His life and ministry glories in His strength and our infirmities

Good morning. So today, very interesting verses that were, and they will be going forward for the next couple of weeks because of this whole idea of Paul going to the third heaven. So we've been watching Paul. We've been watching Paul glorying in what he had no glory in men's eyes at all. In other words, he's glorying in his sufferings. Men don't like to do that.

And then all of a sudden he abruptly turns to being caught up into heaven for a vision of the Lord in paradise. So I thought we could examine today the effect resulting on Christ being glorified. To back up a little bit, in 2 Corinthians verses three and four, Paul says, even if our gospel is veiled, it's veiled to those who are perishing, in whose case the God of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. Is it not now the light that comes down from the top? Think about the hymn we just sang. From the finish of the work to the bottom to get the sinner, to make the sinner conscious of what's going on with him in the light, but not to condemn him. What's that light come down for?

It doesn't demand anything of him. But to conduct him where? Back to the top. Back to where God is in paradise. And one of the guys I read this week asked me, he said, has your heart ever traveled that road from here to here? The light comes down to the bottom where the sinner is to lead him back to the top. It's like a man in a dark forest. He's on the edge of a cliff. And the light shines on his path. And Satan's there, always trying to blind him. Why? So that he would walk off the cliff and tumble down. God's light shines to save the man, to direct him back to the spot from where the glory came.

One of these days I'll figure this thing out. So the light has come to invite us where the Savior is. That light, you know, used to repel us before we were believers. But now it invites us. When you think about what's going on, it's the greatest moral revolution ever. Not merely that our sins are forgiven, but that you and I belong to the glory. We belong there. We're part of that now.

In Luke 23, Luke says, he was saying, Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom. What did the Lord Jesus say back to him? He said, truly, I say to you today, you shall be with me in paradise. And if you look at the verses we're studying today, Paul did not deem himself a stranger in the third heaven. So what's the subject today? The subject really is salvation.

The word salvation a lot of times is misused by believers and it's looked at generally as what I have been saved from. The first hymn we sang today is all about what I've been saved from. While scripture gives us as much information about what we've been saved to. There's a great difference between being occupied with what we are saved from and what we're saved to. If we're occupied with what we're saved from, it's only relief that we're looking for, right? But if we're occupied with what you're saved to, we're occupied with the hope of the gospel, with the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. And you know what's cool about all of this?

Our Lord Jesus Christ isn't satisfied with just getting us out of the misery. He acquired the Father's house so that we can live with Him in it forever. 1 Thessalonians 5, 8-10. who are of the day, be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet, the hope of salvation. For God has not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, and watch this part, that whether we wake or sleep, we should live together with Him. That's His goal. That's what He wants. He died for us. whether we're awake or we're asleep, that we would live together with Him. The whole reason He died was that we might live with Him.

It touches my heart to think about that. I think it touches yours. This word with is a really remarkable word. It means association, to be together with. It's the most assuring thing that whether I'm awake or asleep, I live with the Lord for all eternity, and it's just going to get better. So what does this revelation do? It defines the extent of a position that we all have.

And to be honest, in terms of my life as a Christian, my strength is as I maintain this position in circumstances which are entirely unfavorable to it. There's no personal knowledge of God, but as we count on Him and as we are practically conscious of depending on Him. Dependence is a really important thing for us as believers. Now, if you look at the Apostle Paul as we've been talking, he escapes from Damascus, kind of humbling the way he did it. And that's a great contrast to the way he went to Damascus a few years before that.

He went there with an army of people in triumph, and he was going to round up those Christians, put them in jail. And now he's sneaking out a window in the middle of the night, going his way. Now, think about this. This is a man who's an apostle. He has tremendous power. But what happens when it's time, when they're after him? He sneaks out the window. He's got no other avenue of escape. He is an interesting, he's interesting because he has been subjected and continues to be subjected to really peculiar disciplines.

He goes up to Rome, or he goes up to Jerusalem to see Peter, and he wants to be with all the other believers. But all the disciples were scared to death of him, because the last time they were around him, he was trying to round them up, and he had a reputation. So God calls him to be the master builder of the Gentiles in the church, yet he's got to experience all of these kinds of things himself, and next week we'll spend more time on suffering, which cause other people to hesitate to receive him. Now the Apostle Paul is a totally changed man, and he loves the church. And they aren't sure what they do with him, because they're afraid of him. He preaches a faith which once he obliterated. He speaks boldly in the name of the Lord Jesus, disputing with those who went around to kill him.

In Acts 22.17, is at the next step.

He's in Jerusalem. It happened that on my return to Jerusalem, I was praying in the temple that I fell into a trance. So I thought, well, gee, is the word trance and what he's going to experience here in chapter 12 the same thing? In that trance, he says, I saw the Lord saying, and I saw him saying to me, make haste.

Get out of Jerusalem quickly because they will not accept your testimony. So the word trance is an interesting word. It says a condition in which the ordinary consciousness and the perception of natural circumstances are withheld and the soul is susceptible only to the vision imparted to it by God. That comes from Vine's dictionary.

So God tells him in this trance to get out of Jerusalem. to go away, as far away as possible, and go to the Gentiles, because that's what I want you to do. So, it's interesting that Paul had been more successful as a persecutor than a preacher of the gospel.

How varied and peculiar are the exercises by which the servant is prepared for the Master's use, and we all can attest to that. He escapes from Tarsus, or he escapes from Jerusalem. He goes to Tarsus, where he's from. And he stays there some years. If you look at Galatians 121, he's there for quite a few years, and he's obviously preaching the gospel in Tarsus.

But then Barnabas is sent down from Antioch, who when he came and had seen the grace of God was glad, went to Tarsus to find Paul. And when he had found him, he brought him to Antioch. And it came to pass that a whole year, for a whole year, they assembled themselves with the church and taught many people. And the disciples were first called Christians at Antioch.

So Paul's in Antioch for a whole year. And he is working, working with Barnabas. Now watch what happens next. So in Acts 13, it's a really important time in the history of the servant of the Lord because Paul is glorying in what no man glories in in his eyes. We find in chapter 13 that the church in Antioch was a really vibrant church. But watch what happens.

Now there were at Antioch in the church that there was their prophets and teachers. Barnabas, Simeon, who were called Niger, and Lucius of Cyrene, and Mannion, who had been brought up with Herod the Tetrarch and Saul. While they were ministering to the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, Set apart to me, for me, Barnabas and Saul, for the work which I have called them. And then when they had fasted, and prayed, they laid their hands on them and they sent them on their way. I want you to notice two things here.

Where did the orders come from for Paul's first mercenary journey? And where were they delivered? It's interesting they weren't delivered at headquarters or any place else. They were delivered in the local church where Paul was. And I think it's important for us to understand that because This body of believers, like every body of believers, the Holy Spirit runs this church, and He's the one that directs people, and He's the one that sets people for ministry and trains them in the local body of believers.

I can't find in Scripture, and even less and less as I go on, the need for some controlling board to give us direction. When we were in Italy, that was a fascinating thing about the Catholic Church. They have centralized power into the Pope and the Vatican, and they make all the decisions. But that isn't the way the Lord set up the Church. You won't see missionaries going out from local cathedral because the Holy Spirit called them. They've got to get their orders from the Pope. It's supposed that now, following on his being sent forth by the Holy Spirit in the church, that this rapture happened. And you notice it's 14 years before.

That right in this time is when most of the guys I've read think it happened. It's a confirmation with authority is difficult, but tallies with the time frame given in 2 Corinthians 12. So, it's deeply interesting that these servants, especially Paul, should receive the Lord's direction in the local church, which I just said, in the house of God, to be openly called upon by the Holy Spirit to enter into this work, a moment surely that he could never forget during all the service that he did. Now if you turn to 2 Corinthians 12, which are the verses that we're going to talk about today, what I did, I'm one of those guys that I research and research and research and see what people do to explain what the verses say and whether they do a good job or not.

And I don't want to modify what they have to say. So my research landed in Hal Molloy's lap. So we're going to go through about eight of his slides, specific on these verses, which I think do as good a job as anything, anybody does, of explaining what's going on. And obviously they're his slides, so they're kind of like this. So I'll try to stay ahead of it.

So he says in verse one, but I will go on to visions and revelations. This is after he was talking about the fact that he's not going to compete with other false apostles when it comes to bragging, because the only thing he's got to brag about is suffering, and they don't. They don't. And so he says in verse two, I will go on to visions and revelations.

These false apostles were actually, as we've talked about in weeks past, they were servants of Satan. And so, Hal asks the questions, why does Paul bring up visions in Revelation? He brings it up because these false apostles were claiming that they had the same thing. Gee, that's all gone away. Nobody claims that anymore, do they? turn on the Christian channels and see whether they claim this or not.

And so they were deceitful, they were corrupt, and they would claim that they had spoken to the Lord. So the Lord often communicated with Paul in visions and revelations that we were just talking about. Hal lists the visions of the glory of Christ on the road to Damascus. Imagine that happening to you and me.

A vision from the man that said, come over to Macedonia, Acts 16.9.

A vision where the Lord says, speak to these at Corinth in Acts 22.17.

And a vision that Paul and passengers would be saved from shipwreck. Remember when he's going to Rome and there's a big storm and everybody's sweating, the ship's going down. He said, no, the Lord told me that we're going to make it so you can trust him. Another time I thought about was when he was in Caesarea in jail. The Lord came to him and said, look, you're going to make it to Rome. I know it doesn't seem like that, but I told you you're going to go to Rome. So have confidence. You'll make it to Rome. Revelations. He received the gospel by revelation. And what a gospel he received.

He goes up to Jerusalem by revelation, Galatians 2.2. The mystery of the church is given to him by revelation, and we've talked about this before.

If you take Paul's epistles out of the Bible, what do you miss? You miss the church, the body of Christ, grace, identification, position, condition, all that goes away. The only place you can get that is by revelation. So, the mystery of the church and the Lord's Table. Every month we celebrate the Lord's Table.

How does it start? I received this directly from the Lord. In other words, He didn't have an email from the apostles in Jerusalem on how to do this. He received it. So Paul says, I'm going to go on and I'm going to share with you the visions and revelations of the Lord that I have never shared before. Those when I was in paradise. Because we talk about, like Jim said, well, gee, what did he have to say about going to paradise? Well, he had a lot to say from visions and from revelations. He talked about all of the other ones. He talked about them all the time. The church is built on these revelations.

So, rather than click them down like Hal would have done, he says, I knew a man in Christ who fourteen years ago, whether in the body I do not know, or out of the body I don't know, who knows, such a man was caught up into the third heaven. And I know how such a man, whether in the body or apart from the body, I don't know, God knows. So Hal asks three questions here. The first one is, who is this man in Christ that Paul knows or knew?

Well, he says that the knowledge here is factual knowledge. It's in the perfect tense. He knows him now and had abiding results, has known him in the past. And it's indicative mood, which is whose life is it? It's Paul. This man doesn't appear to be Paul if you just look at two through five. However, in six and seven, it's got to be Paul. It can't be anybody other than him. So why did Paul refer to himself as the third party?

He says it's possible that Paul was distinguishing between his glorified state and his earthly state of infirmity. and his weakness in the flesh, 1 John 3.2. Lastly, he says, what was happening to Paul's life 14 years ago? I just kind of went through all of that. And the timing was impeccable.

Seven to nine years after his conversion, you know, I figure, I remember one time when I was a young Christian, I called up Miles Stanford on the phone. I said, Miles, how long does it take to grow spiritually? And he chuckled. And I said, no, I'm serious about this because I've been a Christian a few weeks and I ought to be mature by now. No. And he said, well, he says, it takes 20 years before you really begin to understand. And that's assuming that you got good teaching. Oh, man, I thought. So I shared with my buddy Bob, I said, you know, Miles says it's going to be 20 years before we spiritually mature. And he said, well, in my case, it won't matter because I'll be gone by then. So it takes a while.

And you watch Paul and the dealings of the Holy Spirit with the Apostle Paul to get him ready to go to Antioch, probably 10-12 years before he gets the call to go on a missionary journey, which is what he was really being suited out for. So his first missionary journey, approximately 44 AD, how did that work out for him? They really received him well, didn't they? They stoned him at Lystra. They left him for dead.

A possibility, but not a certainty. So, when we're talking about this man, the question is, what is it to be in or out of the body? And I thought a lot about this today and this week. In the body, the soul and spirit resides in your body, right? Are you aware all the time of your body? All the time. Romans says that you take care of your body like you take care of your flesh. It's the most important thing to you. So what would out of the body be? Does the spirit and soul, can it function and live outside the body? Answer, yeah.

Imagine that Paul knows that there was, he says, Whether in the body or I do not know, or whether out of the body, I don't know. Why doesn't he know? The reason is, is that the vision being taken up into the third heaven is so magnetic that he's totally forgotten he's even got a body. He doesn't even care. The normal man would say, oh gee, my body's important. Not in this case. Not in this case. So Hell says, why didn't Paul know?

Think about Paul and the environment which he's in. Paul is beholding the glorified Lord. He's fellowshipping and he's near to Christ. And you know what else? He knows he's at home there. He knows this is not a weird place for him to be. He's suited out to be there. And it's called the third heaven. He's listening to unspeakable words. Hal calls them heavenly talk. Well, I don't know what language heavenly talk is other than his word. So the next question is, do you think that in this state of nearness and glorious fellowship with Christ in one's eternal home, that there could be any thought or focus on self. You know what's a great thing about being in the glory of paradise? There's no self there. None. It's such a privilege not to think. I mean, if you go 10 minutes in your day and you haven't thought about yourself, you think, oh, gee, that was cool.

But imagine, Paul is totally absorbed with the Lord Jesus Christ. Do you think that the state of nearness and gracious fellowship with Christ in one's eternal home, there could be any talk itself? No. Answer, no. The Lord Jesus is so attractive that He takes up all your interest, all of it. So the state of the soul, of his soul and spirit, was not important.

I'm sorry, of soul and spirit and the fact that they maybe were in the same body and it was not important to them. So, the last question, can we experience this nearness and glorious fellowship with Christ here? You ever entertain that question? You ever think about it? Can I do that? Can I as a believer actually do what Paul did? I think he can. Let me tell you how I think he can do it.

2 Corinthians 3.18 says that we behold as in a mirror, reflectively, the glory of the Lord.

The mirror is God's Word. It reflects God's glory and it has an effect on us. It transforms us into His image from glory to glory. So when you read your Bible today, tomorrow, every day this week, Think about it from that perspective rather than cramming your head full of facts so you can answer the questions on Sunday. Think about what's happening there. That Word is designed for us to behold the glory of the glorified Christ.

That's why we have it. It's important to Him that we be with Him where He is and, oh by the way, that we recognize where we are and we certainly recognize who the Lord Jesus is. So, yeah, can we experience John 17, 21, 1 John 1, 4? Hal said, go read The Hungry Heart, 7, 2. Okay. I didn't read it. I knew a man. Then he said, God knows such a man was caught up into the third heaven, and I know such a man, whether in the body or apart from the body, I don't know. God knows. It's a factual statement. Whether Paul was in and out of the body, God is in. He said, well, God knows, but I don't have any idea. And caught. Snatched away. The same word is used when we all get snatched away in the rapture. It's going to happen this fast, and we're going to be face to face with the Lord Jesus snatched away quickly. Third heaven. I don't need to explain what the third heaven is. The first heaven is where the birds fly, where jets fly. The second heaven is where the stars and the planets are. But the third heaven is where God lives.

It's paradise. When he told the thief on the cross, today you're going to be with me in paradise, that's where he meant. And be with me was the most important part of that statement. The tree of life is in the midst of the paradise of God. John is the only apostle who was caught up into the third heaven, but he was allowed to write down what he saw. We spent a lot of time this last year studying Revelation. It's really interesting. Because some of it just makes huge sense, and others is, well, you know, from chapter 5 on, it's pretty ugly until the Lord shows up in glory. But John was allowed to tell about the things he saw. Hal says Paul wasn't. Why wasn't he? Because he couldn't explain it.

Maybe say it this way. We went to Italy. I don't understand Italian. When I'm talking, I've got this translator. Oh yeah, I'll have beans and potatoes. There's a language that is specific to the glory of God. And if I knew the language, I could say it to you, you would not understand it. There's a whole language that goes with glory. And that language, Paul, was there receiving, but he couldn't say it.

Because how would you say it? I mean, you know as well as I do sometimes now, you try to explain something about the glory of Christ to someone, and it's like you're talking to them in Latin. They don't get it. We studied this morning in Sunday school, inspiration, revelation, that God's Word is shownness, what it means by the Holy Spirit.

So, words. That's the word rhema rather than the word logos, which has been uttered in the living voice, things spoken as specific words. So, it isn't, it's oral, and he wasn't permitted to speak. Well, I'm not sure that permission was the issue as much as the capacity or the power to speak the language.

If you saw the Lord this afternoon in all His glory like Paul saw Him on the road to Damascus, how would you describe that? What words would you use? Our vocabulary is so limited in terms of explaining what the glory of God is. And even Paul, when you see this vision he had on the road to Damascus, I mean, the most you know is he goes to the ground. And the first word out of his mouth is Lord. And go into town and he's blinded. He can't explain what he saw other than he knows it's God. And he knows it's the glory of God that he's seeing. And it totally transforms him. I don't think that, you know, Hal says that Paul had not the power adequately to use words, nor if he had, he wouldn't have been permitted to do it. Nor would earthly men comprehend it. Only a heavenly man can comprehend heavenly language. The closest thing we have to that is God's Word. For us to spend time in God's Word, the Holy Spirit reveals to us what He means.

And sometimes it takes a while for what I have received, you have received from the Holy Spirit, to actually articulate it. Ever had that happen to you? Where the Spirit of God shows you something in the Word, and right away, like I go to Donna and say, Donna, listen to this. And she looks at me like, what are you talking about? It takes time to get the words to explain what you've seen and what you know.

So, in his life and ministry, he glories in his infirmities and not his strength. On the left side, he says, on behalf to act in one's place of such a man, Paul, in glorified state, will glory. Why? Because he's suffering. On the right side, On behalf of myself, Paul in earthly state would not glory.

He wouldn't brag, except for one exception. He would brag about his weaknesses. It's interesting, I think, that if you see the glory of God, self-strength doesn't fit there. Weakness is the appropriate environment to be in. So he says in verse 5, on behalf of such a man I won't boast or glory in, but on my own behalf I will not boast or glory except in regard to my weakness. Observations here, Paul's revelation and experience were of untold and indescribable blessedness.

There's no question about that. While in the light of it, Everything is for Him. But when He comes back, as we're going to find out next week, everything's against Him. Everything is against Him. The things without false teachers, persecution, trials, suffering, that's where He lives. The things within, the care for the churches, and the believers who have fallen from grace, and we talked about that last week. Question, should we expect anything different? If we're seated above, beholding Christ there, everything is for us. But here, everything's against us. The old man, the sinful nature is against us. The world is against us. Satan is against us. So, glorifying God, we can glory God for our position there, and we can glorify God for our weakness here.

So, verse 6, for if I do wish to boast or glory, I shall not be foolish, for I shall be speaking the truth, but I refrain from this, so that no one may credit me with more than he sees in me or hears from me." If then is a third class conditional sentence, which means it's probably in the future going to be true. If I desire to glory, if it hasn't happened yet, but it probably is going to happen, and when it does, then I shall not be foolish about what I'm bragging about.

I won't brag about men. I won't glory in man. I'm not to glory in myself except for my weakness. I'll only glory in the Lord. I'll speak the truth since it will focus on God's glory and Christ in glory. The focus of my glory will not be on me, so nobody may from a higher estimate have a higher estimate of me. who they see through me as I abide in Him, and hear the message He has given me." That's the end of Hal's slides, which I really thought were as good as I have seen that describe this. So, to sum up now, we've been talking about the plain testimony that the Lord is that we are not ashamed of it. We're not ashamed of the glory. In 2 Corinthians 12, we are learning to deal with Christ on entirely new ground. The new ground is a glory. A man in Christ is taken to a new sphere, Paul the Apostle. He doesn't even know whether he's in his body or not. He sustained there without knowing how he was sustained.

So now we recognize you and I are united to this man there in heaven. And heaven is the place where we belong. Even though we're still in these bodies on the earth, We really are not in any way connected with this earth. We're united to the man in heaven so that we may know that all of our thoughts and joys and expectations are in another sense altogether. A scene that is totally foreign to our birth and condition on the earth. It doesn't mean we're without associations here, because we aren't. But we need to ignore that man, Adam, who is here and the place he's in.

So Paul, and to sum up these verses, Paul is speaking of a fact that happened to him. Here he has to do only with the man in heaven, the Lord Jesus Christ. So it's not only that I have to do with my Savior who's not here, but I do know where my Savior is. And that's why Paul was taken to heaven. And that's why you and I have our Word. And that's why someday we will go there, because that's our home.

So to understand what we've been saved to, is way more important than what we've been saved from. We've been saved to this glorious man in Christ, the Lord Jesus Christ in the heavenlies. And if you go there, you won't even worry about whether you're in the body or not. Less close. Father, how we thank you. We thank you for the Apostle Paul and the events that you gave him so that we might behold through him what it is to be in heavenly places in your dear son. And we pray in his name. Amen.