Throughout his ministry, the apostle Paul endured an incredible list of hardships, one after another, each of them worse than the last. And yet, he described all of them as light and momentary afflictions. How's that possible? We'll hear the answer today on Truth for Life Weekend, as Aleister Berg teaches from 2 Corinthians chapter 4.
Well, it is possible for us to say confidently that Paul was a basket case. He was quite literally a basket case, as we saw on Monday, when we reviewed the narrative in Acts. And what is quite fascinating, at least to me, and I think it will be so to you, that he recognizes himself that in the midst of a great catalog of affliction, one of the things that was emblematic, was illustrative of his inherent weakness, was in the very fact that in that Damascus encounter. He says, "Quotes at the end of two Corinthians eleven, I was let down in a basket through a window in the wall and escaped the hands of the one who was opposing him." It's it's an almost comic tragic picture, isn't it? When we think of the immensity of this man, of the stature that he has in Christ and under God, of the influence that he has been enabled to exercise through the churches in his missionary endeavours, his consistency in the gospel, his unrelenting to commitment in every aspect of things, and yet he says, "If I think about things." You know, one of the things that I always remember is when I had to get in that basket, and they let me down through a hole in the wall.
And it comes, of course, at the end of the classic catalogue of his experience of affliction and persecution. Remember, he's taking on the false prophets in two Corinthians eleven. He's saying, if they want to boast, I suppose I could boast. I'd sound a little crazy to do so, but if you want to know the things I'd like to boast about, I'd like to boast about my imprisonments. I'd like to boast about the times I got a whooping.
I'd like to boast about how many times. I was near death, and then he says, five times I received at the hands of the Jews the forty lashes. Last one, that'd be bad to get one of those. I mean, it would be—it's beyond comprehension to have that happen to you once. You imagine getting laid down, stretched out, somebody beat you with with with rods, and they did it thirty-nine times.
A few of us would actually be around for the rest of our lives, let alone the rest of the week. And this happened to me. He says five times, the lashes. Three times it was the rods. Once I was stoned.
Three times shipwrecked. A night and a day I was adrift at sea. And on my frequent journeys, I was in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people. Friendly fire, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers. In toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure, and apart from other things, there is the daily pressure on me of my anxiety for all the churches.
Now this is familiar material to us, isn't it? And that's why on Monday we were considering the immensity of this man's perseverance, as we surveyed, albeit very briefly, in Acts in in the narrative there, and then as we sought, in part at least, to look at his testimony here in Second Corinthians. And in coming back to the passage, we note, as we have seen in the text, that he says, outwardly, in terms of the way it looks, outwardly we are wasting away. Though our outer self is wasting away, I'm quoting the NIV. Outwardly we're wasting away.
As we read that, we find ourselves saying, "No kidding!" In light of what we've just read in chapter eleven. It's a miracle that you're actually even still alive, and you say we're sort of wasting away. Then he refers to what he has endured as a light and momentary affliction, verse seventeen. For this light, momentary affliction, and our response to that is that we're speechless. How could you call this a light, momentary?
Affliction, and so when he says as he does twice in the chapter, we do not lose heart. Beginning the chapter and coming back to it here in verse sixteen, the obvious question that emerges for us as we read the text is why not? Surely he has plenty of justification for having quit the race, given up the fight. Thrown in the towel, whatever metaphor you want to use. Why hasn't he done so?
And and also, are the reasons for him not doing so, are the reasons for his perseverance, to be attributed simply to his apostleship, to the fact that he was an apostle? Or even to his particular constitution, or to his character, or if you like, to his personality. That's really the question, isn't it? I mean, can we look at this and find in this, as we used to say in Campus Crusade, are there any transferable concepts here? Is does it can can we move from what we discover of him here?
Can we extrapolate from the reasons that he actually provides in the text that we can deduce from the text as to why it is that he perseveres, so that we then, taking a leaf from his book, about to go back to our routine Sundays to. The responsibilities of church life to the ongoing drama of your life and mine. Can we then say, in the strength of that, we may take these things to ourselves, both learning from them and asking the Holy Spirit to apply them to us? That's really the orbit of of our time now. And what I would like to do is to point out to you what I believe are the underlying reasons as to why it is he was able to persevere, and then to make one or two points.
By way of application for ourselves, I'm not going to delay on them, and much of it you can follow up on on your own. What are they? Why is it that he perseveres? Number one, because he was in absolutely no doubt concerning the source of his ministry. He was absolutely convinced of why he was, what he was, doing what he'd been called to do.
Therefore, verse one: Having this ministry by the mercy of God. In chapter two, he describes himself along with others as being completely insufficient for the task that is before him. But in verse seventeen, as he ends chapter two, he says, "We don't peddle the word of God, but as men of sincerity, as commissioned by God, in the sight of God, we speak in Christ." So he knows that he's not on a fool's errand. He knows that he hasn't just fallen off his donkey as it were and banged his head on the edge of a bridge, and and he's gone all kind of crazy religious on everybody. No, he knows now the reality of what Ananias had to come to terms with when he recoils from the story that this Saul of Tarsus has actually been brought to his knees by the living Christ, and the word that is given to Ananias is, "This man is my." Chosen instrument to bear my name before the Gentiles, and at the very heart of Paul's perseverance is the awareness that he is in this place because God has done what God has done in him.
Number one, number two, he is clear not only about the source of his ministry, but he is clear about the source of his sufficiency in ministry. He knows why he is in. And he knows how it is that he is supported in it. To chapter three, let's go to verse five. Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, unlike the folks who were strutting around Corinth with their Counterfeit gospels.
We're not sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God, who has made us sufficient to be ministers of a new covenant. Again, it's straightforward. Why am I in this position? Because God put me here. How am I supposed to do what God wants me to do?
Who's sufficient for a challenge like this? None of us. Then where is my sufficiency? My sufficiency is in God alone. Thirdly, he is actually very clear about this spirit of faith.
We're now down in verse thirteen of chapter four. Since we have the same spirit of faith, according to what has been written.
Now that that opening of this sentence is interesting, and again you can follow it up on your own. I take it that he is quite simply acknowledging that what he has read, and he's quoting the Septuagint of Sam 116, that what he has read there, he finds confirmation with in his own life. That what the psalmist was saying all those years before, he concurs with what was. The psalmist saying, in the context of suffering and opposition, the psalmist says, "I believed and so I spoke." And so Paul says, "Since we have the same spirit of faith as we find in the ministry of the psalmist, so I believed and I spoke. We believe and we speak." The trials through which he has come, which he's outlined here in verses seven to twelve, are in keeping with this expression.
In fact, you could almost say that verses seven to twelve are an exposition of the same spirit of faith. We walk by faith and not by sight. How do we explain the fact that he's afflicted but not crushed, perplexed but not in despair, persecuted but not forsaken, and so on? By the spirit of faith, because it is the enabling of the power of God that caused us to confirm the psalmist's own words. And it is in that context he says in verse fourteen, and this is number four.
Knowing, we believe. We speak. Knowing what? Knowing that He who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and bring us with you into His presence. The the process is very clear.
We we believe. We speak. We suffer. As we speak, we suffer. We speak because we believe.
When we speak, we suffer. I've just been telling you about that. He says in verses seven to twelve. But when we enter into the reality of suffering, when death is all around us, when we are exposed to death, and when we are made aware of our frailty, when they drag me out of the city, leaving me for dead, in that experience, and even he says, as I reflect upon it now, that all took place knowing this, knowing that the same. In which the Lord Jesus Christ was raised, so we will be raised up with Him.
In other words, it is in the hope of a future resurrection that His trials are both experienced and endured. In the hope of the then, it is the then which enables Him for the now. One of the dangers of an over-realized eschatology. Is that we actually lose any sense of the then, as enabling us to face the now? And some people even want to say that it's not very spiritual.
You know, we have to be able to gut it out and handle it in the in the immediacy of everything. No, sometimes the only thing that gets us through is that there is something at the end of it, that there is a promise at the end. I remember one particular surgery I had years ago, and I never forget it. As the fellow came at me with a large syringe, it was—it looked like it was about seventeen feet long, and and he said to me, he said, "If you can endure the next forty seconds, all will be well." And I said, you know, I think I can, and I did. But he told me forty seconds, and it'll be over.
Can you handle it? That's what he's saying here. We believed, we spoke, we suffered in the awareness of the then, because think about it in relationship to Paul's ministry. Without faith in a future resurrection, Paul's Paul's experience would not only have been intolerable; it would have been meaningless. He would have been as the one he writes of in First Corinthians fifteen, the man who is most pitiable.
He would have been most pitiable, wouldn't he? And so it is. He says, "We have the same spirit of faith. We believed and spoke. We did so, knowing that Jesus will raise us too." Fifthly, why does he endure?
How does he endure in this way? For it is all for your sake. In other words, Paul says, "This is not about me. This is not about how well it's going for me." And this, of course, is not unique to two Corinthians four. This is Paul's recurring emphasis.
For example, in Galatians in chapter four, remember he says, "My little children, for whom I am again in the anguish of childbirth until Christ is formed in you." That's an amazing metaphor for a man to pick up, isn't it? This is agony for me. This is the close. He says that I think it is possible for a man to come to the experience of childbirth, and the reason I am in this extremity is for your sake. For your sake.
Now I'm resisting the temptation to keep applying this because I'm going to come to it in a moment.
So we'll leave it as it is. But notice how he goes on. He says, "So that it's a hint clause.
So that as grace extends to more and more people." Through the experience of suffering, not only through his proclamation, but also through his endurance, as that grace extends to more and more people, it will result and increase in thanksgiving, and that will be to the glory of God.
So, the ultimate objective and the enduring dimension is in relationship to the fact that this is for the glory of God. Sixthly. He says, "My inner self, or my inner man, that Don was talking about yesterday, and helped us out with, and I needn't go back to it." He says, "In our inner self, our inner self is being renewed day by day." Now he comes back to: "Is we don't lose heart?" He says, "You know what I'm telling you about here is that I've persevered, and the reason I'm persevering is that although outwardly things are collapsing." Inwardly, there is a daily renewal taking place.
Now, depending on how you're wired together, this allows you when you're doing your personal study to say, "Well, at least I know one hymn that we're going to sing on Sunday morning." And depending on your context, and you're going to include in the in the hymnody of the morning day by day, and with each passing moment, strength I find to meet my trials here. Trusting in my father's wise bestowment, I have no need for worry or for fear. He whose heart is kind beyond all measure gives unto each day what he deems best, lovingly the path of pain or pleasure, till at last we come to find our rest. That's what Paul is saying. You can also include "I need thee every hour." That would be another one.
In the World's Fair in Chicago, where Moody and his team was involved in an evangelistic endeavor, when they gathered one evening at the end of the day's proceedings for a time of devotion, the hymn that was given out for them to sing in the room was "I Need Thee Every Hour, Most Gracious Lord." And in the singing of that hymn, one of the men declared the fact that he really couldn't subscribe to that in its entirety. He said that he needed he needed Jesus every moment. He was an Englishman by the name of Varley. Another person who was in the room was a retired major, and his name was Major Whittle. And Whittle went up to his bedroom, and he couldn't get out of his mind the idea that we need him every hour.
But then the Varley said, "You know, I need him moment by moment." And before he finally got to sleep at about two o'clock in the morning, he had written down, "Dying with Jesus by death reckoned mine." Living with Jesus, this new life, divine. Looking to Jesus, till glory doth shine, moment by moment, O Lord, I am Thine. Moment by moment, I'm kept in His love, and moment by moment, I have life from above. And I'm looking to Jesus, till glory doth shine, moment by moment, O Lord, I am Thine. Never a trial that He is not there.
Never a burden that he doesn't bear, never a sorrow that he doesn't share, moment by moment, I'm under his care. This is Paul's testimony. Why is it that you've managed to get through all this stuff, Paul?
Well, because in my inner man, I am being renewed.
Now, you see, looked at from the outside, his life is really a bit of a disaster. His circumstances are terrible, but it's only these false folks who are looking at the outside. Chapter five, he says, we don't commend ourselves to you again by giving you cause to boast about us. This is two Corinthians five twelve, so that you may be able to answer those who boast about outward appearance and not about what is in the heart. Corinth was just full of self-aggrandisement, and the church was not free from it.
And people were attracted by that kind of thing. And so Paul says, "My outward decay is contributing to my inward renewal." There's a direct correlation between what's happening to me on the outside at the moment and what I'm able to endure and how I'm able to persevere. Seventhly. And this all in the text, isn't it? Why is he enduring?
Well, he says because there is an eternal weight of glory. This momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison. And what we're talking about is in verse eight of chapter one, where Paul says, "We don't want you unaware of what we've been up against." And here it is: we were so utterly burdened. Weighed down beyond our strength, that we despaired of life itself.
Okay, now both in the verbal form and in the noun, both weight and glory, you find them together. You come back now to chapter four, and what he does is he makes this again amazingly paradoxical statement: this light and momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison. In other words, we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength. But now we've discovered, in thinking about it, that the afflictions are actually light, and the glory is weighty. When he puts the two things on the scales, as it were, he says it is because the coming glory is so weighty.
That we can view this affliction as being actually light.
Now you're saying yourself, Paul. I think you've. I think you're stretching it a little bit now. But no, it's momentary in light of eternity. It's light in terms of the immensity of the glory that will be revealed in us.
This affliction, he said, felt sometimes like a huge weight around our necks. But when we lifted our eyes to see the triumph of Christ, suddenly we realized that that was where the real weight and the real strength and significance lay. You're listening to Truth for Life weekend with Alister Beg. We'll hear more about persevering in ministry next weekend. Studying the Bible consistently helps us recall God's promises, so we can press on regardless of our circumstances and rest in the Lord's steadfast care.
And if you'd like to enjoy quiet Bible study every day, you can sign up for Truth for Life's daily devotional email. Go to truthforlife.org/lists. Each day, you'll receive an email with a passage of Scripture, followed by a brief commentary from Alister. These meditations are taken from the Truth for Life 365 Daily Devotions books. You can read the devotions or listen as they're read to you, Alister.
Brief daily insights into Scripture can also be listened to on our website and our mobile app, or you can subscribe to them through popular podcast platforms like Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and Amazon. Simply search for Truth for Life Daily Devotions and choose the subscribe option. I'm Bob Lapine. Thanks for taking time out of your weekend to study the Bible with us. Do your attempts to share the gospel seem to fall on deaf ears?
Next weekend, we'll learn how you can avoid becoming discouraged and disillusioned. The Bible teaching of Alister Beg is furnished by Truth for Life, where the Learning is for Living.
