He whom the Lord commends
2 Corinthians 10 · Vern Peterman · Aug 15, 2010
1 & 2 Corinthians, No. 59
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/492621314808

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Good morning. We have some busy and exciting times going on, don't we? We have some, I just noticed we've got some visitors here, so make sure that you introduce yourself to them if they're around you or you cross paths with them. We also have, let's see, I think next Sunday is Hassan's last Sunday with this. And I understand you taught in the elective before, but you didn't get done, right? So you have more to do. Okay, all right. At any rate, make sure you take advantage of that opportunity before he heads back, before he learns the meaning of eternity again when he goes on the planes and the airports and the planes and the airports.

So anyway, and we can certainly be praying for him. We're going to be finishing up the book of 2 Corinthians, Lord willing, in the middle of October. And I just want to say, kind of coming up in this book, we've got some interesting topics. We've got a passage here coming up next Sunday that talks about another Jesus, a different spirit in a different gospel. Hmm, what's that about?

Well, find out. False apostles, deceitful workers, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ. That's in there too. And also, a man was caught up to the third heaven, into paradise, and heard inexpressible words. We'll take a look at that. And not only that, we'll talk about a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me. What is that about? Well, you'll have to find out.

Okay, let's take a look at today's passage. Randy read the last, oh, approximately a third of it. It's 2 Corinthians 10, 1 through 18. And especially, at least for this introductory part, we'll be looking at the second verse where he talks about what seems to be the issue that he's addressing here. For the last two chapters, we've been talking about what the Apostle Paul had written to the church at Corinth about financial giving in the body of Christ. But now as we turn here to chapter 10, he's turning to some others in the church, a particular group apparently. that seem to be setting aside what Paul says by accusing Paul of walking in the flesh.

Oh, Paul's just walking in the flesh. We don't need to pay any attention to him. Of course, where would he get that? Where would they get that? He had told them, 1 Corinthians 3, that many of them were walking in the flesh. So they throw it back at him.

What do we mean by walking in the flesh? It means living in chronic dependence upon the sin nature, instead of walking in Spirit, walking by means of the Spirit. Abiding in Christ, or resting in Him, or beholding the Lord, as opposed to walking in the flesh.

He starts off in verse 1, he says, What's interesting is Paul said that in a number of different instances. We have the other instances in the New Testament listed here and also on the handout on page 1. Paul wrote in 2 Thessalonians 3.17, I, Paul, write this greeting with my own hand. Paul would often dictate a letter and then finish off some portion of it in his own hand. And that's apparently what he's doing here in 2 Corinthians. Now, most of the time, as you examine those different passages, the pattern seems to be this. He wants his readers to understand, yes, it is indeed him. It's not just some sort of a ghost writer, not somebody pretending to be him. It is actually him.

In 1 Corinthians 4.1, it says, he wrote, let a man regard us. And by the way, that let doesn't mean allow. It means a man must regard us in this manner, as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God.

So Paul would write very specifically, and when he said, I Paul, he wanted to make real clear that they understood it's really me, Paul, and that you recognize the authority that I've been given. It wasn't that Paul was into Paul. He was most certainly into Christ. But he wanted them to understand that he had been specifically given an authority by the Lord Jesus Christ to carry out what he was doing.

Some of them there in the church at Corinth were still fleshly and had not seen, had not come to recognize, even as Paul had said in 1 Corinthians 4, that Paul was a steward of the mysteries of God. He was doing a godly work, not a fleshly work. He was there, unlike apparently some of them in Corinth, he was there to draw their attention to the Lord, and not to carry out his own agenda.

In 1 Corinthians 3, he had told them, And I, brethren, could not speak to you as a spiritual man, but as to men of flesh, as to infants in Christ. I gave you milk to drink, not solid food, for you are not yet able to receive it. Indeed, even now you are not yet able, for you are still fleshly. For since there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not fleshly, and are you not walking like mere men, not walking around differently than anybody else, even though you are saved and have an entirely different character, an entirely different destiny?

In 1 Corinthians 4.1, let a man regard us in this manner as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God.

They weren't doing that. They weren't recognizing it. So Paul writes, I Paul myself urge you. Now, Paul could have come across with the full authority of an apostle and just simply commanded them, you guys need to do this. You need to stop doing that. He could have come across like that, couldn't he? He could have simply ordered them to do this and that. He had that authority. But that's not how he did it.

He comes instead alongside them. That's what this word urge means. It means to call alongside or come alongside. He urges them and notice he doesn't just say, I urge you to do this or that. He urges them by something, which as we'll soon see is a pattern that he often used, by the meekness and gentleness of Christ.

He did not want to have to deal with them when he came personally. He says, I urge you respond to what I am writing right now so that when I come, I don't have to come in some more aggressive spirit and deal with the problem. You guys need to deal with it so that I don't have to.

In Romans 12.1, he did a similar kind of thing where he said, Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God. It's interesting that when he urges and exhorts, he often calls upon the Lord or the Lord's character.

Romans 15.30, later in the same book, Now I urge you, brethren, by our Lord Jesus Christ and by the love of the Spirit. Why does he have these urgings that are by something or someone else? What he's calling in there is by the character of the Lord, by the person of the Lord, by the work of the Holy Spirit. The urging is not simply Paul saying it. It's not simply Paul out of his own authority. But it's because of the power and influence and changed nature that they have, because they believe, can call upon these things.

1 Corinthians 1.10, he had written this same church body. Now I exhort you, brethren, those who are fellow believers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

In verses 3-5, an interesting passage, he comes up with some word pictures there. about the destruction of fortresses. Now when he talks there, he's not talking about that he lives or orders his life, that he patterns his life in dependence upon the sin nature, but rather what he's talking about there is that he does spiritual battle to spiritual ends. One of the things that Hassan and I have talked about as we've gone through some of the various study tools is talked about how Paul would draw upon the battle scene for varying comparisons to the spiritual battle that we're in.

And this is one of those. This very passage runs parallel, of course, to Ephesians 6, 10 through 18, where he urged them repeatedly to stand firm. And he talked about the weapons of warfare. In this case, he's not talking about the weapons, but about the tactics.

He is assuming the weapons, and these are weapons that he himself and those with him will use, if they have to, to come to the church at Corinth. He's speaking in rather bold terms, somewhat similar to the way Christ talks to the church, some of the churches anyway, in Revelation chapters 2 and 3.

Paul is referring to standing against the strongholds, now brace yourself for this one, strongholds of evil that remain in the Corinthian church. This passage about destruction of fortresses and tearing down strongholds and things of that sort is sometimes looked upon as some sort of an authorization to go out and pursue aggressive spiritual warfare. You know, things like binding Satan. I don't know who keeps letting him loose, but binding Satan, things about rebuking the devil and things of that sort.

What he's talking about here is entrenched resistance inside the church. That's the fortress that he's talking about dealing with. He says, if we have to, we'll do that. He says, that's not what I prefer to do, but if we have to, we will. It's an entrenched area of evil and resistance that's within the church body. That's what he's talking about. So how is he going to deal with it?

Truth. What an amazing thing. What a tactic. If they don't finally get it, if they don't finally understand the perspective that they need to have, the understanding that they need to come to, then Paul will use the truth to combat the groundless speculations, the misinformation that's been springing from their immaturity, to take down this false fortress, something that does not belong.

That's why you would take it down. It doesn't belong here, not in the church body. That's why he would approach it that way. It's not what he's hoping to do, but he's willing to do. The reason he's hoping that they'll listen is he wants them, by the meekness and gentleness of Christ, to come to their spiritual senses. What they were doing was spiritually nuts. It was crazy. He wanted them to see the truth for what it is. He was truly God's apostle. He was most specifically and absolutely appointed by Christ. They needed to realize it.

They needed to respond to what he was saying instead of coming up with counterclaims and acting in the immature way that they were. One of the things that becomes clear as we look at verse 6, believers are to stand on the truth together in, as Paul put it to the church at Ephesus, in the unity of the faith. He wanted the believers to stand together, so he wasn't just writing to those people who were this stronghold, but he was also writing to all the believers. They needed to stand together and to deal with this.

When he came, yes, he would deal with it if he had to, but better if he didn't have to. Better if they recognized the need to deal with it as a church body. They needed to stand for the unity of the faith, whether Paul was absent or was present. But better before he came. They needed to respond to what he wrote, rather than wait until he had to tell them face to face.

Now, one of the things that's clear is scripture spells out in multiple instances. We've seen it in both first and we'll see it in second Corinthians. Reference to the faith. It starts as early as Acts chapter six, the singular teaching of the apostles.

You know that God doesn't want us to have a whole bunch of different ideas about what the Bible means. That's not his intent. Yeah, God does not want us to have a whole bunch of different ideas about what His intent was. The unity of the faith, singular. Believers are to stand together for the truth, just as He was urging them to do, in the unity of the faith. And that brings us to a critical truth here. Church politics is not what God has in mind. It's of the world, it's of the flesh, and it's of the devil. Ever seen church politics? Ugly. Church politics is not what God has in mind.

I was once at a medical appointment and of course what always happens is that people ask, well, what do you do? Oh, I'm a pastor. Of course that gets all sorts of reactions, believe me. And then the immediate question out of one medical person who was making conversation, what do you do? The question was, how do you handle all that church politics? I said, I don't. We don't want it. We don't want it.

It's of the world. It's of the flesh. It's of the devil. It's not what God has in mind. The unity is of the Spirit of God. That's the point. Paul wrote to the church at Ephesus in chapter 4 verse 3, being diligent to preserve the unity of the Spirit. And by the way, to see that word preserve, you don't have to create it. The Holy Spirit has already created a unity. It's not our job to create one. It's simply a matter of preserving it.

And it does require diligence. So Paul is referring to standing against these strongholds of evil that remain here in the Christian Church. How? By the unity of the faith. He says he wants them all to stand together with him and with the Lord. In verses 7 through 11 in this passage, he has to tell the believers that they are looking at him from an external and simply non-spiritual viewpoint. They're looking at it purely from a physical and social standpoint.

In fact, one of the critiques I've heard of churches is you can explain everything that's going on by the sociology textbook. Ever heard of that? That ought not to be. As a matter of fact, the church ought to be inexplicable. What's going on among us ought to be inexplicable from a human standpoint. It ought to be nothing that people can understand or explain.

Nancy and I years ago went to a church body where in the evening service they had the opportunity for kind of a roving microphone for people to stand up and say various things. And what was interesting, I remember one night there was a lady who was sitting towards the back and she put her hand up to get the microphone and she said, you know, I came here tonight not a believer. She said, but there's something going on in this church body that I desperately need and I want to have it. She recognized that there was something inexplicable going on. And that's actually God's intent. We should be unexplainable. We should be people who are baffling by any of this world's descriptions and reasonings.

Paul brings them to spiritual truth and spiritual reality. Paul is Christ's, he is indeed the Lord's, and he has the authority of an apostle. What's an apostle? An apostle is a special messenger sent by Christ himself. He does indeed have that. That's the truth. That's the reality.

And contrary to what they were claiming, they said, well, Paul writes this way and then when he comes here, he's another way. He says, no, it's the same Paul. And how I behave when I come will depend on you, not on me. It'll depend on, will you deal with this issue? Or will I have to when I come? So, I'm the same Paul, whether I'm present or whether I'm writing, as you see, he tells them. But you have a decision to make, he says.

The other part that comes out of this, right in the middle of the 7-11 passage, after talking about fortresses of evil that he has to destroy, he also in the middle of this passage talks about building up the body of Christ. If Paul has to tear down any fortresses in the church, any fortresses of evil, the reason is to resume building up the body of Christ.

It's building up the body of Christ that matters. It's building up the body of Christ that needs to be what's going on. If something else is going on, that needs to be set aside so that building up the body of Christ under grace is what's happening. The building up the body of Christ is God's ultimate intent. Tearing down strongholds is only necessary to build up the body. For Paul, to destroy the fortress is only so they can get back to building up the body. The fortresses of evil that had established themselves in the church had to be gotten rid of so the bodybuilding process could continue.

In Ephesians 4, 11 through 13, and we have here this kind of a poetic pattern and layout there, it says, and he gave, that is Christ gave, some as apostles and some as prophets and some as evangelists and some as pastors and teachers. Why did he give these people to the church? And by the way, that's interesting. We think of spiritual gifts as a gift given to us. In this case, these people are gifts to the church body. Isn't that interesting?

What for? For the equipping of the saints for the work of the service. Now get that, it's not for the equipping of the saints, comma, for the work of the service, but the equipping of the saints so that the saints do the work of the service. As we put it before, I'm not in ministry, you are. Right? This is preparing and equipping you for ministry. To what end? To the building up of the body of Christ. That's the reason all these take place. That's why we gather here, to build up the body of Christ.

Now, in verses 12 there, one of the things that becomes clear is they should not get all steamed up over their own self-esteem. The ones who are accusing Paul of walking in the flesh and did not want to see things from the spiritual viewpoint nor see that they themselves were fleshly had great self-esteem They just thought they were so wonderful. But they were rather ticked about the whole thing. They had great self-esteem.

It was interesting talking to my second son, Ed. He is a prison guard, guarding Nevada's worst of the worst. He says actually his job is somewhat easy because his prisoners are so bad they never let him out. But the other thing that's interesting is you talk to him and he says, none of these guys have a problem with self-esteem. Isn't that amazing?

None of them have a problem with self-esteem. He says that's not their problem. Those who had claimed that they were competent to assess their own selves according to themselves, they use themselves as their own measure. They say, see, I measure up to me. Isn't that great? They lack spiritual understanding. That's not the measure of anything. Christ is the measure of everything, right?

Now here's something we have to understand from the culture, and it's this. The pagan culture in New Testament times viewed being humble as a character flaw. It was not considered a virtue at all. As a matter of fact, humility was considered rather disgusting.

So that's part of what Paul's dealing with. When you look at all this, and we're not done with it. He's going to continue talking about boasting. That's why. It's because in the culture, and people in the church were taking their cue from the culture.

In the culture, being humble was considered a bad thing. Got to get rid of all that humility. And what Paul is telling them is quite the opposite. So, in order to be avoid being disgustingly humble. It was common for people to avoid that terrible evil, as they thought, by boasting about themselves, left and right and back and forth. It was a worldly influence that had gotten into the church, and people in the church were soaking up the world's values. And of course you've got to boast. You've got to go on boasting all the time because you don't want to be so disgustingly humble.

Right? That was their view. Another pattern was they wanted to be impressed by clever speech. They wanted to be impressed by clever speech. It's kind of like clicking the channels on the remote. Impress me. You keep clicking until something impresses you. Well, for them, they were looking for clever speech.

But what Paul said is, that's not my edge. That's not what I'm here to do. He started off in the very first chapter of 1 Corinthians, "...for Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel." What did he say? Not in cleverness of speech. But that's exactly what they kept calling for again and again. Why? Because the world says that's what you're supposed to seek. He said, that's not where I'm at. Now we have there in verse 18 a good question, whose approval counts?

There are those who will say that in the end you just have to please yourself. I think Ricky Nelson wrote a song about that, right? Something about a garden party. You just have to please yourself, that in the end that's what you've got to do, right?

Now, then there are others who are prone, even driven, to please others. I mean, whatever you want, that's exactly what they're going to do, because they're not happy unless you're happy. So they're driven to please others. And there's something to be said for that, except that that ultimately is not what God's aiming for either.

What Paul makes clear in verse 18 is that the approval of God is what matters most. It's consistent with the message He's been sending all along and will send again. We live in the sight of God. We live in the sight of the Lord. Our life gets lived out before the Lord of Glory. One way that this has been put is, when Christ died on the cross, He bought out all the tickets to your theater. You are on the stage and He bought out all the tickets to your theater. He owns them all.

And what he wants to see is Christ's life lived out in you. That's why he bought all the seats in the whole theater. And so as we go about living out life, that's something we should never forget. There may be all kinds of people we're involved with, and we probably ought to be involved with, right? But he bought out all the tickets. He wanted to see Christ's life lived in you. And he says, I'll pay whatever the price is. I want front row seats.

He bought out all the tickets for your theater, every single seat. So the question of how we please God then becomes life's largest question. If God bought out the tickets for the entire theater, And just put your name there, and he says, I want to see that person. And I have to tell you, what God approves of, what God's going to be clapping for, okay, in this theater, is not our best efforts and our best labors.

I'm sorry to have to tell you, but that's not the case. As a matter of fact, I would recommend strongly that you not try to be a good Christian. I mean it. Don't try to be a good Christian. That's not what God wants. What God approves of is faith in His Son. That's why we have been placed in Christ and Christ in us. He bought out the tickets to your personal theater, every single seat, so that your life would look like Christ's. what you do, and what you say, and what you choose not to do, and the timing of what takes place. It's all, every single act if you want to call it, it's all a question of seeing Christ's life lived out in us.

We live by faith in the Son of God, Galatians 2.20. He does the living in us. That's what he wants to see. I've been crucified with Christ. Why? So that Christ's life is what shows up and not mine. God doesn't want me to be a good Christian. He doesn't want out of you either.

He wants to see Christ's very life lived out. That's why he bought out all the tickets. Every single one. He owns the whole theater. It's not our job to do the living here on this earth. It's His. It's Christ's job. It's no longer I who do the living. It's Christ who does the living in me. His life. 2 Corinthians 4, 7. This was some chapters back, but still the same letter. We have this treasure in earthen vessels. So that we can look really good up on stage?

No. So that the surpassing greatness of the power will be of God and not from ourselves. Not our best efforts. Not us trying really hard. He doesn't even really want for us to sit there and whip ourselves when we fail. The treasure is in earthen vessels, these things here. So the surpassing greatness of the power will be from God and not from ourselves.

That's what he approves. That's when it's all done. God wants to give a standing ovation. He's bought out the entire theater. He wants to see Christ's life, and that's why we're in Him and He's in us. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for, as we look at this passage here, that we know what you approve. We needn't be frustrated. We needn't be puzzled. We needn't be beating ourselves up when we fail, because none of that is anything that you really want. You instead want your life to be lived through us. That's why you bought out the theater. That's why you placed us in Christ. That's why he's in us. Thank you for all that you have so graciously done and for your amazing love. We pray in Jesus name. Amen.