Christian husband, father of 3 and bi-vocational pastor
Preacher: Pastor Ray
Victory over sin, Satan and death began at the Garden of Gethsemane when Jesus struggled with and overcame His soul–His mind, emotions and will–by accepting the cup of God’s wrath in submission to the Father’s will.
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Message Outline
Believers – Passion Week – spent time repenting
What is our greatest sin?
A failure to thirst for God
Start with the final words of Jesus while he hung on the cross
We read about what was happening physically? What was happening spiritually?
Thirst is a sign of a lack
Read Psalm 42-43 – treat as one unit
We read about thirsting in the Psalms
We already read Psa 42-43
Psa 36:7-9
We read about thirsting in the book of Isaiah
Isa 12:1-6
v2 – He has become MY SALVATION
Pattern of salvation
This theme of thirsting continues in the book of Isaiah
Isa 41:17-18
Isa 44:1-3
Isa 55:1-3
Isa 58:11
We read about thirsting in Jeremiah
Jer 2:13
Jer 17:13
We read about thirsting in the gospel of John
John 4:13-14
John 7:37-39
Come to me and drink – present tense
Already but not yet aspect of the kingdom
We read about thirsting in the book of Revelation
Rev 7:13-17
Rev 21:5-8
Rev 22:17
What do we do?
Ezek 36:26-27
First, we need to ask for a new heart
Psa 95:6-11
Second, we must be careful not to harden our hearts
Psalm 95 is quoted in Heb 4:5-11
Heb 4:5-11
Third, to prevent hardening, we must hear His voice and then make every effort to enter into that rest
Stay thirsty
This mystery of the Messiah is revealed to Paul and for the first time to his generation. It doesn’t stop there, though. Interestingly, a second audience is mentioned. Eph 3:8-10–
Eph 3
8 This grace was given to me—the least of all the saints—to proclaim to the Gentiles the incalculable riches of the Messiah, 9 and to shed light for all about the administration of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things. 10 This is so God’s multi-faceted wisdom may now be made known through the church to the rulers and authorities in the heavens.
Who’s the audience? The rulers and authorities in the heavens. This is not talking about the literal ruler and authority of Paul’s day like the emperor of Rome. He is talking about THE ruler of this world whose dwelling is not on this world but in the heavens. In other words, a ruler who lives in the spiritual world. If you were here last week, I think you know the answer. He is talking about none other than Satan and his forces of darkness.
So here is what Paul is getting at. It’s really fantastic stuff. The mystery of the Messiah was hidden throughout the ages. Ever since the Fall of Man where Satan scored one of his greatest victories, there has been a chess game going on between God and Satan. If Satan could figure out God’s next move, then he could thwart God’s plan and checkmate God and win. So God had to keep his strategy hidden from Satan for the ages. Satan had no clue that God would send His Son to be a man. And when God did, I’m sure Satan was scratching his head. Why would God allow His Son to come into this world as a man, why would Jesus humble himself and make himself so vulnerable?
Satan must have been confused. What on earth is God up to? Satan did all he could think to do. He worked in the hearts of the Pharisees and the religious leaders and Pontius Pilate and Caiaphas and he stirred hatred in their hearts and he mobilized them to achieve his purposes by killing the Son of God. And it was precisely in that moment when Satan thought he had scored his greatest victory that the cleverest, the most you-never-say-this-coming TWIST came into play.
In the Passion of the Christ, it’s that moment right after the death of Jesus when the camera focuses on Satan and he is screaming in agony, he is furious and the camera pans out and the audience is clued into the fact that Satan knows he’s been outsmarted. At that moment when Jesus died, Satan knew that what he thought was HIS greatest victory was actually his greatest defeat. Conversely, what appeared to be God’s greatest defeat was God’s greatest victory.
Eph 3:10 – God’s multi-faceted wisdom is in full display on the cross where Satan killed Jesus and sinful mankind participated in murdering our Messiah but God in his infinite wisdom flipped this situation upside down and he turned the table by raising Jesus Christ from the dead. And now that wisdom is continuously on display as the church denies itself and carries its cross.
Now for the application. How does this mystery of the gospel and the mystery of Christ and the church and the multi-faceted mystery of the Messiah affect the way we live in community.
Eph 2
13 But now in Christ Jesus, you who were far away have been brought near by the blood of the Messiah. 14 For He is our peace, who made both groups one and tore down the dividing wall of hostility…
The fact that this mystery tears down the wall of hostility between sinful humanity and a Holy God is obvious. But I think it’s easy to gloss over the second wall of hostility that the Messiah has torn down–the wall of hostility between man and his fellow man.
Satan loves it when the church is divided. He loves it when the universal church is divided into many local churches that do not partner together in anything. Satan loves it when the universal church splinters into denominations due to theological differences. And I believe Satan is most thrilled when the local church is divided.
What was the cause of division in salvation history? The answer gives us clues as to what can cause division for us here at the Hill?
Eph 2
11 So then, remember that at one time you were Gentiles in the flesh—called “the uncircumcised” by those called “the circumcised,” which is done in the flesh by human hands. 12 At that time you were without the Messiah, excluded from the citizenship of Israel, and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world.
Circumcision was a Jewish practice, which was something all Jewish boys did as a kind of rite of passage into the Jewish community. It was a visible tradition that reminded the nation of Israel that they were the chosen people of God. Spiritually, it was a pointer to Jesus who came to provide a way for the Spirit to circumcise, not the flesh, but our hearts. The fleshly circumcision was a foreshadowing of a future spiritual circumcision.
Circumcision was helpful in that it served as a tangible reminder for the Israelites of them being set apart from the other nations by God and for God’s purposes. Aside from the spiritual aspect, physical circumcision in the Old Testament was a good thing. But what started out as a good thing became a curse. The whole point of being set apart for God was so that God could use the nation of Israel to be a light to the Gentiles. To be a blessing to all nations.
But Israel lost sight of that. Instead, they took pride in the fact that God chose them. They became nationalistic. They became racist. They looked down on others. Those Gentiles are uncircumcised heathens. We don’t want to associate with them and risk becoming defiled. The “circumcised” vs. the “uncircumcised.” These were labels used to divide people into categories–the people of God vs. everyone else, who by the way are not worthy saving.
I think what I said earlier about God’s sovereignty and human choice applies to Christ and the church. When the church, or the people of God become the focus, like the Israelites turning their eyes inward to the group and away from the world, we become a headless body and we risk losing everything. This means that while both the universal church and the local church are important, we cannot put the church on equal footing with Christ. If we put Christ and the church in a 50/50 partnership, we will devolve just like the Israelites did and without knowing it, Jesus will no longer have the preeminence as he ought. He’d be second, third tier in importance. In every church, Jesus has to be the focus. The accent has to be on Christ and not the church in order for the church to grow spiritually.
The early church struggled mighitly with this issue of circumcision and spiritual elitism. The circumcised group thought they were the spiritual elites and as we’ve covered in recent sermons, false teachers started to impose this tradition of circumcision on new Gentile converts.
Eph 2
14 …In His flesh, 15 He made of no effect the law consisting of commands and expressed in regulations, so that He might create in Himself one new man from the two, resulting in peace.
Things like the circumcision were nothing more than laws and commands and human regulations that were completely done away with by the flesh of Jesus. His flesh, his body was torn to pieces so that the body of Christ could be reconciled, mended together as one.
For us, I have one simple application. Examine your relationships with other Christians from any church, meaning the universal church, and examine your relationships within this particular local church. If Christ died to make us one, what are some ways that Satan is still succeeding in keeping us divided? What are some ways that you put up walls to your fellow brothers and sisters? Oh, that brother is weird. That sister is too different from me. I’m Korean, he’s Chinese. Or I’m white, you’re black. We are different ethnicities. I grew up eating kimchi with chopsticks but you grew up eating brussel sprouts with a fork. We grew up with a different family upbringing and different cultures. I can only associate with people with similar ethnic, social, educational backgrounds.
Rather than seeing others as fellow brothers and sisters in Christ, don’t we label people all the time? Take for example, the college student label. Why are there so many college students here? I don’t have a heart for college students. That’s not my ministry. They are not my responsibility. Someone else will take care of them. I only like hanging out with people who are in a similar stage of life. You can understand that, right? I’m married and I have kids so I only enjoy hanging out with other families.
If you are a single who is still in school, sorry, buddy, I’m not going to sit next to you. Or, it can go the other way. College students who only want to talk to other college students. If this is you, then you’ve put a wall between college and non-college. Can’t you see one another at the very least as fellow members of this church, whom you should struggle to love? Or, will you be content with the walls between us?
Without even knowing it, we all put up walls, don’t we? That person just annoys me to no end. Since when does it matter whether or not you like someone. God calls us to love. We are to love enemies, which means we can love people whom we do not like. There are so many walls that Satan puts up between brothers and sisters within the body of Christ.
In closing, this is a spiritual battle. If we are one, we’ve won. Not one in the sense of loving each other and leaving Christ off to the side. That’s a headless body. But one, unified, loving and serving one another because we never lose sight of Jesus and His death and His resurrection. If we are not one in Christ, then Satan has won. A church that is one has won. Pray for yourself. Pray for us corporately as a church. It is my prayer that this church would more accurately represent the one final church in the new heaven and the new earth where there is only one God and one universal body of Christ from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before one throne and before one Lamb. The mystery has been fully revealed to us in Christ. Now, let’s ask for God’s help in living it out.
4) It’s because in God’s eyes, weakness is strength.
2 Cor 12
9 But He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.” Therefore, I will most gladly boast all the more about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may reside in me. 10 So I take pleasure in weaknesses, insults, catastrophes, persecutions, and in pressures, because of Christ. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
The word for “weakness” in v9 has many meanings. In addition to the obvious–lacking strength, feeble, frail, ill, undergoing suffering or calamity–it can also refer to an inability to accomplish what they would like to do. How many times do we commit to do something and we don’t follow through? Or, how many times do we commit to being less selfish only to fail? Or, to be more loving or more compassionate and fall miserably short? This is what weakness is. We are sinners who fall short of the glory of God. But there is an amazing truth that Paul reveals in these 2 verses. He gives us one of the keys to spiritual power and vitality.
God’s grace is more than the forgiveness of God to accept you as you are. The grace of God is a POWER that is present in weakness, a power that is perfected in weakness. “Perfected” means to bring to an end, to complete, to fulfill, to reach the intended goal. The same word is used by Christ on the cross when he said, it is finished, it is fulfilled, it is accomplished, sin has been paid in full, it is consummated.
How is power perfected in weakness? When we admit our weakness and we rely on God’s grace to sustain us, then the latter half of v9–Christ’s power resides in us. This is our posture in prayer. Lord, I’ve come up short. I need you. Lord, I can’t do it, but you can. Please take over. Imagine how many times Paul must have prayed this prayer. The external suffering is too much to bear. I feel weak. I can’t do it. Lord, you got to pull me through this one.
Or, regarding the thorn, Paul prayed, I can’t bear it. Lord, help me. Please remove it. He prayed three times, but to no avail. The thorn which was allowed by God kept Paul from fancying himself as a spiritual superman. It kept him pinned down to earth. The thorn also kept Paul pinned close to the Lord, in trust and dependence. God comes to him and says, I won’t take away the thorn, but my grace is sufficient for you. My grace is enough. Rely on me and I’ll get you through.
Humility is not something we can manufacture. We can’t will ourselves to be humble. But through external hardship and internal thorns, we are brought low. Our weakness is revealed. Humility is nothing more than an honest self-assessment. Paul is not asking us to do mental gymnastics to believe we are nothing when in actuality we are something.
2 Cor 12
11 I have become a fool; you forced it on me. I should have been endorsed by you, since I am not in any way inferior to the “super-apostles,” even though I am nothing.
Paul was not speaking falsely when he said he was nothing. This is not false humility. Some people say, I am nothing when they don’t believe they are nothing. They’re dishonest, insincere, they are appearing humble when they are actually proud. Paul was being extremely truthful when he said, I am nothing. Because he understood–weakness is who we are. We have taken off the Iron Man suit. It’s finally being real.
Our entire lives, we have been fed lies. Shows like American Idol give you a taste of what this kind of Me-centered, self-esteem stroking culture has produced in our generation. From birth, our parents tell us we are great. Society tell us you can be whatever you want to be. You can do anything you put your mind to.
I can believe with all my heart that I am good enough to play in the NBA when I am swatting Elijah in my living room, but that is only a fantasy. We have been fed lies to puff up our egos. We have believed what others have told us about ourselves. Fulfill your potential. The sky is the limit. You’re great. Reach for the stars. Christians who grow up with this mentality have a really hard time depending on the Lord. Because most of their lives, they have depended only on themselves. Is it any wonder that Christians lack spiritual power?
Humility teaches us dependence on the Lord. Given his circumstances and his inner torment, it was impossible for Paul to go a day without crying out for God to rescue him. When you are sick in bed, you can’t do anything except groan. If you are fortunate to having a loving roommate or loving spouse, they will care for you. Because you can’t do anything for yourself.
When you are weak, you realize how precious and amazing grace is. Grace is not just needed to kickstart your Christian life. Grace is not just the initial door you pass through to begin your spiritual journey. Grace is needed at the beginning, the middle and the end and everything in between.
Dramatic religious experiences, like the extraordinary revelations Paul received, appear glorious and it makes us feel powerful. There is a power that brings elation, but it is not the kind of power the Lord seeks to give us. What if God gave me spiritual super powers and I felt like a super hero? And I wore a shirt on Sundays with a big “SS” on my chest which stood for Super Spiritual Man. Is that the kind of power God wants to give me? No, he wants me to depend on the grace of God, to admit weakness, to receive the sustaining strength of the Lord to get through each trial, each thorn, every mountain and valley. A life lived like this is powerful.
The grace and power of God intersect with human lives at the point of our weakness. If you think you can live out your life on your own strength, you don’t understand the grace of God. If you think you can live out your Christian faith on your own strength, you don’t understand how the power of God works. Humble people admit, I am weak, I can’t do it, but God, you are strong. His grace will get me through. His grace is sufficient. I just need to stay close to my Lord. His grace is all I need. Weakness trains us to depend on the Lord for everything.
How can you and I tell if we are living by our own strength or God’s strength? It’s hard to tell sometimes. On the outside, we all come to church and read our Bibles and pray before meals so how can we discern if we are living by our own strength vs. God’s strength?
Let’s read 2 Cor 13:4-5. [READ]
Christ himself is the example and the model for us to follow. He was weak to the point of being obedient to death and He allowed himself to be crucified in weakness. But in that act of supreme weakness, God’s power rested on him and Christ was exalted literally from the grave. Now, Paul advises us to test ourselves to see if we are in the faith.
Christ is the standard. He is the answer key. Are we passing the test? How do we know? On God’s scantron, if you will, there are 3 choices. Choice A, B, or C. There is only 1 right answer. Some of us are weak, but it’s not weakness in the same way that Christ was weak.
Choice A) Some are very weak, but their weakness is just a disguise for immaturity.
Please turn with me to 2 Cor 11:28-30. [READ]
At the tail end of the verses outlining Paul’s suffering, Paul mentions his greatest suffering. He suffered the most when he heard that false teachers were stumbling weak brothers and sisters in the faith. He burned with indignation, he felt the most weak, the most frustrated when those who were not yet mature were being led astray.
This is different from the godly weakness that we have been talking about this afternoon. This weakness stems from immaturity.
Let’s read 2 Cor 13:9-11. [READ]
Twice in the span of 3 verses, Paul tells weak or immature Christians to become mature, to become fully mature. In other words, grow up. If you’ve been a Christian for 5, 10, 20 years and you are still immature in the faith, there is something wrong. You are failing the test. It’s time to grow up.
Choice B) Some are strong but their strength comes from self and it stems from pride.
This is hard to discern from Choice C) Few are strong but their strength comes from God and it stems from weakness. On the surface, both can look very similar. You know how you can tell? You look at how that person relates with others.
Let’s read 2 Cor 12:20. [READ]
With the exception of “selfish ambitions” and perhaps “arrogance,” every other sin listed here is relational. Quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, slander, gossip and disorder.
How you relate with others is a good indicator of where your strength is coming from. If your strength is coming from yourself as you try to relate with others, problems will inevitably arise in your relationships.
Prof. Paul Barnett, retired Anglican bishop of North Sydney and Teaching Fellow at Regent College in Vancouver had this to say:
“It is always a temptation for Christian ministers to use one’s position or one’s gifts, or both, to create a circle of admirers. Such a person exercises his ministry in the name of Christ but is really involved in an ‘ego trip.’ More subtly, the minister may encourage people to lean on him like a crutch, out of his own need to be needed. Alternatively, the minister is capable of being corrupted by the power given him in the church so that he becomes a bossy authoritarian who must always have his own way. It must always be remembered that the word ‘minister’ means ‘servant.’ The application is able to be extended to all people whose roles in life give them power over others–parents, employers, business executives, doctors, teachers, lecturers, and many more. The Christian must not shrink from exercising whatever authority his role gives him. But he must do so in a way that creates an environment of justice and fair play. And he himself must at all times remain like Christ and the apostle, a humble servant.”
If self is at core, it will poison your relationships and it will destroy the ministry. Remember, this is THE Pastoral Epistle, arguably more so than even the commonly known pastoral epistles of 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus. So Paul is giving us wise counsel in terms of how we minister and relate with one another in the church. If your strength is coming from yourself, you are failing the test. This relates to the final choice, which is the correct answer.
Choice C) Few are strong but their strength comes from God and it stems from weakness.
A minister or servant leader will not rip relationships apart. A minister or servant leader will not rip churches apart. Instead, he will serve with the purpose of building others up.
Turn with me to 2 Cor 12:19. [READ]
Paul spoke for the purpose of building others up. Again in 2 Cor 13:10, turn with me there. [READ ]
Paul mentions twice about becoming mature and twice about building others up, not tearing them down. What’s the application? It is wrong to say, I can minister out of my own strength. It is equally wrong to say, I am too weak to minister. Both involve a lack of trust in the grace of God and His power to change you.
You may think you are strong because you believe you can minister out of your own strength. Don’t stop there. You have to become weak so that the power and strength of God can reside in you. You may think you are too weak and can’t do anything. Don’t stop there. You have to move beyond your immaturity and begin to trust in the power of God to change you. For one person, you are asking for the grace of God to change you from being proud to being humble and then onto dependence on God’s strength. For another person, you are asking for the grace of God to change you from being immature and insecure to being humble and then onto dependence on God’s strength.
I pray that we can all become like Paul, but ultimately like Jesus Christ, in terms of their servant leadership. Christ embodied divine humility and weakness and God endowed him with divine strength. Not only did he embody this message of weakness, Jesus expressed this weakness in his ministry through his servant leadership and he gave us a pattern of ministry to imitate.
I want to end by rereading 2 Cor 12:9-10.
2 Cor 12
9 But He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.” Therefore, I will most gladly boast all the more about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may reside in me. 10 So I take pleasure in weaknesses, insults, catastrophes, persecutions, and in pressures, because of Christ. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
Our weakness, God’ strength.