Well, our studies in 2 Corinthians continue this morning. We come to chapter 10. Paul has been writing, as we have seen, about his ministry. And we’ve seen that the first part of this letter, Paul has had to define, had to defend himself, define and defend his ministry. And in doing so, he has opened his heart to them. And he shared both the anguish and the ecstasy of serving Christ, his service to the Lord, and all that goes along with that. And the last time we saw some peace that had come as Paul started to encourage them to share in this great offering that he’s urging the Gentile churches to take for the impoverished, famine-stricken Jewish believers in Jerusalem. And this was important, remember, because it would shine a light, shine a spotlight on the gospel itself. And so that the world may see the gospel accomplishing, doing something that the world had never seen before. Jews and Gentiles trusting in Christ, united in this new fellowship of the Christian church. But now there’s another change in atmosphere, another change in mood as we go into chapter 10. And as we’ve read through the Corinthian letters and indeed other parts of the New Testament, we’ve seen that it can sometimes be like overhearing one side of a phone conversation. You only hear one part, and by reason and clues and deduction, you try to figure out what’s going on, the other part of the conversation, so that we can understand what’s being said, what it is that Paul is addressing.

In 2 Corinthians 10, Paul gives us a number of clues about the conversation that he’s having with them, with the Corinthians. And indeed, we see in chapters 10 through 13, we see Paul is responding to this fresh outbreak of opposition at Corinth. And the tone of these chapters assumes that the situation in Corinth had become desperately dangerous once again. The apostle Paul is under attack, directly under attack. And actually, this was true of Paul’s life in general. If we know anything about Paul and his life and his ministry, this was something, by and large, that was true of Paul. These attacks usually came from those who had already believed the Old Testament, or from those who believed the Old Testament, and then came into the Christian church. In Corinth, there were some whose voices were shooting arrows, as it were, directly at Paul, directly in attack against Paul. And sadly, this is not uncommon in ministry on the whole. I’ve heard it described a number of times from people that say, churches like this, the church is the only hospital that poisons its doctors, or the church is the only army that shoots its generals. And this was certainly taking place in Paul’s ministry, right? Paul, the church planter, the apostle, the pastor that planted this church, was taking fire from the church itself, some in the church. And indeed, at the end of the day, in whatever Christian service we are engaged, it’ll be very unusual in some sense if we do not at times find ourselves in our service to Jesus Christ under some kind of attack. We’ve taken a side in this great cosmic battle, and we will take fire as we live for and serve the Lord Jesus. And so as we look at this chapter, I want us to see Four places where Paul quotes his attackers, right? There are no quotation marks in Greek nor in Hebrew for that matter But that’s what he’s doing if he could do air quotes That’s what he’s doing here in these four places and he talks about things that the that some of the church were saying about for instance, the first of these is in verse one of chapter 10, right? You see that where he says, I who am humble when face to face with you, but bold towards you when I am away. They were saying this about Paul. This is what they were saying. When he’s here, he’s harmless and gentle. But when he’s away, he’s a savage. He’s harsh in his letters. And then later in chapter, I’m sorry, in verse eight, notice he says, for even if I boast a little too much of our authority, This is what they were saying about him as well, that he was always boasting, he was over-boasting about his authority. And they’re saying, can we trust someone like this? Someone who’s always boasting about his authority? And then in chapter, in verse 10, there’s a direct quotation. It says this, they say his letters are weighty and strong, but his bodily presence is weak, and his speech is of no account. When you read his letters, They say, Paul is mighty and really impressive and weighty, but when you see him, he’s pathetic and fragile. And then in verse 14, he says, we are not overextending ourselves. We’re not stretching beyond ourselves. And this is what they’re saying about Paul. He’s always going too far. He’s an extremist. He’s always going too far in his preaching of the gospel. And so these are four things as we structure this chapter, as we work through it, that we see these four quotations or attacks that we’ll look at.

And they are this, they said that Paul was too inconsistent in verses one to six, that Paul was too authoritative in verses seven to nine, that Paul was unexceptional in verses 10 to 12, and then in verses 13 to 18, that Paul was too ambitious. And of course, there are very prominent things in Paul’s life, right? And we can see very clearly in Paul that these things that we’re going to look at in some ways. We see in our own Christian lives and the attacks that come to us. Things like this happened to price people. And when they happen to us as the people of God, they make absolutely zero sense apart from the reality of the understanding, the context of the spiritual battle and the spiritual opposition in conflict for those of us who are in a foreign land, in exile, as it were, away from our true homeland. You’re probably not unaware that pastors get attacked very often. It’s not unusual to be attacked, not only physically in some places in some parts of the world, but spiritually, and they are persecuted. And all kinds of Christians are also attacked and grow through hard times in attacks and persecution. And even in the lives of everyday, ordinary Christians, these things that Paul exhorts us about are a reality at times. And you’ve gone through these things as well. You go through the stuff, the hard times, the rudeness, the ridicule, the betrayal, and on and on. And it shouldn’t surprise us that if we are servants of the Lord Jesus Christ, we find these same accusations in subtle ways directed against us. And we see what Paul is telling us here that because we belong to the king, arrows will come and they do come.

And so let’s first look here at the beginning in verses one to six. We see Paul is being accused of being too inconsistent, right? He’s being accused of the severity of what they perceive as his inconsistency. So this is one of the ways of condemning Paul was to say that he, see where there it says, he walks according to the flesh, right? That is that ultimately he’s just like everyone else, fickle, unstable, wishy-washy. When he’s here, he’s soft and meek, but when he’s away, he’s like a lion roaring at us. And they’re saying that these two realities are inconsistent. They don’t make sense. They say he’s inconsistent because he’s so gentle on one hand and so fierce on the other. And so that was the first arrow, the first attack, the Apostle Paul, the planter, the Corinthian church. That was the first one. And it seems, doesn’t it, when we hear this criticism, this attack, but they were completely ignorant of the Lord Jesus Christ. Think about Christ and his ministry, his characteristics and who he was, how tender and gentle he could be with sinners, right? Or with children, come to me, or he would touch the brokenhearted or the broken in body, in mercy, in tenderness, in gentleness. And then think of how fierce he could be with the self-righteous of his own time. Remember, turning over tables, driving out money changers with a whip. So being completely ignorant of this reality of Christ, they were able to attack Paul as being inconsistent. And that’s what’s key here. How could Paul be accused of cowardice and simultaneously accused of such strength? And we have a clue to the answer to this in the next chapter, in chapter 11, verse two, where Paul says, 2 Corinthians 11, two, I feel a divine jealousy for you since I betrothed you to one husband to present you as a pure virgin to Christ. He says, I’m your spiritual father. That’s what he’s saying there. I’ve betrothed you as a father to one husband, Jesus Christ, to present you how? It’s pure. It’s pure. Now, how do we as fathers do this with our children? When we’re training our children and teaching, particularly our sons and our daughters, particularly our daughters, and preparing her and looking forward to her wedding day in the future. And the father tries, from all that he has to tell her, dear daughter, keep yourself pure, pure for the man that God has waiting for you, that he’s ordained for you. Live for him now, so that when you receive the one that God has planned for you, you won’t have the regrets and the scars that he is sweet and he’s tender and he’s soft with her. And on the other side of this father’s love, father’s love can be strong towards his daughter. He’ll plead with her, he’ll correct her, he’ll warn her from danger. But all along when she sins and falls and fails or is discouraged or unsure about herself, that same father can take his daughter in his arms Right and simply remind her again and again. I love you. You’re safe. God’s grace is here for you always and always and forever. And when we see these things, it helps to clarify for us these two ends of the spectrum for Paul that he exhibited towards these people whom he loved. It’s his love and his jealousy, he says in St. Corinthians 2, St. Corinthians 11-2, for God’s people. It’s his love and jealousy that makes him both of these things. But these people attacking Paul have no love for the Corinthians. Their only interest is in their own reputation and what Paul’s love and instruction says about them. So we come again and again to the self-obsessed, self-focused narcissism that is so prevalent presents itself in all of these ways. And so they accused Paul of being too inconsistent. And Paul says, we have spiritual weapons for that, for all of it, to deal with it. In verses three to five, for we walk Though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh, for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised up against the knowledge of God and take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. There’s a lot there. There’s so much there. We’ll look more at this in a few weeks. But for now, notice that Paul was accused of being inconsistent. This was their slander towards him.

And then secondly, in verses seven and eight, notice he’s accused of being too authoritative, boasting in his own authority. Even if I boast a little too much of our authority, I will not be ashamed, he says. So some people were saying, who does he think he is talking to us like this? Who does he think he is? Verse seven, if anyone is confident that he is Christ’s, let him remind himself that just as he is Christ’s, so are we. And some scholars, in trying to make sense of this and understand and flesh out what’s going on here, they think that this is talking about people who have seen and heard Jesus at some point. in Palestine, for instance. And they’re saying, we saw Jesus, we know about Jesus. We’re from Palestine, Paul’s not from there. This is Saul of Tarsus, and not Paul of Palestine. He came here, he’s not from here. We know Jesus, Paul isn’t Jesus. Forget about Paul. It’s Jesus that we need. And this can sound very spiritual to some. And indeed, theologically liberal, critical scholars, unbelieving scholars are infamous for this kind of thing, right? Pitting Jesus against Paul, pitting them against one another. But it’s not only critical scholars who do this. You may have heard or read this kind of thing yourself. It’s quite prevalent, really. People say they love Jesus. Give me Jesus. They want nothing to do with Paul or the rest of the New Testament. They love the Sermon on the Mount, for instance. The Can’t Stand Paul. I recall seeing an interview a number of years ago now, and this is exactly what happened. It was an interview with a panel of people, but one of them was that spiritual self-help guru, Deepak Chopra, the unbelieving, I think, Indian man. And he was trying to praise the Bible, and he said, I carry the Sermon on the Mount always with me, I always have it with me. And then in everything else that he said, he denies the reality of Christ. He denies and really belittles the rest of the teaching of the New Testament. He wouldn’t accept the teaching of Paul. And what does this tell us about people like that? People like this who say this kind of thing have clearly not even read the Sermon on the Mount. The Sermon on the Mount, you’ll recall, ends with Jesus saying that there will be people who will stand before me on that last day, and I’ll tell them what they did in the Lord’s name. They will tell me, Jesus says, what they did in the Lord’s name. And Jesus will say what? Do you remember the reply? Depart from me, I never knew you. You’re saying, pardon me? I have no idea who you are. That’s how the Sherman on the Mount ends. And they never want to address that part. The Sherman on the Mount is about plucking out your eye if it causes you to sin, or cutting off your hand if it causes you to sin. The reality is, unless you belong to Christ and have found forgiveness, the Sherman on the Mount will build up condemnation for you. So none of this crazy talk that I love Jesus, but I can’t stand Paul. That’s the speech of the ignorant. That’s the speech of those who hate Christ. It’s also the speech of someone who doesn’t understand that the Apostle Paul was not on the road to Damascus on a Christian missions trip, right? He was there for what? To destroy the church of Christ. Christ took hold of him. And so you see they’re complaining about Paul’s boasting in exercise of his authority. Paul has no authority, however, in and of himself, right? It’s never his claim. He was exercising all of his authority when he was on his way to destroy the Christian church. And Jesus floored him and left him with no authority. And after that, he was a man under authority, the authority of Jesus Christ. And the Lord sent him to the Gentiles to show them Jesus. And so he says in 2 Corinthians 10, you think I boast a little too much? I’m just telling you what the Lord Jesus did so amazingly, so wonderfully, so powerfully in my life. And they said, what, this other attack that comes so often? He’s arrogant. Paul is arrogant. And I don’t know if you’ve experienced this or you’ve heard or seen this or felt it. And when a believer says, perhaps you or someone else, I know my sins are forgiven. I know I’m going to glory by virtue of what Christ has done. Many times the reaction is what? It’s outrage. How could you? I wonder if you’ve ever said that and people jump all over you. You arrogant person. How conceited, right? And that’s yet again another sign that they don’t understand the gospel. Often it’s a sign of false humility or self-righteousness. I’m too spiritual to make dogmatic statements. Who do you think you are? How dare you be so sure? Have you heard that? Because you see, if Jesus Christ has died on the cross in my place and said that everyone who trusts in him, he will take into his presence. If your trust is in him, it would be arrogant not to believe him. They don’t understand the gospel. And this is what’s going on here. We like Paul. We like Jesus, we hate Paul. We don’t like this assurance that Paul has, that God has saved him, that he’s called him. He’s too sure, he’s too dogmatic. So Paul says, no, actually what you don’t like is Jesus, that’s who you don’t like. So the accuser of being too inconsistent and being too authoritative, and then thirdly in verse 10, the accuser of being too unexceptional, right? Mediocre, under-impressive. And if you step back for a second and you think, well, these things don’t really go together. How can they accuse him on the one hand of saying, this man is trying to exercise too much authority, and on the other hand say, he’s just blah, right? He’s unimpressive, unexceptional. He writes big, but talks pathetically. He’s weak. And these accusations don’t fit together, of course. And others have pointed out, that often when you hear people criticizing, talking about others, talking about someone else, they’re actually talking about themselves. It’s not really about the person. Because they’ve made what? They’ve made themselves the standard by which to judge everyone else. And that’s what’s happening here. Paul’s unexceptional, they said. In verse 10, his letters are weighty and strong. And they certainly are. But when we meet him, his bodily presence is weak and his speech is of no account. They demean him because apparently he was not particularly imposing or impressive when he came. We have no description of Paul in the New Testament. And as far as we know, there’s only one description that we have in antiquity. And it matches what is said here. It says he was of low stature. It says he was bald, he had crooked thighs, he had hollowed eyes, he had a crooked nose. And it also says he was full of grace. And sometimes it seemed like he was a man and other times it seemed he had the countenance of an angel. And so here’s this little man. He’s bald, he has a messed up nose, he has problems with his eyes. He’s not much to look at. He’s rather quite strange. and they degraded him and they demeaned him and they insulted him. But Paul uses his spiritual weapon. And he says what he says, in effect, they’re demeaning me because the only people they ever compare anyone to is themselves. And that’s a great way to think well of yourself, right? You be the standard. And sadly, that’s not uncommon as well. People are all too comfortable judging and condemning others because others are not just like them. Something we all need to be aware of. We all need to be aware of this. Jesus is the standard, not me, not you. People like this in Corinth, they found themselves in their own eyes being beyond learning, beyond the possibility that they just might be wrong. They might be grossly wrong. and it is unwise, and it is foolish, and it’s a dangerous place, brothers and sisters, to be. Scripture is the standard, Jesus is the standard, right? But Paul bursts their bubble when he says they’re not just comparing themselves with, he says they’re only comparing themselves with themselves and everyone else. They’re saying we are the standard, and anybody who’s different from us, by definition, is what, necessarily, less than we are. These people are saying things like, don’t you know who we are? They just accused Paul of doing that very thing. But Paul, on the other hand, was always saying, don’t you understand? Don’t you know who he is? This Jesus? Paul’s saying they’re only superior because they compare everyone else with themselves and they regard themselves as a standard for all things. And in doing so, they reveal themselves in their sin. So Paul’s accused of being too inconsistent, being too authoritative, being unexceptional, and none of these charges are true.

And then fourthly, in verses 13 to 18, he’s accused of being too ambitious, of overactivity, of overextending himself, stretching too far. And remember, there was this agreement, right? You’ll recall from the book of Acts, as we read the history of the church, the Acts of the Apostles, right? There’s this agreement in the early church that Peter and those who served Christ with Peter would go to the Jews, and that Paul and those who served with him, served Christ with him, would go to the Gentiles. And Paul made a point, very strong point, of not moving over into someone else’s missional territory. And he was always saying, we’ve got to go further. We’ve got to go further and farther with the gospel. And his attackers respond to this, saying he’s always overextending himself. He’s always overactive, right, in verse 14. And Paul just goes and tells them what? He tells them that he and his coworkers were so overactive that they even came to Corinth. It’s by this activity that the gospel came to you, Corinthians. He says, for we were the first to come all the way to you with the gospel. In other words, he’s saying that if it wasn’t for their overactivity, for their extending themselves, for their ambition in the gospel, compelled by Christ, there wouldn’t be a church in Corinth. And he tells them that they would embrace his zeal for the spread of the gospel. They would be able to reach other places, places beyond and places new, bring the gospel to Christ to others as well. And that’s the point that he’s making. What is it? The point is this, that those who seek to destroy your humble service to Christ very often do so because they have no interest whatsoever in reaching others with the gospel. That’s always a good test, right? Do we want the gospel to reach others? And under this facade of demeaning Paul, they were really giving evidence of the fact that they had no interest in evangelizing the lost. They were criticizing him for fulfilling his calling. He was a sent one, didn’t send himself, he was not self-sent, he was sent by the Lord Jesus Christ. They had no love for their neighbors, they had no care for others. Our task, right, the end of Matthew tells us, is the great commission. Our goal is to bring the gospel to our city, to those people that you know, people that you work with, people that you love, people on teams with your, sports teams with your children, to your families. And what did Jesus say to his disciples? To go into all the world, preach the gospel to every creature. Now, does that mean that you can’t do that because you’re grounded here in Fort Wayne? I can’t get to every creature, so I can’t do any of this. Must we fail this commandment of Jesus if we don’t think we can go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature? Of course not. Why is that? No one can do all of that. We’re finite creatures, sadly. at times. But what it means is that you can’t do what? You can preach the gospel to the creature nearest to you. Because you can’t preach the gospel to every creature as an individual doesn’t mean you can preach the gospel to no creature, right? Preach to your neighbors, to your friends. Tell them, remind them, invite them. The command that’s given is not for you as an individual to fulfill, but for the whole church to fulfill. But you see these opponents, these attackers, these critics of Paul, they’re saying what? We don’t like the way Paul does things. And the answer could have come, I like the way I do things better than the way that you don’t do anything. And that was a problem there. And sadly, brothers and sisters, this is often a problem in the church by and large. Does the church love people enough to serve them in Christ’s name? to invite them to hear the message of the gospel, to have a confrontation with the Lord Jesus Christ. Does the church love them enough to engage with them and to engage them with the Redeemer who saved us by his life and death? To pray for them and put up with them, to be available for them, to put their own interests aside for the sake of others, sake of the gospel. to live with integrity, to love them, to show them with our lives who we are and to whom we belong. For these false teachers at Corinth, the answer to all of these was certainly, no, we don’t love them enough to do these things. And then finally think about this. It’s interesting that these four things, Right, he was too inconsistent, he’s too authoritative, he’s too unexceptional, he’s too ambitious. You think about it, all four of these things that came, these accusations that came against Paul, were things of which our Lord Jesus was accused as well. We can read about them in the Gospels. He was accused of inconsistency. What are you doing spending so much time with sinners, Jesus? They’ll dirty you. Of course, we know that holiness had a reverse contagion, right? He wasn’t dirty by their sinfulness. He made them clean by his holiness. Then he was accused of exercising too much authority, divine authority. Where does your authority come from, Jesus, they said to him. He was accused of being unexceptional, accused of his unexceptionality, right? Nazareth, really? Can anything good come from Nazareth? There can’t be much to him if he comes from that place. He was accused of being too ambitious, right? He was almost murdered long before he was actually murdered because he said what? He said, the gospel is about to break out of this Jewish community and go to the ends of the earth. That’s ambitious and upset the world. and they wanted to take him and stone him to death because of it. It’s the lesson that the Lord taught his disciples in the upper room before he went on his own to be crucified in John 15, where he said, my dear disciples, here are the fundamentals of living the Christian life as it is with the master, so it will be with his servants. And Paul gives this most beautiful illustration Right at the beginning of the chapter in verse one, 2 Corinthians 11, notice the words, I pull myself and treat you by the meekness and gentleness of Christ. He front loads what he’s doing with those very things. And you know, those are almost the only two personal characteristics of himself that the Lord ever drew attention to in his earthly life. Notice when you read the Gospels, He very rarely draws attention to his own personal characteristics. But in those famous verses, those well-known verses, those comforting verses, at the end of chapter 11 of the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus says this, come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle, and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, my burden is light. Come to me, he says. You can trust me, because I am gentle, I am meek, and I will minister precisely, perfectly to your needs. And Paul is able to do that for a very simple reason. It’s because he’s sure that the Lord has called him. And not only is he sure that the Lord has called him, right? And this is so important, especially for you who are younger in your Christian lives of age or of where you are on the spectrum of your growth and sanctification and understanding and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. It’s important because many of the things you go through can appear to be so discouraging and they feel discouraging. but we must see, we must grasp what Paul is saying here. Those of us of all ages, we teach this to our children. As all of this comes upon him, and it was very hurtful, it was very painful, but you see, in all of it, he’s turning to the Lord Jesus, and he’s saying, Lord, this is painful, but it’s not about me, it’s about you. And it’s because it’s about you that I can remain meek and gentle and face such pain and opposition and slander and whatever it might be. And that could be you this morning. Maybe it is you here this morning. Maybe you’ve gone through this or experiencing it right now at the office or at school or in your family or your social connections that you have, that the arrows come and the little rude comments that are made whenever you’re in the room, or that you hear about them maybe later when you’re not in the room. And it can be painful, and it is painful. But like Paul, brothers and sisters, you can say, Lord Jesus, this is because I’m yours, and it’s not really about me. And you can deal with it, because he can deal with it, and he will. How did Paul know this? How could Paul say with such confidence these things? It’s because he’d seen a man who faced accusations similar. And he’d been right next to that man when that man was being stoned to death. And Stephen looked up into the heavens and he said, Lord Jesus, this isn’t about me, it’s about you. And you were able to deal with it. Father, please forgive them for they don’t know what they’re doing. And then we read shortly after that in the book of Acts about this man that was agreeing with every single rock that was thrown to kill Stephen, approving. We see him saying, Lord, what do you want me to do? What shall I do? Be assured, brothers and sisters, that Jesus can deal in his grace with whatever situation you’re facing. It’s actually great to be in the stuff, in the hard times with Christ in this way. And it will grow your faith, will grow you as a child of God. May God help you and help me whenever the heat gets a little too hot for comfort. to be able to say to the Lord, Jesus, this is about you. And that’s the only reason that it’s about me. Help me to be meek, help me to respond in meekness and gentleness and bring people to you through how they see me respond in a way that honors my master. May we indeed interpret all of life. even and especially in those hardships and errors and persecutions in light of who we are in Jesus and realize that it’s not about, not at all about us. Rather, it’s only about us because it’s ultimately about him, the Lord Jesus. And let’s comprehend the promise that for you who have been granted to suffer for him, it is you who are heirs with him in glory. That’s the promise, brothers and sisters. So go back from here, back into your lives, taking this reminder and taking the love of Jesus to a loveless world, and trust that our mighty God will have his way with that world, all for his glory. Amen. Let’s pray.

Gracious God and Father, we’re so slow to believe Pray, increase our faith, help our unbelief. Lord, help us to not only remember, but have at the forefront of our thinking this reality. Lord, help us to interpret all of life, especially these hard things in light of who we are in you. Help us rejoice in our great Savior. Father, we pray that you would be with us indeed for all of our lives. as you carry us and you care for us. We ask this all in Christ’s name.