To Christ I might present you
2 Corinthians 11:1-11 · Vern Peterman · Aug 22, 2010
1 & 2 Corinthians, No. 60
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4926213394231

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

Good morning. I've decided that I will have Hassan come up here and join me up here for a little bit. And one of the things I promised that I would do is ask him several of the questions that he's been asked dozens of times. Go ahead and come on up here. And actually no, I won't do that. He's been with us for about nine weeks here. We have been through quite a time of involving him in studies.

We went through about three weeks of how to study the Bible. We went through polemics, that is, how do we discern what is true and what is false within Christianity. We went through the identification truths and that impact upon counseling. He has studied, between Mike and myself, he's studied the first 11 verses of Romans 5 and of Romans 6 in some depth, and introduction to Greek.

Boy, he's had a whole bunch thrown at him, aside from all the other things that are brand new. things like this is his first time he's ever been in an airport or on an airplane and seen electric garage door openers and automatic dishwashers and things like that you know so uh... anyway he's been amazingly resilient and believe it or not he's actually standing in front of us that's really quite astounding after all that we've thrown at him but one of the things I'd like to have us do is to pray together for him because he's going back to Uganda uh... tonight And he gets to learn the meaning of eternity all over again, being forever on the planes, and in the airports, and the planes, and the airports, and the planes, and the airports, and traveling between three different continents.

And plus, would you say there's not just Uganda to go back to, but there's some new insights to go back with? and uh... wisdom as to how to communicate that some another way we can uh... pray for so let's do that Lord, I thank you for the time that you have graced us with, to have Hassan with us, to share with us as a church body in various ways of fellowship and of teaching. And we thank you, Lord, for the marvelous grace, the amazing grace that you have made clear and made known. And we pray for our brother Hassan as he heads back, for wisdom for him as he goes back to Uganda starting tonight. And we are thankful that he goes back, Lord, with your continuing presence, your very life, as we sang just a moment ago. your very life within Him. And we do thank you for your faithfulness as He goes to as well. And we just entrust everything into your hands. In Jesus' name, Amen. Okay. And do take the time to say goodbye. All right. Okay.

Okay, this passage that Courtney read for us here, 2 Corinthians 11, 1-11, Paul continues to deal with those who are challenging his apostleship. He has dealt with it before. He actually hinted at it in the very first chapter. Now he's beginning to address it at length, and he continues on in this chapter. It seems like, as you read the passage, it's not that everyone in Corinth has this problem, but there's a certain persistent and vocal group that does, and that's the group that he's addressing.

One of the other things we talked about last week, and it continues to show itself, is that in the culture of the Roman Empire and the pagan culture, Humility was not considered a virtue. As a matter of fact, it was looked upon as a character flaw. And so to avoid that terrible, terrible thing of being humble, it was quite common for people to boast.

And so you find Paul addressing boasting. As a matter of fact, you may even wonder, why is he talking about boasting so much? It's because a great many people would boast in order to avoid appearing to have this character flaw. in the culture of the day, this character flaw of humility.

And so Paul says, yes, I will boast, but I'm going to boast about the Lord. I'm going to boast about what the Lord has done, what the Lord is doing, and what he will do. So Paul continues with that. But God does value humility, and he is the one who appointed Paul. Paul is, in fact, not on the basis of boasting, but is, in fact, God's appointed apostle to the Gentiles through Christ.

And that's quite clear. Now, this is from page two of your handout, but you don't need to turn there. I'm just going to introduce it. What Paul was concerned about, while he does address the wrong understanding of himself among the Corinthians and the wrong acceptance of others who are not actually Christ's apostles at all, he does do that What he is really concerned about here are two things. One, not only is it really important that you understand that I am indeed God's Apostle, but even ahead of that, you need to understand that I am the Apostle that is telling you about the true Christ. And I am very concerned, Paul will say in this passage, that these others are presenting to you a different Christ, a substitute, a fake, a pseudo-Christ.

So we'll come back to this issue here in a bit. In verse 2 is one that Courtney read for us and I'd like us to take some time to focus on it. It says this, I betrothed you to one husband so that to Christ I might present you as a pure virgin. Now this is making reference to what was fairly widely known, and that's the Jewish wedding customs and the marriage customs. And so yes, I'm going to be doing a little bit of digressing. At this point, what we're going to do is go through the Jewish marriage and wedding traditions and how those were reflected in what Christ said to his disciples towards the end of the Gospels and what Paul and the other apostles wrote to the church. And I have a warning to make.

When I get on this topic, sometimes I get a little sideways. Nancy and I were married 37 years ago. And what I find is I just get more and more intense about it. And I was just a couple of days ago telling Chris Smucker, who was visiting this last week but had to leave for home yesterday, so he isn't here today. I was just telling him that when I look at this, I come to realize, more so than I did on our wedding day, and boy, let me tell you, on our wedding day I got sideways. But anyway, I get sideways because of this.

As the church is the bride of Christ, and as Ephesians 5 spells out, the relationship between Christ and the church is the example for the husband and wife relationship. It grabs me at heart. It grabs me at heart. that every day that Nancy and I are married, that the Lord grants us and graces us with that, we have the privilege of expressing the eternal romance between Christ and the Church. That grabs me. So if I get a little sideways, you'll understand. Or at least try to. The relationship between Christ and the Church as the ultimate marriage relationship is a romance begun here in extending into all eternity. It's a continuing thread in the New Testament.

In Ephesians 3, 1 through 4, it tells us, blessed be the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us already with every spiritual blessing on the heavenly places in Christ. And here's the key part, the start of verse 4, just as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world. that we would be holy and blameless before him in love.

The father did the choosing of the bride, the church, for his son, just as was done in the Jewish families. God the father chose a bride for his son. You're the bride. We, the church, are the bride of Christ. We were chosen as Christ's marriage partner for eternity. In that same passage, it says, and that we would be holy and blameless before him. Now, first of all, that term holy and blameless was the term that was used to describe the ideal bride, holy and blameless before the Lord.

But the before him part is something we need to look at. That presentation at the wedding was a presentation before the groom. It was a presentation by the groom, it was a presentation by all the family and friends, and it was a presentation of the bride for herself. Let's take a look at that.

Ephesians 5.27, that's the last part of chapter 5 in Ephesians 5. His passage on marriage where it gives the illustration of Christ and the church as the example for husband and wife. It says this, that he might present to himself. That's the other aspect of this. The presenting of the bride to himself was a part of the wedding ceremony. the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she would be, what? Holy and blameless, just like the choosing at the very beginning. This was the description of the ideal bride.

In Colossians 1.22 and 2 Corinthians 11.2, that same presenting and holy and blameless principle is put there. Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 11 to I betrothed you to one husband so that to Christ I might present you. You see all those who were at the wedding and involved in the time up to the wedding had a responsibility during that time to preserve the bride holy and blameless up until the day of the wedding to deliver her and present her before the groom holy and blameless. So Paul says, I betrothed you to one husband, and the betrothal period in the tradition lasted a year, so that to Christ I might present you. There is a presenting time that's going to go on. When we pass through heaven's gates, there's a presenting that's going to go on to Christ. That's the big wedding, okay? This is the ultimate wedding. And the Jewish wedding practices went like this.

At the appointed time, the father would send the prospective bridegroom from the father's house to the home of the prospective bride. That would be the pattern. And as Jesus repeatedly claimed, we have been studying in the Thursday night study at Laban and Cady's, the Gospel of John, and we saw again and again, I've taken just a sampling of it, Jesus claiming, the Father himself who sent me, the Father sent me, he sent me. Repeatedly Jesus makes this claim. And it follows just in the pattern of the Jewish wedding tradition. The father would send the son to the home of the bride.

There, the son would negotiate with the father of the woman, according to guidance given him by his own father, the father of the woman, to determine the purchase price of the bride. For us, the church, the bride price was Christ's death on the cross. Now, it's been interesting, as I've had discussions with Hassan, to talk about the customs in Uganda. Because there, a very typical bride price, as I understand it, would be three cows. And for a more qualified bride, it might be much more, maybe even twice that. Well, the custom was also to pay a bride price in New Testament times. And the bride price that Christ paid was his death on the cross. And that is why he would say, for the joy set before him, he endured the cross.

That's why we also saw in 1 Corinthians 6.20 you have been bought with a price.

Not to be an article, not to be a thing, but to be a bride. Once the bridegroom then paid the purchase price, the marriage arrangement was thereby established. And the young man and the woman were then considered to be husband and wife as betrothed. It was not considered then permissible or proper for them to be physically intimate. But nonetheless, the engagement was more than our informal engagements. It had legal standing. Joseph when he was betrothed to Mary and discovered that she was with child Joseph Was planning until he understood differently was planning to divorce Mary and To put her away quietly as scripture puts it to do it in rather quiet terms because he didn't want to bring all sorts of notoriety and embarrassment there was plenty of that to begin with and But to divorce her, why? It's because the betrothal was an official event in biblical times. In 1 Peter 1, 18 and 19, it says, and you were not redeemed with perishable things like gold or silver, but with precious blood as of a lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ.

That was the bride price paid. Since Christ was the bridegroom and has paid the price, The marriage arrangement has indeed been established, and the church is now betrothed to Christ. That's exactly what Paul says there in 2 Corinthians 11. We are at present, right now, we in the church are betrothed to Christ. It's official. The bride price has been paid. The arrangement has been made. We are now in the betrothal period. That's where we stand at this moment. Even if you're single, you're engaged.

In Romans 7.4, Paul wrote this, Therefore, my beloved, you also were made to die to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may be joined to another, to him who was raised from the dead.

Christ died on the cross to pay the bride price. He also died to separate us from the law. Why? To separate us from the law so that we could be joined to Him. So that we could be joined to Him. It is one of the reasons for believers to come to understand that we're not under law. Not any law. As a matter of fact, for us to cling to the law is by this very passage comparable for someone, though engaged to be married to another, still enthralled with the one that they were previously joined to. That's not quite right, is it?

Then the bridegroom would declare to the bride before the father of the bride that she was consecrated, sanctified, and set apart exclusively for her bridegroom. That's why Paul would say in Ephesians 5.25 that Christ paid the bride price so that he might sanctify the church, his chosen bride. Sanctified, set apart, made holy. As a symbol of the marriage relationship that had been established, the groom and the bride would drink from a cup of wine over which a betrothal benediction had been pronounced. So our taking of the Lord's table, as we do customarily at the beginning of each month, is a commemoration of the betrothal that we have with Christ. Isn't that something? It's a commemoration of the betrothal that we have with Christ, who has paid the bride price in full with his own blood.

And as 1 Corinthians 11.26 says, until he comes. Why until he comes? Well, we'll get to that in just a minute, okay? Can you handle it? All right.

Then the betrothed bridegroom would begin preparing a place for the bride and the bridegroom to live in which they would live together once the wedding had taken place. So this is why Jesus in John 14, 3 and 4 says, I go and prepare a place for you. I will come again and receive you to myself that where I am you may be also.

Can you imagine how puzzled and baffled the disciples were? Here Jesus is meeting with them. It's Passover time. And what does he do? He starts talking wedding words to them. That must have shocked them. I go to prepare a place for you. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Aren't those words that you say to your bride-to-be? Yes, exactly. That's the point. They must have been stunned to hear these words.

From then until the time of the wedding, the father was to keep the bride consecrated, sanctified, and set apart exclusively for her bridegroom. Jesus praying to the father said sanctify them in the truth your word is truth That's our sanctifying process folks The betrothal is has already taken place The wedding is going to take place just beyond heaven's gates We're right now in this betrothal period How are we going to be sanctified and set apart? Jesus said it right there in John 17, 17, as he prayed there at the Garden of Gethsemane, hours before his crucifixion, hours before he was there getting ready to pay the bride price. What did he say?

Sanctify them in the truth. Your word is truth. When we gather here this morning and study God's word, why are we doing that? This is the sanctifying that the Father wants. This is the sanctification that's in preparation for that day when we'll walk through heaven's gates. And it'll be the wedding day. Family and friends were expected to help in this task. And I think that's what Paul is talking to. He was considering himself part of the family and friends who wanted to be part of this presentation. Obviously, Paul had a pivotal point here.

Says, I betrothed you to one husband. I wanted to present you as a pure virgin. But something's going wrong. We'll talk about that shortly here. So that to Christ might present you as a pure virgin is what he said. Among the Jewish wedding customs in New Testament times, when a bride was betrothed, It was the solemn duty of the bride's family and friends and the father of the bride and even the bridegroom himself to be able to present the bride to the bridegroom as a pure virgin, holy and blameless and beyond reproach. That was the solemn duty of everyone. Isn't it interesting you have this wedding and it's not just the event, it's the culmination of a whole time where everybody who is concerned about this young woman has had a part. And by the way, doesn't that mean that we have a part in sanctifying one another? Everybody who is there who is a part of the family and who is a friend would want to see the bride presented as this holy and blameless bride, as a pure virgin.

2 Corinthians 4.14, He will present us with you Same picture. Everybody there is to present the bride to the bridegroom. The bride was also to prepare for that wedding day. She was in her preparation for the wedding to take the customary bridal bath. Not just so she was physically clean, I'm sure that was a part of it, but to picture her moral cleanliness up to that point.

So Paul wrote to the church at Corinth, 1 Corinthians 6.11, but you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified, declared righteous in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and the Spirit of our God.

On the wedding day, the father of the bridegroom would say to the bridegroom, go get your bride! And he wasn't supposed to leave until he heard that, right? This might provide some insight as to why Christ would defer to the father as to the timing of his coming for us. There will be a day, I hope it's today, when the father will tell the son, go get your bride. Maybe Hassan won't have to fly home. Maybe he won't have to take him to the airport.

The bridegroom would then go to receive his consecrated, sanctified, set-apart bride unto himself, to be presented to him by the bride's father and family and friends, and the groom also presenting her to himself, she being holy and blameless. In Revelation 19, 7 and 8, A time as described, it could be as close as about seven years from now. Let us rejoice and be glad and give glory to him for the marriage of the lamb has come and his bride has made herself ready. It was given to her to clothe herself in fine linen, bright and clean. For the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints.

Revelation 21.9, just second to the last chapter of the whole Bible. Then one of the seven angels, who had the seven bowls full of the seven plagues, came and spoke with me, saying, Come here, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb." As Paul moves on into verses 3 and 4 in this passage here, the poetic pattern we have laid out there on a slide on page 2.

He says, but I'm afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your minds will be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ. Think of how the serpent deceived Eve. First there was a questioning, did God really say? Then there was a questioning of God's character. Oh, God really isn't doing the right thing by you because he knows that you'll You know, I have this advantage if you eat the fruit. And finally, a complete denial of what God said, an outright lie. She was deceived. She had not been there when God told Adam, don't eat of it. And so she somehow got this turned around. But Adam knew what he was doing.

So reference here is to the church being led astray, or at least some of them being led astray, their minds led astray from the simplicity. Instead of following the right path, there appeared to be a fork in the road. Oh, I can choose this path or this one, not realizing that there was one path that was very toxic. That was the fear that Paul had, is that their minds would be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ.

Oh, well, look, we've got these other apostles, and they've got another Jesus. And it sounds pretty good. It's certainly appealing. And by the way, these guys are using all the right words. They've been to marketing classes or something, right? But then he says in verse 4, 4, if one comes and preaches another Jesus whom we have not preached, or you receive a different spirit which you have not received, or a different gospel which you have not accepted, and Paul speaks kind of facetiously, you bear this beautifully. It's actually rather scary. He says, I'm afraid. I'm afraid because you guys receive it all too easily. It sounds too smooth. It's too easy to accept it. Let me ask you this. Ever seen a wax apple and just been tempted to take a bite out of it? Probably not so much, right? And that's really what Paul's talking about here. It kind of looks like an apple, but it's not really.

He's saying the hazard there is somebody presents another Jesus, might even give it the name Jesus. Another Jesus. Ever been in a restaurant and you go in there and you notice in the kind of the entry area they have these desserts sitting out? And the only reason that this dessert doesn't look really, really bad is somebody comes along and dusts it every once in a while, you know? And matter of fact, they may even run it through the dishwasher, I don't know. But the food is fake food.

And after you look closely, you go, well, those cherries look pretty good, but, you know, you really wouldn't want to eat it. Well, that's what some of these Corinthians were doing. They were biting the wax apple. They were trying to chew on the fake cheesecake or whatever it is, right?

He says, I'm afraid that somebody comes up with another Jesus and you accept it all too well. You don't discern the difference. A different spirit. A different gospel. Have you ever heard of a really nice gospel? You see, a gospel in which, you know, Christ didn't die for your sins. As a matter of fact, you don't really have a sin problem. You just got to join Jesus' team. You know, or be committed. Right? Make a commitment to Christ. Something of that sort.

Paul does address the wrong understanding of himself, as we mentioned earlier, and the wrong acceptance of others who are not actually Christ's apostles at all. And that's what he does substantially in this passage. The much bigger issue, the one that he was really concerned about, was that they would accept the wrong Jesus rather than the Christ of Scripture. Notice he's writing to these people who for all appearances seem to be believers.

So what happens if we, as believers, as people who are saved, then get sold on a wrong Jesus? Oh, it may even have the name Jesus, but not the right one. What happens if you get sold on the wrong Jesus? You buy into it. What happens? Well, guess what? We, as we behold the Lord Jesus Christ, are transformed. Are we not?

2 Corinthians 3.18. We are transformed after we believe as we behold Christ. What happens when you behold the wrong Jesus? You aren't transformed. You aren't transformed. How about a Jesus that's just kind of a coach? Jesus just kind of a life coach, you know? Kind of give you clues and cues and that sort of thing about how to go through life.

Would you buy that Jesus? How about that one? How about a Jesus that's just really nice? I mean, real friendly, you know, outgoing, gregarious, you know? Boy, I mean, he's got you, right? Just a Jesus who's just really nice. I mean, just the friendliest sort of guy you could ever imagine. Is that the kind of Jesus you want to buy into? Or how about the Jesus that's still on the cross?

He's still there. And you go the next week and He's still there. And He's there and it makes you feel really, really bad. And you just feel like you need to play the blues, right? Right? You've got to play the blues because Jesus is there and you feel really, really bad. And you go to church in order to feel really, really bad. Right? Okay.

Or how about the Jesus that you've been identified with? The one that Scripture describes? where you've been identified in his death, in his burial, resurrection, ascension, and seeding. How about the Jesus that's described in Scripture? How about the Jesus, the one that we're called to behold?

Or as Hebrews 12.2 puts it, looking unto him, that Jesus, that one. Paul was concerned that they not accept some other Jesus because it sells well. because people can make a lot of money.

Several years back, a friend of ours from Carson City was out here in Denver because they had the Christian Booksellers Association. And I'd never been to such a thing before. They took me on a tour. I was rather blown away because most of the booths there for the Christian Booksellers Association were what he calls Jesus junk.

You take stuff and you put a fish on it. You take things and you put a cross on it. You know, I don't know, just about anything you could sell, you can put crosses and fish on it and pictures of Jesus and make Jesus junk. And they even had Christian bubblegum. I'm not kidding you. The whole thing was Christian bubblegum and various other kinds of candies. So, you know, whatever.

The key thing here, however, is Paul's concern is real and genuine, and he quite understands what's at stake. When we go to be with the Lord, when we get to be presented before Him, and by the way, that could be today, okay? When we go to see the Lord face to face, Will we be shocked because he's not the Lord that we expected? Or will he be the Lord that we've been beholding truthfully in the truth as revealed in God's Word all along? Will we say, yeah, that's the one. That's my Lord. That's my Savior. Are you ready to say, I do? Are you ready to say, I do? Good. Let's pray.

Lord, as we look at this passage, what precious and deep things are here, and what critical things, too. We are right now betrothed to our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, the one with whom we will have an eternal romance. on into the rolling ages of eternity. And your grace, Lord, will be ever made known and demonstrated. We pray that we would have discernment now for that day to come, perhaps even today, when we see you face to face. We look to you to guide and lead us. And we thank you, Lord, that we even now have access access to you, the one to whom we're betrothed. We pray in Jesus name. Amen.