Have a nice day!

Good morning. Before we step into the passage, just a few things. One, last week there was a supplement available in the cabinet as you exit the room that I forgot to announce. feel free to take advantage of that. Another is I was communicating electronically with Hassan this last week and as he's gone back it's been really neat. He has said that they've been really glad to have had Him come back, and they've received him with joy, and he's begun teaching a Bible study which by the way is quite a breakthrough because over there Unless you're a pastor and and in that particular role. They basically don't let you so this is rather breakthrough Anyway, some good things, so glad to report that. The third thing I would mention is just I've gotten feedback that the guys really appreciate the things that we're sending them.

You could also be in prayer. However, we've got some questions about packages. Are they getting there? So if you could be praying about that. It's one of those things where it's hard to control entirely. I know Andrew has recently had his address changed. So that may be adding to some of the questions. So anyway, those things.

We'll step now into our passage, 2 Corinthians 11, 21 through 33, that Courtney read for us here. And we preface it jokingly or ironically with, have a nice day, because it is probably one of the greatest lists of troubles and trials and tribulations that Paul or any of the apostles had amassed here.

He's been responding to the believers in Corinth because they've had a chronic, ongoing issue. The believers in Corinth have been, at least some of them, boasting, and that's to sort of compensate for avoiding or to avoid the issue in the culture where humility was not admired. It was not considered a virtue, but rather a character flaw. So it was common in the culture to boast in order to avoid appearing disgustingly humble.

The other thing that we see cropping up here is the appearance of false apostles, those who claim to be apostles, but in fact are just coming in, kind of usurping Paul's position. And what they are coming in and doing is something that Paul's run into before in the churches in Galatia.

He dealt with the legalists there, those who come in and simply say, well, you just got to follow the law of Moses, then you'll be saved, then you'll stay saved, right? And so he's dealing with that. He is going, in this case, to put his qualifications as an apostle up against those who are coming in and claiming to be apostles and are teaching law. He is going to do that in a couple of different ways, as we'll soon see here. He's dealing with these false teachers who are very much like the ones that we read about in the Churches of Galatia, the Book of Galatians, and see showing up in Acts 15. In part, Paul was dealing with identity theft. No, nobody had gotten his password. It wasn't that. But these other guys were claiming to be what he in fact was. And they were not. They were false apostles.

So you have here is a slide, on the second slide I believe, on page one, the poetic pattern. And he starts off, but in whatever respect anyone else is bold, and he begins the passage that way, and then he has a little insertion that he puts in there. In an interesting pattern, he says, I speak in foolishness. And we said last week, foolish was not being like a court jester. We're not simply doing something rather stupid. But a fool was someone who didn't have a correct assessment of themselves.

He says, I am just as bold myself. In other words, he's saying I can match point for point with these who are claiming to be apostles. He ends this same section here with, I speak as if insane, because now he's not going to simply match them. He is going to do one-upmanship with them in a very curious way. He's going to say, I am better than they in trials, in suffering. They can't match me on that. He says, I can way outdo them in trials and suffering.

I am more so, he says. And so he goes on like this. And I put this, I am more so, because the verb tense is the same as I am just as bold myself. So in order to make them match poetically, I've done that. But I think it fits. But he says, are they Hebrews? So am I. It's almost like, you know, yes, you are. No, you're not. Yes, you are. Well, anyway, not quite like that, but almost. Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites? So am I. Are they descendants of Abraham? So am I. Well, we might look at those Hebrews, Israelites, descendants of Abraham. Aren't those all about the same thing? Close. But no banana, right? They're a little different. Why are they different? You see on the next slide here.

A Hebrew has this definition. It's a Jew who could read and write in the Hebrew of the Old Testament and also speak Aramaic. Aramaic is the language that the Jews had learned to speak out of the exile over in Babylon and under the rule of some of the foreign countries there. So that was the definition of a Hebrew. An Israelite is one of the descendants of Jacob, who the Lord named Israel, fighter with God, who knew his tribe.

So Paul writes in Romans 11.1, I to him an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin. So this is an Israelite.

We had, when we were going through Genesis a couple years back, this chart that showed Jacob and the for mothers of all of Jacob's children and then the heads of the twelve tribes and some of the key descendants from them. The point is this then, the third thing that he calls out is a descendant of Abraham. Now what that means is being genealogically descended from Abraham through Isaac and Jacob, which may sound similar but it has this difference.

Abraham was the beginning of the series of covenants between God and the Israelites. As Paul wrote twice in his letters, it is the Jews who have the covenants with God. And so he says, I have this descendancy from Abraham, going back to those covenants. So from Abraham, then to Isaac, then to Jacob, who was also called Israel, and therefore the descendants of him called Israelites. So, we have this poetic pattern, and in the first part it's, he matched them up. Are they this? So am I. Are they this? So am I. Are they this? So am I. And then, after matching them, he then goes on, are they servants of Christ?

And now he says, and now I'm really going over the line. Now I'm really going over the top. I am even more so. And I'm going to prove it. because I've suffered far, far more than they." And he knew there was no way that they could match that or even claim it. More so. So he says, then I'll do one better than that.

So verses 21 through 23, Paul would first match the so-called qualifications of these legally bent false teachers, these false apostles. They had come from Israel to the believers in Corinth. So he matched up against them point for point. Then he would do better than they in a way that seemed upside down. Well, can't do that. Okay. Paul's qualifications as a servant of Christ might come to us as a surprise. What was it? Intense suffering. Qualified how? By intense suffering. These guys, no way can they match that.

So Paul then goes on with his incredible list and we have here at the bottom of page one on your handout, we have the first part of his listing of these qualifications that he has laid out in a poetic pattern in your handout. We'll go through it a little bit at a time so it's more easy to read on the screen. repeating the last part of the prior slide there. He says, I am more so a servant of Christ in far more labors, in far more imprisonments. When it comes to suffering, I'm way ahead of them. They can't even touch me. So we see this pattern in far more labors. Paul is by occupation by trade, a tent maker. He very likely got that from his father. And it was actually a fairly common trade that he could take from one place to the next.

In our own culture, we tend to think of a tent as sort of, this is a recreational occupation where you live in a tent as a matter of recreation. But in biblical times, a tent was a more formal structure, and was not just for camping, per se. It was used more commonly, and it even had social rules about what you could do and not do in the tent, and who was allowed to come in and who wasn't.

But Paul made these tents. He could go into any place where he was at, get the material, whether of fabric or of leather, and he would make the tents. He would often be making tents on into the night. He would be making tents while he was teaching, working very hard in order to avoid burdening the churches.

He also said far more imprisonments. We only have one record specifically of that until the very end of Acts. Acts 16, 22 through 24. This is the place in the picture is thought by some to be the jail in Philippi. And so that's what's recorded there in Acts 16. But by this time, he says imprisonments plural. So there were apparently others that he had. But he said far more labors, far more imprisonments. Not just a little bit, a lot.

Beaten times without numbers. Sounds like it was almost boring. Now, by this beaten, we have after there Acts 16, which is actually beaten with rods. But in this case, the implication, because he later talks specifically about the number of times he was beaten with rods, this was actually probably fist beatings that he got repeatedly. So often, he says, I've lost count. He'll later on give count on some other things. He says of being beaten with a fist, he says, I've lost count. Just so many times, I can't tell you the number.

And so here was the place, this is the forum in Philippi, where he was beaten by Roman lictors. This is the forum, the Agora. He's often in danger of death. In Galatia, on his first missionary journey, Paul was stoned and left for dead. However, he recovered, was not killed by it. I'm sure the stones felt a little bit worse than a massage, right? but often in danger of death.

The stoning is only one instance, and I think what we'll find as we go through this list is the Book of Acts records a sampling of things, but not everything that occurred. Furthermore, we're going to find that in some cases the Book of Acts records after the writing of this letter even more of some of these things. For example, we know that Paul was imprisoned after he wrote this. We know that Paul was in danger of death after he wrote these things. So the Book of Acts only adds to the number that we see in here. This letter was written about 57 AD.

The Book of Acts goes on for another several years. Five times I received from the Jews 39 lashes. The Jews would give 39 lashes because the law allowed 40, but they didn't want to break the law. So in case somebody miscounted, they said, no, 39. That's how we make sure we don't break the law, because that would be the most horrid thing. So 39 lashes from the Jews. That's how they would count it. And just so they didn't break the law, people would help them count. And by the way, that's something else. Sometimes people will say, oh, the synagogue is just like a Jewish church. No, it's not.

And the synagogue was not only a place where the Jews gathered, but it was also the place of judgment and punishment. If you needed a whipping, sometimes it was done right then in the synagogue or right outside. It was a place of making judgments according to the law.

He says three times I was beaten with rods. This is of course the instance that you see there in Acts 16. Funny I got my lines a little oddly there. But this is a Roman lictor. Ever heard of the term taking a licking or getting a licking? That was done by the Roman lictors. Those are the ones they would have some kind of rods that they would beat people with. That's what Paul got there in the Forum or the Agora in Philippi.

This is once I was stoned, so that's probably the instance recorded in Acts 14, 19. So there we have one specific place where that's almost certainly the case. Once I was stoned, I don't think he's talking about anything having to do with the stone like we use it, you know, in our day. Okay, three times I was shipwrecked.

Now what's interesting is the only recording of shipwreck that we have, particularly with Paul, is in Acts 27, which was written after this event. So that means at least four times Paul was shipwrecked. Because that would be added to this number. So Paul was involved in shipwreck. It was apparently fairly common, and you could not get on the radio and call out, Mayday, Mayday, Mayday, right? They didn't have a bunch of life rafts and life preservers to work with.

He says, a day and a night I was spent in the deep. Hmm. Then, after his experience being shipwrecked and spending a day and night floating, probably holding on to something, but a day and night floating around out in the middle of the ocean. He says, dangers from rivers, dangers from robbers, dangers from my own countrymen. That sounds like my high school days. Anyway, dangers from rivers. What would happen?

They would have crossing rivers where the bridge was out or places where there never was a bridge. And if you happen to cross there during a time of high flow, it could be very risky. And so you try to make your way across, especially when the water gets muddy.

You don't know how the configuration of the area underneath the water is. You may suddenly find yourself slipping into something quite a bit deeper than you were expecting. The other question is, what's in the river? Oh, we don't know about that. OK. Dangers from robbers along the road in strained cities. In roadways, one of the common problems, of course, most people were walking or riding some kind of an animal.

And so there was a hazard from robbers and thugs between these cities. And while the robbers and thugs would tend to leave the Roman soldiers alone, other people would be subject to being attacked. The smaller the group, the more the risk of being attacked. We have the account of the Good Samaritan as one of those kinds of instances. Dangerous from countrymen.

Jews in many cities and towns in the same way that Paul was seeking to kill the believers. As a matter of fact, later on in Acts, he says, whenever there was a chance for me to vote against the Christians, I voted for death. Any chance I could, I voted for death.

Now, guess what happens? The table is turned. He gets voted deaf against him. And so it is a great risk and hazard from these Jews who are carrying on the same attitude towards Christians that he once had. He was in danger from that. The Jews would sometimes get in mass. There would be riotous activities. There would be demands. There would be false charges. trumped up against Paul and some of those with him.

Dangers from the Gentiles in every city and town. Dangers of every sort. The Gentiles, mind you, did not have the moral and legal restraints that the Jews had. Here the Jews were a danger because you might be violating the law of Moses, or might be speaking against the law of Moses, But with the Gentiles, the Gentiles would often pray to their gods to be able to steal better and to lie better. The Gentiles did not have the same moral hesitations and limitations that the Jews had. So there would be another group of dangers from that. Dangers in the city. Dangers in the city, why? Because you'd be in places where you didn't know exactly where is the best part of town. Reminds me, I one time traveled to Birmingham, and the shuttle bus dropped me off at the wrong hotel.

And so I couldn't get any help at that place. So I went across to a gas station there. And I was talking to the guy. He says, oh, you need to be down the street down here. It's a number of blocks down that way. And he said, but that's not a good part of town. And I said, well, what is a good part of town? He said, I've lived here my whole life and I don't think there is any. Anyway, so a little difficulty here. dangers in the wilderness, of course, weather, exposure, wild animals, things of that sort. So lots of dangers.

He would be traveling along the way, walking on these Roman roads. The Romans had, as we mentioned in the elective this morning, the Romans had enough roads that you could go twice around the globe. Over 50,000 miles of hand-built roads. Lots of roads. But oftentimes, there would be long spaces between cities, and you'd have to camp along the way. Of course, he was a tent maker.

That helped. But nonetheless, just being out in whatever conditions there were made for some risks. Dangers in the sea. He mentioned, of course, shipwreck, but there were other things. Ill-intended crew, mutinies, or a crew member that said, hey, I noticed you've got this. I want it. What are you going to do? Or passengers that had ill intent. Or one other that's not on the list. Pirates. Pirates.

There was also that hazard as well. Dangers from false brethren. I wonder who he's talking about. The false teachers, these false apostles were false brethren. There was hazard from that. He mentioned it in Galatians and now here in Corinth. There was a hazard again. These false brethren were claiming to be apostles, claiming to be followers of Christ, but in fact what they were is Jewish legalists. And so they had all the reasons to come violently against Paul. So these false brethren were a hazard. Why does he spell out all these troubles? Why does he go through and list one trouble after the next, after the next, after the next? Why does he do this? Let's go back to Acts chapter 9, 9, 15, and 16.

It says this, Christ told Ananias that Paul would suffer for his name, that is Christ's name. But the Lord said to him, to Ananias, Go, for he is a chosen instrument of mine to bear my name before the Gentiles and kings and the sons of Israel, for I will show him how much he must suffer for my name's sake. Wait a minute, that goes along with bearing the gospel? Choose somebody else, right? No. Paul knew exactly why the Lord had chosen him. He knew that he was chosen. And by this, Paul also knew troubles were coming, and that comes with his assignment.

In the very next chapter, we're going to be seeing this within two or three Sundays here, the signs of a true apostle in 2 Corinthians 12. The signs of a true apostle were performed among you with all perseverance by signs and wonders and miracles. It looks like just a few words there, but we want to make note of it. The Greek word that's translated here, perseverance, means to bear up cheerfully, even patiently, under the circumstances which are assumed to be difficult. Did we do miracles among you as an apostle? Yes. What came along with that? You also saw that we suffered greatly. But we didn't suffer and gripe and grouse about it. We bared up patiently underneath those sufferings.

1 Thessalonians, a letter that was written prior to this 2 Corinthians, Paul writes this. 1 Thessalonians 3, 2-4, we sent Timothy our brother and God's fellow worker in the gospel of Christ to strengthen and encourage you as to your faith so that no one would be disturbed by these afflictions. For you yourselves know that we have been destined for this. The King James says we have been appointed for this. Verse 4, for indeed when we were with you we kept telling you Not just once. We kept telling you in advance that we were going to suffer affliction. And so it came to pass, as you know. Isn't this amazing?

Here is Paul. He says, I have been appointed by Jesus Christ. He is the Savior. He is the Lord of the universe. And you know what? He says, I'm going to suffer a lot. Isn't that amazing? And Paul says, I don't want anybody else to claim to be an apostle out here among the Gentiles. Why? He says, I know that the Lord has made me his apostle and not these guys and along with that he told me in advance, and I've been telling everybody else in advance, I'm going to suffer a lot. You have on page two on the top this poetic pattern here. It breaks down into four sections. In order to make it more readable, we'll take a look at it one section at a time. Here's the poetic pattern here in verse 27.

I have been in labor and hardship through many sleepless nights, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure. Sounds like parenting young children, right? Okay. Labor, hardship, and sleepless nights, along with frequent hunger and thirst.

He often worked to make ends meet and often under difficult circumstances. He would work hard in order to avoid burdening the churches. He would go and establish churches, and they were young churches, and he didn't want to say, OK, you guys need to start giving me money. And so he would work and work and work and work to avoid burdening them at all. He didn't want to seem like his purpose was greedy.

Since ministry was often during the day and during the evening, he would sometimes work through the night. He would work on tents while he was working alongside and teaching people. Working, working, working. As the pressure of ministry and those adverse circumstances bore down on him, he would not only be tired and sleepy, but hungry and thirsty as well, along with some cold nights.

No, I didn't say that right. Cold nights, OK? And bad weather. The next poetic pattern goes like this. Apart from such external things, all these difficult things on the outside, there's the daily internal pressure, the weighing on his heart. I'm not talking about the heart that sits there and beats, but I'm talking about the heart being the very heart of him, his soul and his spirit. Who is weak without my being weak? Who is led into sin without my intense concern? If they're weak, I'm weak with them. If they're led into sin, I'm greatly concerned for them.

We have the next slide here, what's on and on and on your mind, right? He'd been listing, and we've seen the long list of all the different kinds of difficulties have been going through, and he knew there were more yet to come. No question about it. He knew they were coming. But in the midst of that, There are all the things that weighed on his heart.

Concern. How is this church doing? How's that person doing? What we find is when Paul writes to Timothy and Titus, he talks about individuals over whom he's got some concern, but he also talks about whole churches. He has concern for whole churches, whole areas, individuals. At all levels, there is spiritual concern. He is the one who has taken on this assignment from the Lord. He has been entrusted with these things. Paul's spiritual concerns were immense, and that's without even mentioning all the difficulties from the outside.

The next one we find in 30 and 31, For if I have to boast, I will boast of what pertains to my weakness. I'm far more weak than they. The God and Father of our Lord Jesus, He who is blessed forever, knows that I am not lying. And by the way, the construction of the Greek here under the God and Father means God and Father are the same. They're the same ones. Boasting and weakness.

He wasn't going to step into the boasting that they were doing, the boasting that was going on among the Corinthians, where he tried to avoid humility. No, he says, if I'm going to boast, I'm going to boast in such a way that it is humble. I'm going to boast in weakness. He wasn't going to embrace and absorb what the pagan culture had been putting off. He boasted in his weakness. He boasted in the overwhelming nature of the circumstances. Not his sufficiency, but the Lord's sufficiency. He boasted about the concerns of his apostleship. And one of the reasons that's very important is the false apostles weren't concerned about the people. They were looking to themselves. The false apostles wanted something out of the people that they worked with.

Give me this. You do this. I want to show that I have control over you. Nancy's been reading a book, and she and I have been talking about it. This is FLDS, Fundamentalist Latter-day Saints, or kind of Mormon splinter group, in which the leaders have great control, and abusive control, frankly. But what's interesting is Paul says, I'm not here for control. The false apostles are. I'm not here for control. I want you to have relationship with the Lord. I want you to obey the Lord. And if I'm coming in and saying anything, it's because of that. I want you to have relationship with the Lord.

Paul could certainly have various people testify the things that Paul endured. But the thing that he says here is the Father knows. The Lord of the universe knows all that's going on. Of course, one of the things he's been telling him, and he's going to tell him again this next chapter, everything that he does and that they do is in the sight of God. Everything is in the sight of the Lord. And this is no exception. God knows why everything is in his sight.

Everything is before him. In the last part here in Damascus, the ethnarch under Aretas the king was guarding the city of the Demasenes in order to seize me. And I was let down in a basket through a window in the wall and so escaped his hands. And folks, I'm afraid I have to tell you here, Paul was a basket case. It's true. Paul was a basket case.

We know that King Aretas lived in this place called Petra. Some of you have maybe even seen it or know of someone who has seen it or been there. King Aretas ruled there from Petra until 40 AD. Paul was writing this 17 years later after that. So this had happened earlier in Paul's career before he'd even gone on his first missionary journey. And so Paul was a fairly young Christian when this took place, this basket experience. Here is one of the more famous sites in Petra. I think it's visible in the third Indiana Jones movie, if you may recall that.

And so here's Paul that is let down there out of the city of Damascus in order to avoid this ethnarch, an officer, a ruler under King Aretas. Here's what's interesting, is that it was certainly very risky for Paul to be pursuing Christians now that he was a Christian and had turned to Christ. Roman soldiers, it was an honor to scale the wall to take over a city. That was considered an honorable position. So here's the Apostle Paul, as opposed to that high honor of scaling the wall, here he is escaping from the city and being let down. It's like the reverse. What is it? It's more humility. Exactly what they didn't like to see, and exactly what they didn't like to honor. Exactly what they didn't respect and regard because of the world's message.

So why does this matter to you and to me? Why does all this make a difference? It matters because of this. It matters because Paul is validated as a true apostle. Yes, he not only is the Hebrew, the Israelite, and the descendant of Abraham, but he also is the one who truly suffered greatly, afflicted greatly. He is definitely the one worth listening to. including the study that we're doing here. The troubles and trials that Paul endured faithfully are ours as well, in some degree or kind. Ours as well.

See, being a Christian doesn't mean that you're suddenly on this wonderful freeway, never to have another hassle all the way to heaven's gates. That's not what it means to be a Christian, is it? That's not what you signed up for. Right? Now, in fact, there will be troubles. Count on it. Just like Paul was guaranteed troubles and he knew it, so will we have troubles and we know it.

At least we ought to. The other clear purpose here, the troubles and trials that God has put intentionally in our lives are for multiple godly purposes. We certainly can ask God to take away our pains and problems. God may have in mind that they remain so that we trust him and find his grace sufficient. Let's pray.

Lord, we thank you that you are faithful through these things, that you have purpose. We can count upon you, Lord, to bring everything into our lives for purpose and meaning and value and intent. And we give you thanks for that. And we thank you for what you have revealed to us through the Apostle Paul here. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.