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2 Cor 12-13 – Teaching #7: Our Weakness, God’s Strength (pt3 of 3)

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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.

2 Cor 12-13 – Teaching #7: Our Weakness, God’s Strength (pt1 of 3)

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We are going to wrap up 2 Corinthians today. Paul planted this church at Corinth and the first challenge this young congregation faced was internal. This is review for those who have been with us a while back when we covered 1 Corinthians. After Paul left the church at Corinth to continue planting other churches, the Corinthian leaders who remained began to diminish the centrality of the gospel message and to pursue the supernatural, charismatic gifts like speaking in tongues and prophecy. There is nothing wrong with such gifts because Paul himself spoke in tongues privately and had special revelations and spiritual experiences. However, when these things become the focus and Jesus’ death, burial and resurrection becomes secondary, it’s just a matter of time before the church will fall apart.

In 2 Corinthians, the challenge was external. False teachers had come in and turned the gospel of free grace which liberates people into a legalistic religion that enslaves. This is a running theme in Paul’s ministry. He plants churches, he leaves and false teachers come in. The result: people suffer, they stumble and they are led astray. We will read about the exact same thing happening at the church in Galatia next week.

We started our study through this letter six weeks ago in 2 Cor 11:1-4. [READ]

Notice the choice of words. If you add to the gospel or subtract from the gospel or you raise another teaching above the gospel, you end up teaching a false gospel or another Jesus. And soon, you will lose everything.

With this as the backdrop, the first teaching was about repentance and the reality of spiritual battle. Week 2 was the new covenant (2 Cor 3). Week 3 was the gospel of Christ, the light of the knowledge of God’s glory in the face of Christ (2 Cor 4). Week 4 was about having an eternal perspective (2 Cor 4-5). Week 5 was the new creation and the ministry of reconciliation (2 Cor 5-6). Last week was the grace of giving in terms of finances (2 Cor 8-9).

And finally, today, drawing from the final 2 chapters of the letter, I am going to talk about humility, but more specifically, weakness. Paul uses the word “weakness” quite a bit throughout this letter. Humility and weakness are pretty much interchangeable.

1) We don’t like to be weak.

Quite the contrary, we like to boast. When you are growing up, esp. for guys, physical prowess is what the popular kids possess and what the rest of us want. At that age, nothing else matters. Who gets picked first at recess is really important, not who got an A on the math test. The strong, athletic kids are popular.

I remember not knowing about the Presidential Fitness test when I grew up in Flushing, NY in Queens. But when I was in the fourth grade and we moved to a suburb near Philadelphia, I found out one morning that it was time to be tested for Presidential Fitness. I had no idea what that was. But soon enough, I found out that it was a test to see who the toughest, strongest, fastest kid in the school was. As a fourth grader, one of the most nerve wracking things is walking up to a pull up bar one at a time having just watched my peers do 5, 6, 7 pullups and I had never done a pull up in my life. It might be shocking to you, but I was a bit of a chunky kid. There is nothing more embarrassing than having a kid right in front of me do 10 pull ups and then I was hanging on the bar and the gravitational pull of the earth at that moment suddenly quadrupled and my arm refused to bend.

By sixth grade, I was fed up with being picked on or being perceived to be weak so I started taking taekwondo. I know that Mr. Miyagi from the 1984 Karate Kid and Jackie Chan from the more recent version said we should only use martial arts for self-defense, but that’s not why I took it. I took taekwondo because I wanted people to fear me. I didn’t want people to mock me with the crane technique, but I wanted to walk down the hall and have the crowd of people split around me because if they bumped into me, they would be afraid of what I might do to them.

From a young age, we don’t want to be weak because society looks down on weak people. When I trash talk my kids and Elijah, my four year old, is going up for a shot in our indoor hoop and I block him, I like to yell, get out of here son! I find it poetic because he is my son so this is high level of trash talking because there is a double meaning.

You might not be as vocal in your boasting as I am with my kids, but don’t we all boast in our hearts? Boasting stems from a belief that we think we are better than others in some area. The greater the gap, the greater the boasting. Lebron James has the nickname, King James. And on the basketball court, he is the king. His team, the Miami Heat are the reigning champs. Earlier this year, they won 27 straight games. Lebron was the key reason for their dominance. He is the MVP on the best team in the league and they’ll most likely win another championship. Lebron can call himself a king on the court and he has the play to back it up. We love Lebron because he seems larger than life. He plays at another level. He is faster, he jumps higher, he makes all of his teammates around him better. He’s like a video game character. Almost super human.

I grew up carrying around an Incredible Hulk doll while wearing a Superman T-shirt and a blanket tied around my neck as a cape. We all want to be super strong, we all want to jump over buildings in a single bound and soar through the air. Have you ever seen a superhero with a “W” on his chest for Wimpy. Wolverine, yes, but it is doubtful if Wimpy Man would become a summer blockbuster. We like to cover our weakness. We put on an Iron Man suit so that we can appear invincible.

Sad to say, even in spiritual life, we don’t like to be weak. We gravitate to spiritual ministers who speak eloquently, who are highly competent, very decisive and gifted. Sometimes, when you compare yourself with such people, you think, they are too perfect. Do they have any weaknesses? Am I the only one around here who is struggling? We are drawn to such people who have it all pulled together.

Three-Part Series on Vision 2013 – Love God (pt3 of 3)

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First, Jesus commands us to love God with all our heart. Not half-hearted. Not love some of the time when we feel like it. Whole-hearted devotion, all the time. The Bible stresses the importance of our heart. God looks at the heart because the heart is the control center. If your heart changes, your mind, your actions, everything falls in line.

If Brother Matthew stumbled into service every Sunday at 3:55pm and he didn’t choose the songs ahead of time and nobody on the praise team got a chance to see the music until 5 minutes before service and we started singing and his guitar was out of tune and this happened week after week, I would probably sit down with Matthew and ask, hey, what’s going on? Is everything okay? You can’t keep winging it up there. Show a little heart. I am picking on Matthew because I know he does put his heart into preparing for praise. And he is not paid. He is just volunteering his time out of his love for God and this church.

We all show heart toward whatever we value. We show heart toward our studies. We show heart toward our careers. We work hard. We plan ahead. We prepare in advance and get all our ducks in a row. We show heart toward our favorite sports teams and our hobbies. Let’s show some heart this year toward God. Not out of a sense of duty or obligation. But out of an overwhelming sense of gratitude for his love for us in Christ, let’s love God in response with all our heart to show how much he means to us.

Second, Jesus commands us to love God with all our soul. When I hear the word “soul,” two things come to mind. Music and food. As an Asian, I don’t have much soul, but I can recognize soul when I see it. There are a lot of singing shows nowadays on TV. After a singer gives a very soulful performance, the judges say things like, I like your tone. It was bluesy. I heard a rasp in your voice. There was some grit. I like the texture of your voice.

Is this a singing show or a cooking show? It almost sounds like they are describing food. So I, too, will mix my metaphors between singing and food. Soul food is not a hollow, air-filled puff pastry. That’s not soul food. Soul food is artery clogging ribs and mashed stuff, smothered in butter. When you listen to soulful music, there is a substance that gets communicated. I like music with a lot of bass. Because you can actually feel the music in your bones. It’s not a thin broth of diluted chicken noodle soup. We are talking some chunky beef stew. It’s meaty. It’s because the artist’s soul is being communicated. His soul is coming through. His or her essence is present in the music. When we love God, we want the deepest part of our being to be engaged.

We might not have the talent here that Friendship Baptist Church, who worships in the morning, has, because those guys can sing, however, when we sing, is your soul engaged? Are you fully present? Or do you sing (clapping), “Blessed be the name” and your mind is wandering. You’re thinking about how much homework you have to do. Or the pile of laundry at home. Or your deadline at work. Whatever we do for the Lord, we want our soul to be communicated. We want to give God our very best because we love him that much. We want to lay our heart and soul on the table as an expression of our love for him. Let’s love God with all our souls.

Third, Jesus commands us to love God with all our mind. I read an article on CNN this past week entitled, “Secrets to a Better Brain.” Did you know that our brain actually changes based on how you think. Your thinking alters your brain cells and neural pathways. It’s amazing.

The best way to relate to your brain is to inspire it; the worst way is to ignore it. Let’s start with the negative first. Here are some qualities of people who tend to ignore their brains. They ignore their brains by getting set in their ways, by never looking beyond their own opinions, their likes and dislikes. They assume they are always right. They ignore the brain by isolating themselves from others and they take existing relationships for granted. Also, they assume that their best days are behind them and so life feels like a slide downhill. They act on selfish impulses. They give in to anger and anxiety. They avoid anything new or challenging. They tolerate stress. They find ways to distract themselves with mindless diversions. This is how one ignores the brain.

In contrast, here are some qualities of people who inspire their brains. They take care of stress. They avoid dulling routine. They do something creative every day. They read materials that makes them feel uplifted. Sounds like reading the Bible would fit here. They take time to be in nature. They bond with another person who is heartwarming. They make sure to take time every day by themselves to relax, meditate and self-reflect. Sounds like prayer to me. They deal with negative emotions like anger and anxiety. They focus on activity that makes them feel fulfilled. They give of themselves. They attach themselves to a cause that is bigger than they are. Hmmm, what could that be? They take the risk to love and be loved.

The difference between these two lists is pretty stark. In one case, you are approaching the brain as something that runs on auto-pilot. In the other, you assume that the brain has all this untapped potential. How we approach life is largely informed by the way we think.

Our minds are often like those vinyl records. There are grooves and the needle of the record player spins around the same grooves in a circle. Around and around. There are certain patterns of thought that God wants to break in the new year. Certain people pleasing patterns. Certain self-glorifying patterns. Certain fearful, paralyzing patterns. Be encouraged–we can actually change our brain circuitry. God wants to renew our minds and break those patterns so that we can love him in new and fresh ways. Transformation often begins with our minds. Let’s love God with all our minds.

Fourth and finally, Jesus commands us to love God with all our strength.

What happens if you don’t exercise? Our muscles atrophy. We lose our strength. Strength is important. We might be all in when it comes to our hearts. Our soul might be fully engaged as an expression of our love for God. Our minds might be sharp and focused on inspiring things; Phil 4:8–our minds might be zeroed in on whatever is true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent and praiseworthy. But, if we are lying in bed with the flu and have no strength, then what good is it? While we have our youth, while we still have breath in our lungs and the ability to serve, let’s love God with all of our strength.

The Greatest Commandment–love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. You can only obey this commandment if you have first experienced the love of God. Our love for God is only a response to God’s love for us. He loved us first. We love second. I pray that we can love God with everything we are and have in 2013 because he gave everything to us.

Three-Part Series on Vision 2013 – Love God (pt1 of 3)

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Happy New Year! I hope you had a good Christmas and New Year’s. It’s great to have the students back. For you undergrads and grads, I trust that the restful break will translate into renewed vigor and enthusiasm to tackle your studies. Kids are back in school – kids, are you excited? Parents, are you excited that the kids are back at school? I love my boys, but it’s time for them to get back to school.

Most people enter the New Year’s with some resolutions. If you are a youngster with siblings, your resolution might be, I have fight less with my siblings and I need to listen to my parents. If you are a student, your resolution might be things like, I need to stop procrastinating, I need to wake up before noon and stop playing video games. If you are married, your resolution might be, I have to be nicer to my spouse. And take her out on a date on a regular basis, not just on anniversaries and birthdays. If you are a parent, your resolution might be, I need to spend more quality time with my kids and control my temper and yell at them less. If you are middle aged, your resolution might be, I need to shed a few pounds. Some of the sisters here are battling each other to see who can lose the most weight. I want to officially announce that I would like to enter that competition, if they would have me. But I’m not sure if they want me to compete because, frankly, they’d lose. So I fully understand if you sisters want to compete amongst yourselves.

As a Christian, what should our resolutions be? Based on my reading of Scripture, there are 3 things that all Christians ought to resolve to do better, not just from one year to the next, but daily. Daily is hard. So at the very least, the turn of the new year gives us a re-calibration point. Cars need to be re-calibrated. Cars get out of whack over time so you have to do a tune-up or re-alignment. Instruments need re-calibration. We got an old piano from Jackie’s parents and it hadn’t been tuned in over 30 years. So it sounded terrible. And we had to spend a good chunk of change to retune it. As Christians, we can get out of tune. 1 Cor 13 describes Christians who sound like clanging cymbals because they have no love. We can become noisy and harsh to the ears and there can be a lot of background interference if we lose focus on the essential things. And so the new year affords us an opportunity to re-tune, to re-align, to re-calibrate ourselves.

If you are a violinist, then you know, you first tune your A string, then you can tune the rest, G, D and E strings. And if you are concert master, you step out in front of the orchestra before the performance begins and you play that A string and every other instrument tunes to your A string. As Christians, we have at least 3 A strings. There are 3 things that are so fundamental to what it means to be a Christian that it would serve us well as a church to spend the early days of this new year re-tuning ourselves to these things.

On that NOTE, pun intended, I want to suggest 3 resolutions for us in 2013.

1) Love God
2) Love Neighbor
3) Make Disciples

This is going to be a three-part series. Today, we’ll cover the first one, loving God, and we’ll save loving neighbor and making disciples for the following two Sundays.

If you have your Bibles with you, please turn with me to Mark 12:28-34.

Before we take a look at the Greatest Commandment, let’s set the stage because I believe the context teaches us some valuable lessons. Notice who Jesus is talking to. v28 – he’s talking to one of the teachers of the law. A religious leader. If you were with us last year, you know that Jesus and the religious leaders don’t get along very well. It’s like oil and vinegar. They just don’t mix well. In the eyes of the teachers of the law, the Pharisees and Sadducees, to the religious establishment, Jesus is a heretic. He is a revolutionary that must be quieted. He’s a Rabbi, just like them. Yet, Jesus is telling the Jewish nation, and the leaders in particular, essentially, that they need to start over because they have abandoned God and all they have left is empty religion.

Put yourself in the shoes of these teachers of the law. They’ve been attending the synagogue their entire lives. They felt so passionate about what they heard that they devoted their entire lives to God and they even chose to become full-time teachers of the Old Testament law as their vocation. They were well respected in the community, and along comes this no name Rabbi named Jesus and he tells you, you’ve got it all wrong. Repent. Start over. For some of us here, Jesus is telling us the same thing. You need to start over in 2013. Whatever you learned from the past, whatever traditions you followed, it’s time to hit the reset.

To these Jewish leaders, Jesus said countless times, your religious system is broken. You are like the blind leading the blind. You are like white-washed tombs. You are dead inside. If you are the recipient of these kinds of words, how would you respond? You’d be offended. You’d want to punch Jesus in the face. He says things like, I am the Son of God. That’s blasphemous. What he is saying is offensive to the entire religious community.

In our age of tolerance, everything has to be PC. Everything has to be politically correct. Everyone’s opinion has to be valued and accepted. We have to be tolerant of views, no matter how off the views might be. I don’t think Jesus would be very tolerant if he were living today. You might find him in churches overturning pews. This is not my message. This is not why I came and died for your sins. Truth is offensive. The message of Christianity is offensive. We believe, it’s not all roads lead to God. There is one way that leads to God and Jesus is THE WAY, the truth, the life.

Given Jesus’ track record with the Pharisees and the other religious leaders, this conversation stands out. It’s unusual. v28–

28 One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him…

…an important question regarding which commandment is the most important. Most times, religious teachers come to Jesus with a hostile attitude. With an attitude of testing. An attitude of judgment. They are often trying to show how right they are and how wrong Jesus is. When confronted by this kind of attitude, Jesus responds in one of two ways. Either, he teaches in parables and keeps things hidden from the listeners. Or, he rebukes them. He offends them. It’s one or the other.

A Spiritual Secret from Apostle Paul's Life

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Continuing from last time, Paul was shipwrecked, he was imprisoned, he was beaten, but nothing seemed to faze him. How does Paul do it? I can’t do this. Even if I muster all my human willpower, I can’t come close to living like he did.

Paul seems almost super human in the book of Acts, but if you read his other epistles, they reveal a more vulnerable side. He is trying his best to live for God and he experienced setback after setback, people trying to beat him and kill him, he’s shipwrecked, he’s in chains. And I’m sure he wondered at times, why are all these things happening to me? [Read more…] about A Spiritual Secret from Apostle Paul's Life