are they Abraham seeds?

So am I. Are they ministers of Christ? He said back in chapter 11, verse 23,

Paul says, I more so in far more labors, in far more imprisonments, in beatings without number, in frequent danger of death.

Five times I received from the Jews 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 have spent in the deep.

I've been on frequent journeys, dangers from rivers, dangers from robbers, dangers from my own countrymen, dangers from the

Gentiles, dangers in the city, dangers in the desolate places, dangers on the sea, dangers among false brothers.

I have been in labor, in hardship, in many sleepless nights, in starvation and thirst, often hungry and cold and without enough clothing.

And apart from such external things, there is the daily pressure on me of concern for all of the churches.

These are the things that Paul boasted about. The most eminent apostles, well, they boasted in themselves or in their own accomplishments.

Paul boasted in his weaknesses, all of these persecutions that he had endured for the sake of the gospel.

And he said this to the Corinthians to say to them, see how much I have given for you.

These affections that I have for you. The desire that I have for the gospel, because remember that he said, are they ministers of Christ?

I more so. They haven't done any of these things. It is the true apostles of Jesus Christ who have been putting their lives on the line to preach the gospel, to see that these lost souls come to faith in Jesus, to plant these churches, so on and so forth.

All of the risks and dangers that they have gone through for the gospel of Jesus Christ.

This was the kind of boasting that Paul did, and it contrasted greatly with the kind of boasting that the false teachers were doing in themselves.

Look at my accomplishments. Look at what I have done. Look at me. So the focus is always going to be on exalting themselves, not exalting

Christ. They become the focus rather than the gospel becoming the focus. Lot of teachers that are doing that today as well.

You can probably think of a few that are always all about themselves. As John MacArthur has said, beware those teachers who are the heroes of all their own stories.

Most recently, Rick Warren, who gave a bloviating speech from the floor of the

Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting in Anaheim just this last month, it was less than a month ago now, was that annual meeting, and Rick Warren was on the floor to save time.

I don't want to rehash the story of what set all of this up, but Rick Warren was invited to a microphone on the floor of the convention where he gave what he called a love letter to the

Southern Baptist Convention. It really was not a love letter to Southern Baptist. It was a love letter to himself. As he just went on and on and on about his accomplishments, even going all the way back to saying that my great -grandfather was saved by listening to Charles Spurgeon.

He said, I was trained by Billy Graham and did Harvest Crusades and saved so many people for so many years in these crusades that I did, whatever it was that he went on saying.

Then he started laying out his numbers. Southern Baptists love their numbers anyway,

Rick Warren even more so, and he laid out numbers like this. He said that Saddleback Church baptized 56 ,631 new believers.

We sent 26 ,869 missionaries to 197 nations.

We had 78 ,157 new members sign our church covenant.

We have 9 ,173 home Bible studies in 162

California cities, and this was probably his biggest boast of all. We have trained, or I have trained,

I take that back. He says, I have trained 1 .1 million pastors in his 43 years of pastoral ministry at Saddleback.

1 .1 million. That means that he was training over 70 pastors a day, and he said this is more than all of our seminaries combined.

Yeah, you're right. It is. That is so ridiculous a number. There is no way that that's true unless he's going off of like hits on his pastors .com

website. I think it's pastors .com that he owns. But anyway, I mean, is that what it is that he's counting?

He's had this many hits, so that's 1 .1 million pastors that I have trained.

It just went on and on and on about himself. What you did not hear in Rick Warren's speech was anything about Christ, anything about proclaiming the gospel.

He did not humble himself in any way. In fact, there was even this follow up tweet that he did on Twitter after all of that, because of course, people were making fun of his bloviating speech.

So there was this this meme that he posted on Twitter and said that he had been training all these pastors in churches and in huts, oh, in stadiums and in huts.

That's what it was, because he had a picture of himself in a baseball stadium doing one of his big crusades, and he had been training passers, whether it was in stadiums or in huts.

It's interesting that the picture that he posted was of him in a stadium, not in one of these huts, supposedly, that he was in and one of these far off countries training pastors.

He never had any kind of humility in any of this speech whatsoever. And Christ was never exalted.

It was just all about him. There was a good article on Nine Marks that contrasted the speech that Rick Warren gave with the sermon that was delivered.

I think it was the following morning, Wednesday morning or something like that. So it would have been the convention sermon. I can't remember now who it was that preached it, which is probably a good thing, because it's not about the guy who preached it.

But the preacher who did the convention sermon talked about how many small, unnoticeable pastors there are in the

Southern Baptist Convention, pastors of small churches who will never get great thank yous. They will never be on the stage of the convention to deliver great sermons.

They are just faithful pastors of small congregations who continue this work day in and day out, week in and week out, preaching from the

Bible, sharing the gospel, winning souls, baptizing a few, not a massive number, but just a few with faithfulness to the task that has been set before them as to what

God defines of a pastor to do according to what we have in First and Second Timothy and Titus.

So these guys that are humbling themselves and doing this work, they will be called greatest in the kingdom of God.

It was an interesting contrast to hear that being said about these faithful pastors versus this bloviating that Rick Warren did about himself at a microphone in Anaheim.

Man, I hope that guy learned some humility because the day of judgment will not go well for him if he does not.

So you just compare that kind of boasting with the faithful pastor that you've never heard of before, who's just preaching the word of God to the people of God, which by the way,

Rick Warren is not doing. He is not preaching the gospel to people. I have never heard the gospel from Rick Warren.

Now that's not to say that he's never said it. I'm just saying I never hear it. And I've listened to a lot of Rick Warren sermons.

There are pastors that I have heard only one time and I've heard the gospel proclaimed from them. But I've listened to Rick Warren dozens of times and I've never heard him preach the gospel.

What he lays out in his book, The Purpose Driven Life, is not the gospel. So even as he goes on and on and on about these tens of thousands of people that have been transformed by the ministry of Saddleback Church and these 1 .1

million pastors that he has trained, what is he training them in? Because it's not in the teaching of the word of God, he's just constantly twisting the scriptures to say what he wants them to say.

That is Rick Warren's MO. He has not been faithful to this work.

He has been puffing up himself and he will be brought low on the day of judgment if he does not repent of all of this self -exaltation.

And that's not what Paul was doing here. Paul humbled himself before the

Lord. And in what boasting he did do, it was in all of his weaknesses. It was in stuff nobody thinks to boast about.

Oh yeah? Well let me tell you how many times I've been beaten for sharing the gospel of Christ. You know, that's not where people go.

No one was coming to the floor of the Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting to boast about how many times they had been thrown in prison for the gospel.

Now there may be missionaries out there boasting about that kind of a thing. Yeah, that's probably the case.

But that's not generally what wins you a whole lot of attention. The person who is constantly persecuted, you know, we probably look at that person and think of them, well, you did something wrong and that's why you're getting persecuted for that.

If you were just obeying your government, you wouldn't be so beaten up for sharing the gospel.

When James Coates up in Canada was thrown in jail just because he wanted to have his church open during COVID, there were

Christians that were out there blaming him for this and saying he should just be going along with what the

Canadian government tells us to do. In fact, they were rebuking James Coates because he decided to keep his church open.

There were some pastors who were saying, well, now the Canadian government is cracking down harder on all of us because James Coates won't obey.

He won't obey the government and instead he has his church open and he's preaching. And so those preachers were rebuking

James Coates for doing that. We saw this even in America during COVID shutdowns, the

Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, instead of protecting churches rights to go to church and worship, they were telling

Christians, no, you need to obey the government, shut down your church and go home. Jonathan Lehman of Nine Marks was telling churches the same thing and rebuked

John MacArthur when he decided that he wanted to have his church open, that they were not going to go along with what the

California government was saying, but they were going to obey God rather than men. And we've seen this many times, that when a person gets persecuted for doing what

God has said to do, there are Christians, so -called Christians, that will rebuke that Christian in their persecution because if they had just done it right, then you could have saved yourself a whole lot of trouble.

The things that we go through for Christ, like when we are afflicted, when we're oppressed, when we're persecuted, when we're made fun of, those things generally don't get seen as heroic.

As Paul Washer has said, your persecution will not be noble, like the world is going to label you all kinds of things that you are not just because you wanted to do what

Jesus said in the Bible. But he has also said to us in Matthew 5, blessed are you when others revile you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.

Rejoice and be glad, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you. Our reward is great in heaven.

We're not doing this anyway to receive the recognition and the acknowledgement of men. We are doing this for the sake of Christ.

As Paul said at the end of chapter 10, so 2 Corinthians 10, 18, it is not the one who commends himself that is approved, approved by God, but the one whom the

Lord commends. I skipped verse 17. That was that was where I should have started. But he who boasts is to boast in the

Lord. And even this boasting that Paul is doing, it is for the sake of the Corinthians to put their focus back on Christ, not on the things of the flesh, but on heavenly things.

Now in chapter 12, verse one, Paul says it is necessary to boast, though it is not profitable.

Now what does he mean by that? If he's trying to win the Corinthians back to the truth, then why would he say that this boasting is not profitable?

It's not profitable for him. He is not advancing himself by this boasting that he is doing.

He is boasting to point the Corinthians back to Christ and to win them back to the truth.

Boasting is not profitable. If anyone is going to boast in themselves, let them boast in the Lord. And Paul says, but I will go on to visions and revelations of the

Lord, those things that God has shown to him, which he can verify and authenticate.

These are visions, revelations that have come from God. The most eminent apostles were probably also claiming to have received great visions, but they could not authenticate them as being real, for they did not actually come from God in Deuteronomy 13.

And in chapter 18, it is said there in the law that if a prophet or a dreamer of dreams comes in among you and he says that he has been given some word of the

Lord, but that prophecy that he says or that dream does not come to pass, then what he claims did not actually come from God.

You are not to listen to him. And what was supposed to happen to such a false teacher who claimed to have a word of the

Lord that did not really come from the Lord? He was to be put to death. So that was a very dangerous thing to be flirting with extra biblical revelations that did not actually come from God.

But these most eminent apostles were willing to boast in themselves about their great revelations and say what those revelations were, even though those revelations did not come to pass.

Paul was given great revelations, which he does not boast about. And then we'll consider that further tomorrow as we read on here in chapter 12, verses one through 10.

And remember, it's tomorrow that I'm going to reveal to you what is the thorn in Paul's flesh.

Let's see if you can figure it out before then. Heavenly Father, we thank you for this word that has been given to us.

And I pray that we would humble ourselves, recognizing that there's nothing in and of ourselves that we have to boast about.

What we deserve for all of our great accomplishments is death. We deserve the judgment of God because of our sin and lawless rebellion against you.

But you have been gracious toward us and you've given your son Jesus to die on the cross for our sins so that all who believe in him will not perish but have everlasting life.

So let our boasting be in the Lord who has been gracious to us. And may we humble ourselves and show grace to one another.

We ask these things in Jesus' name. Amen. Thank you for listening to When We Understand the

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