The Apostle Paul

As some of you know, the gravestone of Corrie Ten Boom is located about one hundred yards from here. I have checked out from the library the book about her life called, The Hiding Place. A picture of her appears on the cover of that book. It is an elderly woman smiling, not very impressive looking. Even her gravestone is plain and unpretentious. I’m currently reading about her heroism in saving numerous Jewish lives from Hitler’s gas chambers; how she was involved in the Dutch underground while the Nazis occupied Holland during World War II. In my mind’s eye, I can see her riding her bicycle around town, helping people, saving lives. What a servant! What a woman of God! The more I learn about that smiling old lady, the better she looks and the more I admire her.

According to tradition, the Apostle Paul was not very impressive looking either. He was of moderate height, rather bald, with a long nose and jutting brows, and bowlegged. Paul had been the first Christian to visit the city of Corinth. He had evangelized a large number of people in a short time and set up several churches, but these new believers were slow to mature. Paul has now gone to another city, and he writes letters to the Corinthian Christians. 2 Corinthians is one of those letters. On this Sexagesima Sunday we will examine our epistle text, and try to find applications from it.

In 2 Corinthians 11:19 he says, “For you put up with fools gladly.” Who are these fools they are putting up with? Evidently, a band of traveling preachers from Jerusalem had arrived at Corinth. Paul doesn’t bother to name them; he simply describes them as “false apostles, and deceitful workers” (2 Cor. 11:13). These braggarts had no qualms about exalting themselves and putting Paul down. They were from the great Jerusalem, while Paul was from small-time Tarsus. Thus it was questionable whether Paul was a genuine Jew. Their style was ten times better. They could preach in the flowery eloquence of the Greek rhetoricians, while Paul proclaimed the unpolished Gospel. Furthermore, Paul, in person, was bald, bowlegged, and weak. They were handsome, bossy people who slapped people around, and charged the Church a stiff fee for doing it. They told the Corinthians that no true apostle would work as a tentmaker and refuse payment. According to them an apostle should exalt himself, have a slick outward appearance, communicate with high rhetoric, push people around, and require fat payments. The only point they conceded to Paul was his letters; his letters could be weighty. Other than that, he was a disaster.

Paul was astonished at these assertions but he reacted with amusement, and a bit of sarcasm. We see this attitude in our epistle. 2 Corinthians 11:16-22. [Read them.]

Paul is reluctant to boast about his life and character but he feels forced to do so. The false apostles had accused him of lacking the qualifications of a genuine apostle, so now he will present them. “Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites? So am I. Are they the seed of Abraham? So am I.” These traveling preachers from Judea were bragging about their Hebrew and Israelite lineage – God’s chosen people. Paul had been born in Tarsus; and thus, in his opponent’s eyes, he had a questionable heritage. Was Paul a pure Jew? Did he understand the Hebrew language? Paul unequivocally said yes. He was descended from the tribe of Benjamin. He had been instructed by Gamaliel; one of the most renowned Pharisees of that day. His credentials were impeccable. Let us read the next verses from our epistle lesson, 2 Cor. 11:23-24. [Read them.]

Paul was lashed five times for preaching the gospel in the synagogues. According to Deuteronomy 25:3, forty lashes was the maximum number the Jews could give. The rabbis, however, would only allow thirty-nine. If the guy doing the flogging miscounted he wouldn’t accidentally sin by administering more than forty. Most of us would have stopped preaching Christ in the synagogues after the first batch of bloody lashings. Not Paul. Paul kept at it four more times, at minimum.

Verse 25 lists many more harrowing experiences where Paul was exposed to death. “Three times I was shipwrecked,” he said. And this was years before his famous shipwreck off the island of Malta. “A night and a day I have been in the deep.” Did he swim the whole time? Did he tread water? Did he hold on to a piece of wood? A book came out recently about an electrical storm at Yosemite. The lightening hit Half Dome, killing three guys, and injuring two. The author was able to write an entire book about that incident. Floating a day and night in the sea, three times shipwrecked, three times beaten with rods. Any one of those episodes could have been a book.

Take his stoning. He says, “once I was stoned.” It happened in Lystra. You can read about it in Acts 14:5-19. One moment the mob was trying to worship Paul and Barnabus as gods, the next moment they were hurling rocks at them. Some of the Jews in the crowd had told the people that the men were notorious troublemakers, and should be run out of town. That set the stones flying. Barnabus escaped the rock throwing but the stones struck Paul so many times he crumpled to the ground. Assuming him to be dead somebody dragged him out through the city gates, so as not to have a corpse within their walls. When the disciples went to check on him, he revived. They dressed his wounds, put him on a donkey and took him to another city. He must have been in great physical shape. Maybe he was a runner and a boxer. He talked about those sports in 1 Cor. 9:24-27. The stoning possibly scarred him for life. Is it any wonder that the false brothers claimed Paul looked ugly? He was covered with scars. In professional sports, one serious injury can ruin your career, two for sure. Paul was a cat with nine lives. None of these floggings, stonings, shipwrecks, or near drownings would stop him from preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ, the forgiveness of sins, and salvation from God’s wrath. The Lord graciously strengthened Paul to survive these scrapes with death, and keep on going. Let’s read the next section: 2 Cor. 11:26-27. [Read them.]

In Paul’s era, traveling was a dangerous venture. Thieves attacked the smaller parties, so it was safer to travel in a caravan. Paul and Barnabus joined a caravan on their first missionary journey. Each night a huge fire would be kept alive and they all slept around it, their feet toward the heat. Paul would take his turn on watch, probably wrapped in a sheepskin. Before dawn they would break camp, eat olives and goat’s cheese and, if cold, could drink wine diluted with water. Tea was not known yet out of China, and coffee not yet discovered. They started out every morning before sunrise to take advantage of the cool of the day. The pace was a steady plod, and they tried to cover about fifteen miles. At noon or later, they made camp, cooked their meal, slept in the shade, oiled themselves in preference to washing, and rested until morning.

The going was slow. The high altitude of the mountains and a poor diet made for a plodding pace. The heat, the sudden drenching storms which flooded the gullies, the cold at night when limbs were stiff and old scars hurt, the danger of sudden attack – these are the elements Paul endured, first with Barnabbas, then later with Silas, Luke, and Timothy.

“Besides the other things, what comes upon me daily; my deep concern for all the churches. Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is made to stumble, and I do not burn with indignation. If I must boast, I will boast in the things which concern my infirmity” (vv. 28-30). What were the greatest sufferings Paul experienced? The danger posed by false brothers. This was greater than stonings, beatings and shipwrecks. Every day he worried about the spiritual health of the churches he had founded. A young congregation could fall into any number of traps. Persecution could force the church to compromise its theology; quarrelling and inner strife could distract the church from its purpose; false teachers could deceive the members, parishioners could fail to persevere in the faith.

I. Which goes to show, that mental and emotional pain is often harder to endure than the physical pain. Children must be reminded of this. The physical pain they inflict on their brothers or sisters is not as hurtful as the emotional pain, the humiliation of the act. We should remember this too. Paul was beaten to a pulp on numerous occasions but his greatest suffering had to do with his burden for the churches, and his concern for individual brothers and sisters in Christ.

II. In Paul we see an example of the work of our bishops. Just as Paul was concerned for many churches, our bishops must sheperd many churches, and bear many burdens. But bishops are not the only ones called to have a concern for other Christians. We must be concerned too, even for believers outside our parish. It was a blessing to have Christ’s Chapel Riverside and Downey Bible Church, Reformed join us a few weeks ago. We need to be connected to Christians outside of our local church. Paul had a deep concern for all the churches. We do well to follow his example.

III. What are some of the other lessons we should take from this passage? Respect for authority; respect for the chain of command. Bishop Grote reminds us that there is an authority structure in the Church similar to that of the military. The false apostles who wandered into Corinth were undermining Paul’s authority there. We live in a day when nearly everyone has a problem with authority. Often they don’t even realize it. In Western societies at large, no one wants to submit voluntarily to anyone. We obey only when we are forced to. This attitude afflicts the Church. People have a hard time respecting and obeying authorities, especially when they tell us to do something that is inconvenient or uncomfortable.

IV. Moreover, Paul’s confrontation with the false preacher suggests that we be cautious with using slick entertainment to advance the Church. “The people of the first century loved eloquence and put on a pedestal those who could produce it. Back in those days, eloquence was perhaps their primary entertainment. Audiences liked rhetorical pizzazz in public speaking. Yet Paul refused to use this style. He did whatever it took not to be confused with an entertainer or professional speaker. He did not preach for the money and he did not teach to entertain. His primary goal was to proclaim and embody the gospel, and he was criticized for it. There is time for entertainment and a place for flashy oratory, but not when these things obscure the gospel and idolize the speakers.

V. Next, the attacks against Paul hint at a difference between Christianity and Islam. Christianity puts up with insults; Islam insists on retaliation. Consider how Paul reacted to the scoffing and scorn of his detractors. It is true, that Paul could be an irascible guy, and he used sarcasm against them, but for the most part he held back. The example of Jesus Christ was even better. Peter tells us that when the Lord Jesus was “reviled, He did not revile in return; when He suffered, He did not threaten” (1 Peter 2:23). John Piper points out that “For a true follower of Christ, enduring suffering patiently for the glory of Christ is the essence of obedience. ‘Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.’ During his life on earth Jesus was called a bastard, a drunkard, a blasphemer, a devil; and he promised his followers the same: ‘If they have called the master of the house Beelzebul, how much more will they malign those of his household’” (Mt. 5:11; John 8:41; Mt. 11:19; 26:65; 10:25). [WORLD, Feb. 18, 2006, p. 43.]

The world mocks Christians in a multitude of ways. That mockery irritates and angers us, but we know that we are called to such humiliation like Christ endured throughout His life, and on the cross. We expect this kind of behavior. Thus, Christians are not easily offended; we are told to love our enemies. Muslims do not have the example of Christ to follow. The times Muhammad felt insulted he murdered the people who did it. When a prominent Jew had composed a satirical poem about him, the prophet asked, “Who will deliver me from [this Jew]? Immediately four persons volunteered and shortly returned to Muhammad with the Jew’s head in their hands.” On at least two other occasions Muhammad ordered people assassinated for composing poems that mocked him. Justas Muhammad practiced an extremely oversensitive overreaction to ridicule, so his followers continue to this present day his extremely oversensitive overreaction to ridicule. [Answering Islam by Norman Geisler and Abdul Saleeb pp. 179-180.]

This is what we see playing out today with the cartoons from Denmark. John Piper says, “a religion with no insulted Savior will not endure insults to win the scoffers. It means that Islam is destined to bear the impossible load of upholding the honor of one who did not die and rise again to make a resurrection from the dead possible. It means that Jesus Christ is still the only hope of peace with God and peace with man. And it means that his followers must be willing to “share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death” (Phil. 3:10).

So let us identify with Christ, embrace his suffering, and like the apostle Paul, rejoice in our afflictions. Christ was insulted, Paul was insulted; you and I will be insulted. Vengeance belongs to the Lord. Let us love our enemies and win them with the Gospel.

Let us pray.