Christ life & ministry glories only in the Lord - not in the...
2 Cor: 11:28-33 · Randy Peterman · Nov 19, 2017
2 Corinthians (2017), No. 44
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/49261727216515

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

Alright, well I have been missing for two weeks and you'll forgive me for having missed out on these intense verses. I have to say I am semi-relieved that I didn't have to teach some of the earlier verses. Actually, I remember when this got taught years ago talking to Jim Poole, because he was the one that was part of teaching some of this, and I told him bluntly, I said, This is one of the harder passages in the Bible because Paul is using some rather interesting language and intensity as he's delivering this. So I lucked out in God's providence. He blessed me with verses 28 through 33. That being said, as I looked at this I am excited about teaching these verses this morning.

I hope that when you leave this morning you'll have a little deeper insight into the person of Paul and his heart and what his ministry was focused on as well as maybe a deeper sense of his humility. He's been talking about boasting throughout the whole letter, right? So he's going to continue on that theme here and he's going to be talking about his own weakness. as well, and his care for the church body. So, lots of good stuff here this morning. I hope that as we'll be digging into these principles that you'll meditate on them throughout the week. I think there's a lot of stuff here to be thinking about. Alright, so Paul writes here, apart from such external things, there is the daily pressure on me of concern for all the churches. Who is weak without my being weak? Who is led into sin without my intense concern? If I have to boast, I will boast of what pertains to my weakness. The God and Father of the Lord Jesus, He who is blessed forever, knows that I am not lying. In Damascus, the Ethnarch under Aretas, the king was guarding the city of the Damascenes in order to seize me, and I was let down in a basket through a window in a wall and so escaped his hands.

I learned some really cool political things that we're going to go over this morning that are historical. That last part maybe seems like it's a little disjointed from the first couple verses, but we have to remember that the larger flow of this in 11 is Paul is talking about some of the things he went through, right? Last week he talked about his list of difficulties and beatings and drownings and it was very exciting, right? This morning we're going to continue on here. Now he says at the beginning of verse 28, apart from such external things, and so that's what he's referring to is those beatings and roundings and the things he talked about in verses 23 through 27.

And so when he says external things, those are all exterior physical things he went through that were experiences on his journeys. And here's a funny thing to consider. When he writes chapter 11, chapter 11 is on his third missionary journey and it's not done. He has yet to go to prison in Rome. And so the things that he's writing, we're going to see, he's not done. Right, so there's a list of all these things. There's a bunch more still to do. Yeah, so it was exciting and also for us, I think if I'm being honest, that's terrifying. I am very blessed by the physical comforts that I have in this world and the idea of being shipwrecked or tortured of any sort seems kind of terrible.

So Paul starts off by transitioning from those external things, and he says, there is the daily pressure on me of concerns for all the churches. So the question I've got there is, why was it daily pressure? And there's a complex answer to that, so you can pick any part of it that comes to mind. Why was it daily pressure?

No news is not necessarily good news when you're waiting for an update. That's true. Yeah, when you're waiting on updates and there wasn't email, right? We got a lot of churches that Paul has planted or been connected with throughout the regions that he's been on his missionary journeys. And if he's waiting for updates on those churches, you could be talking about months time, right?

I mean, when I have read history books and historical references about communication, much of that communication was weeks or months in time, and it could have been lost in a shipwreck. It could have been lost by people who were robbers, stealing, going through, oh, well, we've knocked this guy out or killed him. Going through all the stuff, oh, this is a letter open it make sure there's not a check in it right and then throw it out right so there's all these things that that could have happened so the daily pressures would have been mounted by the realities that they were facing at that point in time. Well Randy also it means that you know he had this intense love for it wasn't just a casual you know, need to know kind of deal.

He had this really passion and love for these churches that he had set up. Yeah. And so it was much more than just news. Right. It was it was really these were like his children. I mean, these are his, you know, his offspring, if you want to use that. And so it was it was a real intense love that he had for these churches. Yeah, absolutely.

And in fact, We're going to go over that parenting thing here in the second section of this, because I wanted to emphasize that. So we'll look at the Bible verses and talk about it, but that's absolutely one of the key concerns. So it was daily pressure in the sense of he was getting updates occasionally, right? But his concerns linger. Have you ever found out about somebody who's suffering, either that you know personally or they're a family member, and have that consume your thoughts for one day and then two days and then three days and I mean months or years. There's times when that happens when someone we love and we care about is wounded or let's say let's be honest if they walk away from the Lord or any of those things then I've had lots of times in my life where I've had a hard time sleeping because someone I care about deeply is not okay and Paul's gonna list that as one of his his concerns here in just a verse or so. But the daily pressures came.

Not only was Paul working a full-time job as a tent maker, we'll call it a full-time job, but really Paul was a tent maker. He was trying to live off of his own resources so as to not be robbing the church of resources so that they could send more money to Jerusalem. He's emphasized that earlier in this letter. So Paul's working.

He's teaching at night up to the point where everybody's staying up late. Remember in Acts where one of the people actually falls out of the window and dies because he fell asleep. It was so late. And Paul goes down and the Lord resurrects the person who fell out of the window. But he's physically exerting himself to the point of exhaustion. And then there's the emotional element of this that he's caring for them deeply. And just because I think it's a good point to make out, the second question I've gotten here, why was Paul concerned for all the churches?

And I think we should go ahead and take a look at 1 Thessalonians chapter 2 verses 7 and 11. And if you get there, go ahead and read that out loud, both those verses. 1 Thessalonians chapter 2 verses 7 and 11. But when we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom which God ordained before the world is untrue unto our glory. Hold on, Tom. That's a really good verse, but we're looking for 1 Thessalonians, chapter 2. Yes. Okay. Got it. Somebody else's. Yeah. Prove to be gentle.

Yeah. among you as a nursing mother tenderly cares for her own children. And then verse 11. Just as you know how we were exhorting and encouraging and imploring each one of you to father with his own children. Alright, so in 1 Thessalonians chapter 2 there he describes himself in parenting language. And I interrupted Gary.

Honestly, if you read between 7 and 11 there, he describes the motherly love in more detail and the fatherly love there in verse 11. But if you have this bond and this relationship with these churches and you would go so far as to describe yourself in this parenting way, I think we understand the depth here of understanding. What I think is interesting is that The principles of the motherly nursing to make sure that there is tender care and health and establishing and nutrition moves to, he says, like a father in a lemon where there is this encouragement to grow and to edify and to develop and mature.

That's Paul's goal for each one of these churches. And we're going to see that as we go through this, keep that parenting mindset as he goes through these next several verses. The other thing that Paul did that we want to keep in mind here is he didn't want these churches just to exist. He didn't just start them and then take off.

He wanted the church body in each one of these places to flourish and to grow and be established and mature where they were. One of the things that I personally absolutely love about the book of Ephesians, which I believe we're on target to go over again next year, is Ephesians is very much a book about establishing and growing the church body to maturity. And so I can't teach all of Ephesians right now in this lesson, so you're just going to have to take my word on it. But if you are able to be here next year, it will be a rich study, I think, because there's so much material in there for our growth.

So then Paul says, moving on into the next verse, he says, who is weak without my being weak? And I wanted to take a moment to look at different forms of weakness that are in the New Testament because we want to understand what he means here, or what he doesn't mean in certain cases. So let's just take a brief look at this list.

He's talking about weakness of faith in Romans 4.19 and 14.1 and 1 Thessalonians 5.14 and 2 Timothy 3.6. Now, let's ask this important question. Can we argue that Paul means weakness of faith in this passage? Does it seem rational or a logical leap that we should take that Paul is weak in faith?

And that's what he's referring to. Well, since he says he's transitioned to the internal concerns, it kind of fits well, that would be, you know, if it's, you know, he would describe the weakness other places up in the physical weaknesses, so. Yeah, I think that this weakness of faith makes me, I'm a little hesitant to say that that's the case because Paul's faith is focused on the Lord in all of these things.

So, I'm inclined not to think that's what he's talking about, but it's a possibility. He doesn't define the context here specifically, other than earlier in the passage. In verse 21 he uses the same word weak as well, but there he's actually talking about he must be weak because he doesn't tolerate being abused.

So I don't think that's the context there. Weakness of strength, I don't think it's not just a physical, because if Paul got reports that somebody wasn't doing bodybuilding, I don't think we would describe. Oh no, Paul is also now not bodybuilding, right? So that doesn't seem the right context there. Weakness of conscience, now that would be alarming. If I hear a report that somebody has a weakness of conscience, and let's be honest, that's a whole lot of people, then Paul suddenly has weakness of conscience. That doesn't seem to make sense there.

It's also used in Galatians 4.9 for carnality. I don't think Paul is saying carnality.

Hebrews, which is not written by Paul, but in Hebrews chapter 12 the author of Hebrews writes about God's discipline and that the discipline leads to maturity and so the weakness is a starting point but it shouldn't be the ending point for the believer maturity wise and then lastly this same word could be translated sick and is done so for example in Philippians 2 26 and 27 so I'm going to say that I can't tell you with precision if he meant just one of those or if he meant most of those other than I think I would argue that his heart is broken when people's faith is weakened but it would be weird for him to say his faith is weakened because their faith is weakened in my understanding.

I was wondering, you know, he talks a lot about weakness. In fact, we're going to get into chapter 12. He's going to basically say that it's God's opportunity to live his life through you when I'm weak. So I wonder if he's not maybe talking about the fact that he sees weakness in others and he realizes that he cannot, he doesn't have the power to change that. And so it fits in with his weakness.

God has to do it. The principle being, wherever someone is weak... He has a sense of empathy, right? We can say that with certainty. I kind of thought that maybe made him closer to what he said. My argument, and that's what I have in my notes here, is that empathy is his core point in this case. I would argue that it would be weird for Paul to experience the symptoms of each one of those outputs, but the principle of his care is what he's trying to emphasize. I went over those variations because I'm a software developer and lists make me happy.

But the thing that I think we can walk away with confidence in this is that it is Paul's empathy. I would assume it's not weakness of faith only because it would be problematic for the Apostle Paul to have sudden weakness of faith every time I heard about it. because he's in a ministry mode. But no matter what the weakness is, the empathy is the focus that's there.

So one of the questions that I have here on the page, the next question is, what do you do when others' weaknesses make you weak? What's your response? Because I think we established earlier that everybody has had times when They've heard reports of somebody else's stumbling and or weakness and it's been a distraction.

What do we do when that happens? Pray a lot. Pray a lot. Well, don't you think too we look at ourselves? We take a look when we see someone else having an issue. We take a look at ourselves and go, well, you know, what would I be doing if that happened to me? How would I react or what would I do? Or is that a possibility for me? The answer is that it's complex, right? We often think about things in complex ways and we start to, especially if it's distracting and it's on our minds again and again and again, we tend to start digesting all of the facets of what's going on. But fundamentally, I think the idea that we go to the Lord first should be an important principle. Let's take this.

He said he's concerned for all the churches. So we have Paul. He's concerned for all the churches. Now, Roger, I want to ask you a question. This is a yes or no question. This is very easy and safe. He's an elder, right? So Roger, as an elder, would you say that being an elder over an entire body introduces you to stresses from within the body where your concern goes for each one of the biome. Absolutely. So yes or no question. We're safe, right? I didn't ask for too much information.

But imagine that times tens or hundreds of churches. That's a lot. That's a lot of burden to have on one person's heart. And so I think it's worth just considering in this that This was a very special calling for Paul to be an apostle, but it was not always just winning souls.

It was not comfortable. What we see here is that Paul's weakness is a response and empathy. Then he goes on because he's He's not done with this illustration, and repetition is always a good way to clarify, right? He says, who is led to sin without my intense concern? And I've had various folks on my heart throughout my life, and even very recently, where this kind of a problem gets set up. where someone that we know about, someone that we care about, gets led into sin. And so when we read Paul's letters and their corrective, there are some really tremendous examples of how he's trying to address this problem. There are false teachers. Another book that I am honored to have gotten to teach through is Galatians.

In Galatians 1.6 he starts off and he greets the church in Galatia as brothers and sisters in Christ and then hits him in verse 6 with you foolish Galatians that you'd follow another gospel. Following another gospel, that's a pretty intense sin to be led into. There were false teachers that came in and were leading them away, leading them astray saying, Yeah, Paul's gospel, it's like 95% right.

Here's the other 90%. And they delivered lies and brought in legalism and were deceiving the church in Galatia. And so Paul, when he hears this, that's a concern. If it's one person, that's bad enough. If it's an entire congregation, that's some serious heartache. So that's false teaching and the false gospel concept.

But then he says philosophies of the world in Colossians 2.8. He says don't be led astray by the philosophies of the world. I can tell you right now that the number one thing I'm watching Christians walk away from Christianity for is the philosophies of the world. They don't care about it.

False gospel happens. That was a major concern for the last 100 years as cults were establishing themselves from the mid-1800s in the United States into the mid-1900s. We had lots of cults in the United States establishing themselves. Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, Mary Baker Eddy and the Christian Science Movement, all of that happened during that window of time. The false gospels were being presented.

We moved away from faith-based lies That's not actually true because false philosophies also talk about faith, but humanism is faith in yourself. So when you go to the university and you've gone to church, you started as a little kid, you became a Christian at some young age, and you get into university and now university is presenting, oh you stupid Christians and your crutch. You stupid Christians and you believe in the fairies in the sky.

And so the philosophies of the world that Paul talks about in Colossians 2.8, those are things that people were led to stumble, they were led to sin, by believing in themselves or some other philosopher that made them feel good. And then, if philosophy and false teaching were not enough, there's just simple carnality.

Paul writes to Timothy in 2 Timothy 4.10. Let's turn there real quick. Let's watch how this happens. Verse 9, Make every effort to come to me soon, for Demas, having loved this present world, has deserted me and gone to Thessalonica. Crescens has gone to Galatia, Titus to Dalmatia. Now I don't think Titus and Crescens were walking carnally. That's not what he's saying. I think those are separate ideas.

But we see that Demas, having loved this present world, just worldliness, carnality, has gone off, he deserted him and gone off to Thessalonica. You've got to know the Thessalonians kicked his honey. The church there in Thessalonica were probably like, really? You checked it out? You came back? Because we know that they were a well-established church, right? But carnality or being in love with this world is a big distraction.

There's a lot of Stay cool at the water cooler. You gotta know what the Broncos score was or you might not be a good person. At least if you live in Denver. If you're in Seattle, maybe it's the Seahawks. But the thing is that whatever worldliness is there is an easy distraction. Let's face it, entertainment is really good at easing our pains and our tensions that we go through. for 42 minutes with commercial breaks I can stop worrying about what's going on in my life and think about fiction. My family went to a DU hockey game on Friday night and for three periods of time we got to watch other people out there beating on each other. It was really violent. I went to a fight and a hockey game broke out. Is that how that goes?

But those distractions are there and I would say that it's not evil to go to a sporting event or watch television. That's definitely not what I'm saying. But I'm saying if you're watching it and it's a coping mechanism, if you're watching it and it's a distraction from our faith, that's a problem. If it's a thing that woos us into a sense of greed, right? Isn't that what commercials are for?

The other 18 minutes of the hour, when you've got the 42 minutes of content, is you are insufficient in some capacity and you need, you do have a weakness. Paul is right. He's got weakness, but your weakness is that you don't own this car. You need these drugs. Oh yeah, you definitely need the drugs or the car.

I read a joke this last week that was two out of three people face depression, call your doctor. And so the guy immediately turned off the television and called his doctor to find out if his doctor was depressed. But the thing is that He was concerned, right?

But as we see these things, the leading to sin, the worldliness, all of how that was building up was a blow to Paul. His heart was heavy for people that were being led astray. Some of that turned into letters, like we have in 1 Corinthians, in chapter 5, when he goes after the young man who is sleeping with his father's wife. That's really intense. And that turned out in Paul's letters. That kind of sin is unacceptable. You've got to set that person aside if they don't take correction. But whatever's going on here, we see a sense of empathy in Paul that, when we look at the scale of it, is supernatural. Only the God of the universe can sustain Paul as he's dealing with these trials and the difficulties that are there.

Last thing that I want to call out on this, and I probably should have called it out first, but what's translated in your New American Standard, if you read that, is led into sin, is really the idea of being led into a stumbling block, directly led into something that will trip them up. So just a little translational nuance that's worth calling out. I want to emphasize something. This next section is kind of an aside, but I think it's worth looking at.

I said the heading there is why Paul wrote what he wrote and sent who he sent. His letters and his writing were about correction, growth, and body life. And that's why he sent representatives as well. He wanted to make sure he sends Onesimus. He sends Titus, he sends Timothy, or in this second Timothy passage, he sent another couple fellows. But as he's going through here, he's sending these people because he wants to make sure that the body is established and shored up and they're prepared for growth.

It's a theme that when you see him from a parenting perspective, wouldn't it be weird as a parent We think it's weird as parents in a generally Christian environment, but this is not unheard of in the secular world. It would be weird for us if we saw parents just say, all right, I had a kid and they're able to walk and take care of themselves. They're five or some age approximately like that. And then we just kind of set them free. My dad actually knew a guy who was for all intents and purposes a feral human being who was uneducated until 18 and then somebody actually they actually had to be kind of captured and cleaned up and then they were educated.

So we think of that as a little weird but but the reality is that I have a very dear friend who once his mom showed him how to make his own food at a young age. she pretty much stopped providing for him other than making sure that the food existed in the home and then he'd have to make it himself. She said she didn't want to raise a sissy. And so at a young age he was just on his own.

He discovered by watching television that there were ways to kill the cockroaches in their house for example with products. So he took his own money and he went out and bought stuff to kill cockroaches. So we hear that and we go that's crazy But Paul is saying, how do I establish and take care of these churches?

I don't want to set them off and be ill-equipped. So the parenting concept is something that we want to hold on to when we read Paul's letters. Every single one of them. Even when we read John's letters and Peter's letters. There's a parenting principle of caring and cherishing and equipping and building up and correcting and discipline and all those things come together rooted in love. Alright, so let's keep going.

That's a little rabbit trail and I apologize, but I wanted to call it out because I think it's worth putting some mental energy into understanding why Paul is establishing these churches these ways. I've got some Bible verses there at the very bottom of page two that are good passages to read on this principle of why Paul was trying to establish the Church and agape love.

Ephesians 3.14-7 is why we're established in love and then why we should have unity. 1 Corinthians 12-14, we went through that last year, that there's a body and that love should be the core of it and our interactions together in the Church should be directed by the Holy Spirit. Romans 12 that we are each rooted in our individual walk with the Lord and that expands to our walk with one another in the body and then we have an outreach to the world around us. So Paul was trying to establish the church so that there would be longevity and equipping and growing and that's why his heart was broken when he heard that there was weakness and people being led to sin.

Alright, verses 30-33, and looking at the time, I think I can just get it done here. Paul's weakness continued, verses 30-33, he says, if I'm going to boast, if I have to boast, I will boast of what pertains to my weakness. So he's redirecting the conversation back to where he's been earlier in this chapter, in this book. So, he's going to boast about what pertains to his weakness, and in the next two weeks we're going to take a look at 2 Corinthians verses 12, 9 through 10, if I have my schedule memorized correctly.

There is some really awesome stuff about weakness there, but I'm going to not go to that. You're going to have to wait for two weeks. But it's really, really, really, really good material. God uses our weakness to show his strength. I'll summarize it that way. So Paul is boasting in his weakness. Why do we need to understand our own weakness?

Okay, that's a really good answer. It's not what I had thought of, but I like that answer better than what I thought of. So that's good. that we can fellowship with the Lord in proper understanding and humility. It also allows us to have more empathy for people we come in contact with who have that same weakness. That reminds me of something.

I had a conversation with somebody once that said, oh I have an addiction. And they were talking to me as though I could not fathom addiction. And I said, oh, let me explain to you. There are certain people that teach that only some subset of the human race has addiction, and then everybody else is normal. And that's not what the Bible teaches. If you look at Romans chapter 1, you see that everybody has a tendency towards addiction. whether it's sexual addiction or worshipping certain things or pursuing various things that make them high or whatever else that's part of Romans chapter 1. Paul says they're all trying to call for you to do it with them. The reason they can do that is they know you're also addicted because you're a descendant from Adam. We have the Holy Spirit.

That's why Galatians 5.16 says if you want to not do the desires of the flesh, those are the addictive desires by the way, If you don't want to do those things, you have to be walking in the spirit. That's what I wish I had understood when I was a teenager and I got addicted to pornography. I went to older men in the church and I was like, hey, I have this problem. And they're like, here's a great psychology book on dealing with this where literally one of the hints was to think about pink elephants. Because if you thought about pink elephants, then you'd remember, oh, I shouldn't do that, and you'd stop doing it. I'm like, that did not help any. All I did was think about pornography and pink elephants, which is really gross and weird.

But the thing is that if someone had said to me, here's Galatians 5.16, here's what God says about addiction and defeating the desires of the flesh, I had a whole lot less heartache. It would have been a useful thing.

So I make sure that my kids know about Galatians 5.16 early. Let's talk about this. You need this. Trust me, you're going to need it. It may not take away all of the pain you're going to experience in life, but you need to know these truths.

So Paul, knowing his weakness, we need to understand our weakness so that we can know where our faith should be. We responded to the gospel because we knew we had weakness. If we stop thinking about the fact that we had weakness, then it's somewhat an ignoring of the reality of the gospel that we believe. Now, we can be strengthened in the Lord, so we don't want to stop with weakness, but we're going to get to that in chapter 12.

And then Paul says in the next verse here, he says, The God and Father of the Lord Jesus, he who is blessed forever, knows that I am not lying. Now, God knows that I'm not lying. On the surface, we hear, God knows that I'm not lying. And we go, OK, Paul is saying God would be his witness. That's true, right? But I don't think I'm not saying that's not true.

But if you were a Jew and you swore to God, that's death penalty kind of swearing. You're taking an oath on God's name If you're lying, you're saying, I'm putting my life on the line. Jews would not mess around if you said, swear to God. And in fact, in Matthew, what we find with Matthew's gospel, Matthew 23.16 tells us that the Jews had made various buffer laws and various swearings to where they wouldn't swear on the altar because that was too holy and you don't want to tarnish God's name, but if you swore on the altar implements, that was like swearing to God, but it was okay, it was a safer thing. So they'd taken what was the oath from Numbers, Numbers chapter 30 verse 2, he says, if you swear to God, you're taking your life on the line.

By the time we get to Matthew, the Jews have liberalized it. They're just making some buffer laws. Like, let's step back from swearing to God. Let's never do that, because then we don't have to kill you. So Paul says, swear to God. My oath is before God.

You will testify I'm not lying. So if you were a Jew in Corinth, and you read this, if you had any Gentile buddies that were sitting with you while you were hearing or listening to this letter or reading it together, you'd be like, wow, Paul is not joking. He's putting his life on the line here, because this Numbers 30 verse 2 says if he's lying, we've got to take him out. So Paul is not joking.

God knows that I'm not lying. Then he says he is blessed forever. And I love that, because here's this thing. where we see Paul, just take a moment, I'm swearing not just by God, not by the God of the Old Testament, but the living God, the one that's blessed forever, the one that saved me. So he swears to God, or swears by God. He knows that I'm not lying.

And then in verse 32 he says, in Damascus, so he's going back to his humiliation, He's saying, I'm testifying that these things are true. And then going back to his humiliation in verse 32, in Damascus, the Ethnarch under Aretas the king was guarding the city of the Damascenes in order to seize me.

Does everybody understand like five of those words? And the other ones are like, hey, those are great for scrabble, right? Actually, one of them is a proper noun, you can't, and the two of them are. The thing is that what we see here in Damascus, so that's a location, it's south of, in the Jewish kingdom, it's very south, it's important.

The Ethnarch, now this is really kind of special, so the Ethnarch was a person under the king who was in charge of corralling and maintaining a certain ethnic group within the community. Historically, there was a lot of racial segregation that was self-inflicted. The Jews stayed together. They were being holy unto God while they were living in Gentile territory. But they were racially segregating themselves, and so the kings would establish ethnarchs. The ethnarch is a governor or a ruler over the Jews in this case.

And the Jews really didn't like Paul sharing the gospel. I don't know why. It's the truth. They should have accepted, but they were a little hesitant for some reason. And the Ethnarch wanted to get Paul under control because the last thing he wanted to do was have to go to Eratus and say, hey, my Jewish people are rioting. Because that could mean his head. That could mean his life. So the Ethnarch is looking for Paul, and if we were to go for a cross-reference we see that this is actually in Acts chapter 9 verses 24 and 25. Paul talks about this.

But let's let's talk about this dude Aretas because Aretas was the king of this Nabees, I can't pronounce it properly, my Middle Eastern historical culture's pronunciation is a bit weak. He's the king of this people group and He was the father-in-law of Herod Antipas. But Herod Antipas divorced Areta's daughter. And Aretas was not going to have anybody disrespect his daughter that way, so he gathered an army and they went up and they took most of Herod Antipas' territory. And Herod Antipas was completely insulted that somebody would come try to take over his Roman territory, so he sent a message to Caesar. And he said, Caesar, this is just terrible. They have disrespected you. Right? Because that's how you sell that. They've totally disrespected you, and so Caesar sends an army. Except the army doesn't really care about Herod Antipas.

So they stop for a little religious holiday that lasts a long time, and Caesar dies. If this feels like a Jerry Springer episode in the back of your mind, it's because it feels like a Jerry Springer episode. Caesar dies, and so the army general finishes his religious break and goes back home. Because the guy who was in charge isn't in charge anymore, and he's like, you know, I don't feel like dying.

So Herod Antipas loses this territory to Aretas. and that's why Aretas was over the Damascenes and so when Paul goes in there and he's preaching the gospel to the Jews first and then the Gentiles in Damascus he upsets the Jews and the Jews are rioting probably based on what we understand and so Paul has to be lowered like a coward like a running fleeing wimp, right? Out the side of the city in a basket.

So when Paul is talking about being persecuted and he's talking about looking weak and he's talking about all these things that he's been through here, he says, I've even done this. But Paul doesn't care. Why does he not care? What matters? What matters is his walk with the Lord and sharing the gospel over here.

Here's the gospel wherever he goes. And so what we see is Paul is boasting in his weakness. He's boasting in the embarrassment of being led out. But it was where God preserved him so that he could go preach the gospel again. Another day, I get to preach the gospel. Now, I think it's worth calling out, as we go through the book of Acts upstairs, what you're going to find is that there are times when Paul runs from the government, and there are times that he walks straight in. And the Holy Spirit directs his steps.

So sometimes he goes right before the governors, and he's like, OK, here's the gospel. And he argues it like a court case. And there are other times when he runs away. He flees because the citizens are going to kill him. In one case, the citizens were going to kill him, and so the government actually sends in with an escort. Well, actually, more than one case that happens. So I've got a question for you.

When do we hear people sharing their own embarrassing experiences at church? Maybe even in a Bible study or in casual conversation. When do we hear those embarrassing stories? Sometimes in the foyer. Sometimes in the foyer. We hear them as we share our testimonies with one another.

As I shared with you earlier, I was actually saved at a young age, but I didn't get taught good position and condition and identification and abiding truths until I was 19. And then that took me a while to kind of wrap my head around. I'm still wrapping my head around it if I'm honest. But we share our weakness with one another, as Margaret pointed out, sometimes so we can come alongside. I mentioned that I had an addictive personality, like we all do, that took pornography. And then when I worked in different junior high and high school youth groups, the young men would come to me and they'd be like, hey, I have this embarrassing thing I have to talk to you about. And I'd be like, guess what?

Let's go to Galatians 5.16, because I didn't have it, but you need this bad. So we share our embarrassing stories sometimes in church. And who's glorified in our embarrassment? The Lord is glorified. God is glorified. And the gospel is declared powerful and life-changing. And the truth of who God is, His faithfulness, His provision, His care for us, is declared.

And so, we can boast in our weakness. And that's exciting. I'm here to tell you that in the flesh I still have an addictive personality. But in the Holy Spirit, I rejoice in being able to share the gospel. I rejoice in being able to say, hey, I screw up still, but Jesus loves me anyways. I rejoice in saying, I bet you that we're brothers and sisters in Christ and we understand each other in that. And I rejoice in knowing that as we are weak together, it's because there's empathy and love between one another. And when we hear that one of us, either in this body or outside the body, is stumbled and sinned, we too are concerned. These truths that are true of Paul, that he's writing about, he's testifying to them, and he says, God will be my witness.

That's us. That's you and me, also. We're not apostles, right? Thankfully, I don't have hundreds of churches I'm hearing about this year. Even though social media makes that seem possible. But we rejoice together in the depth of love and the bond that we have in Christ. and we can care for one another as a consequence of that. Any other thoughts? Things I shouldn't have said? All right, let's close in prayer.

Heavenly Father, we are so grateful for you sending your Son that even though we were unrighteous, you came and redeemed us and called us righteous because we simply believed. We thank you that our testimonies bring glory to you. We thank you that Paul was an example of empathy and care and deep love. We thank you that by your Holy Spirit, he endured so that he could continue to write and reveal your truth to us. We pray for the return of Jesus, but while you tarry, we just pray that we may be a light and be establishing the next generation of those who come after us. In Jesus name, amen.