Critics don't hold the final say about us: Only God does.

Introduction

Hello to all of our students here tonight and welcome to camp for this year. Before we get going to far tonight I want to introduce myself and give us a bit to get to know each other a little bit.

My name is Juston Davidson. I have a beautiful wife Amanda who I met as a kid in youth group in our hometown of Owensville. She was a nice, outgoing, and kind girl and I was the loser that you really hope your daughter doesn’t bring home to meet the family. We met each other while we were working at McDonald’s, because it was the only place where a teenager to could get a job in Owensville until you turned 18. She was a money manager at 16 years old and I came in late every single day. One day she came to church on a Wednesday in her daddy’s jeep and we talked. Nothing special but I could tell she was checking me out. Later we both started coaching kid’s basketball teams together because they had so many kids sign up that they maxed out everyone immediately. It first started as, “We need anyone with any basketball experience”. then it became “We need anyone with any experience with kids”. Then it became “we need anyone.” Everything I knew about basketball came out of the manual they handed me to coach from. Yet, as it would turn out. My practices were on Tuesdays right before Amanda’s and I’d hang out and watch her do her thing and we’d shoot hoops together after that. Eventually, I got up the nerve to ask her out, having done all the work needed. i asked her friends all if she liked me and they told me how she wouldn’t shut up about me and frankly, it was getting old. So, one night, I asked her if she’d go out with me sometime while we were both at a friend’s house and guys; she laughed out loud in my face and said, “why would I go out with you I don’t even know you?”

That shook me a little. I’d done all the work. I knew she liked me. All her friends knew she liked me. What is the problem. I went away, however, determined to make her get to know me. For the next couple months I would call her, talk to her, sit at work and have my lunch break where she could see me watching her, sometimes showing up when I wasn’t supposed to be at work, and wink at her. She’d always roll her eyes. But eventually, she decided I was worth the risk and she went out with me. I don’t remember the movie we watched but she wouldn’t let me take her anywhere but taco bell. She ordered 3 tacos and ate only one of them because she was so afraid to eat in front of me.

We dated through the rest of high school, through 4 years of college, and will be married 15 years as of this year.

Tension

You see, Amanda didn’t want to date me because I had developed a bit of a reputation. I had a group of stupid friends and they had way too much say in my life, more than anyone really should.

If you have friends like that raise your hand. Friends that can seem to talk you into stupid things.

Don’t point but is that friend in the room?

Raise your hand if you are that stupid friend.

Yeah, we’ve all had them or been them over the years.

My friend Eric would get me in trouble all the time. One time we set a bunch of fireworks off on top of hay bale in the field next to his house and a neighbor called his mom on us. One time we took my 1985 Volkswagen Golf mudding with the guys at school and blew out my axle, which nobody helped me with by the way. One time we sabotaged a buddies truck and a school bus driver called it in, watching us do it. Eric got ISS and I got off Scott free.

See heres the problem, in all reality, I knew what I was doing was stupid but I couldn’t seem to stop myself when he was involved. I cared so much about what he and the other people around me thought about me that I’d do almost anything to fit in, even giving up what I knew to be good sense. Surprisingly, this didn’t just go away from me when I became a Christian either. All that changed is now I knew what I shouldn’t do and couldn’t pretend I didn’t know anymore. yet, the pull to still fit in with the people I wanted to like me was still there, even when it conflicted with what I thought would honor God.

I would wager that with all of us who have made it to camp this week, there are some of us who could say this could be said of our story too. That we sometimes can fall into a category of caring greatly about what others think of us, sometimes to the point of allowing our desire to please them outweigh our desire to please God.

In our time this week, we are going to be talking about what it really looks like to be empowered.

What is real strength and where does it come from? How do we tap into it and how can we, as God’s people lived lives that our empowered to do what he’s called us to do and be.

We will be setting up camp this week in 2 Corinthians chapter 12, and tonight we will diving into verses 1-6 together.

Truth

2 Corinthians 12:1–6 (ESV)

1 I must go on boasting. Though there is nothing to be gained by it, I will go on to visions and revelations of the Lord.

2 I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows.

3 And I know that this man was caught up into paradise—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows—

4 and he heard things that cannot be told, which man may not utter.

5 On behalf of this man I will boast, but on my own behalf I will not boast, except of my weaknesses—

6 though if I should wish to boast, I would not be a fool, for I would be speaking the truth; but I refrain from it, so that no one may think more of me than he sees in me or hears from me.

Pray

Exposition

Now, before we get going too deeply tonight I need to explain to you all how we study the Bible so that we can understand what it’s trying to say to us. Its a simple process but it helps us make sure that we are seeing what’s there but not adding anything to it.

We ask what the text meant to those people at that time.

We study the world around them so we can get the whole picture.

We acknowledge the gap between our world and theirs.

We figure out what messages were timely for them and which ones are timeless for us.

So, walking this path with our passage for the week we have to realize that this passage is a small piece of a larger letter that Paul was writing to a church he started on his 2nd missionary journey in a city called Corinth.

Paul was the apostle to the gentiles, commissioned to plant and grow churches to the nations that didn’t grow up in Jewish life and thought. His background in Judaism and as a Roman citizen made him uniquely perfect for the role even though he started out as a man who hated and persecuted Christians. He was kind of like the temples hired hit man who went around searching for Christians to make them repent and come back to Judaism or he could stir up a crowd and have them killed.

Yet, through some crazy situations, God broke through to him, convincing him of the validity of Jesus as the long awaited messiah and he gave all of his life to building up the church. His first time up to bat he traveled the Mediterranean region planting churches, teaching and preaching about Christ. He’d stay in the town, usually until he got ran out of town by the opposition, and teach them Christ’s words, then he would send them letters helping them figure out how to live out their calling as a church, to teach and preach the gospel in their communities.

The book of 2 Corinthians is one of 2 letters that he sent to that church in Corinth. These letters are all found in the New Testament and often, we find that Paul uses them to correct issues the church is having, to build up their knowledge, theology, and doctrine because they are believing all kinds of wrong things, and to bolster them on to live out their calling.

So, asking our first question “What did the text mean to those people at that time” we can see a couple things. 1. Letters were very expensive to write, paper wasn’t widely available, and most people didn’t read or write. So when you got a letter it meant something. Somebody had to have paid money, usually for papyrus (an expensive cloth like paper product), a scribe to write your words down, then pay someone or get somebody to hand deliver it. Then, once it got there, you usually had to find somebody educated enough to read it for everyone. So, Imagine that you are in the Corinth church, and Paul sends a letter to you. First off, Paul had already sent them one letter before and frankly, isn’t wasn’t very flattering. The letter of 1st Corinthians is ripe with critiques and scathing spankings for the people in the church who were messing up in all of the ways and making a mockery out of their devotion to Jesus. Paul’s first letter was sent to to get them back into shape and to correct the issues and theology they were having.

So, here they are, they got another one. “Oh, no. What did we do this time?” Maybe some of those thoughts coming out.

Secondly, they had a relationship with Paul as the planter who built up the church there. He shared the gospel with a majority of the founding members and was influential in their discipleship and their understanding of the Word of God and how to live out their faith in Jesus.

“What was the world like around them as they received this letter?” That is where things get thick. Corinth was a booming town with a broken and unrealized history. It was of Greek origin but laid in ruin, literally for 100 years after Rome sacked it. Now, it had been rebuilt, in some places from the ground up, and had become a sort of boom town for trade and shipping. As such, a town that was once literally ruins, was now blowing up overnight and being settled by all kinds of different merchants, Romans, Greeks, Jews, pagans, and industrialists. It had a storied history but one that no one had experience with. And with all those people converging in this place at this time, it was like throwing all those different cultures, religions, foods, languages, practices, family expectations, into a blender and mixing everything into a very volatile smoothie.

The Greek and roman mindset appealed to people with lofty speech and elegant arguments over messages that were founded in truth. Their was a constant influence of teaching that special teachers had “special revelation” or secret knowledge from God that only their followers were given so the people fought all the time over who was the coolest person to “follow”. The church was having big issues living out their Christianity according to the truth of the Word of God and adding to their beliefs practices that their pagan neighbors considered okay. And in the midst of all of this, the church was having a constant crisis of whether they would stand up for Christ in this city that was all but stacked against them, or if they’d give in.

“So how big is the gap between their world and ours?” Well one thing that helps us here is an understanding of a fun one for us. Everyone repeat after me. “HONOR IS THE ONLY GAME IN TOWN.”

You see, in their world there was this sort of back and forth game that was played primarily by men out in the public square. The rules are simple to follow and there they go.

1. There are people with honor and people without it. Some of those people got that honor by being honorable and some just by being rich, or knowing the right people, or being in the right crowds. Your honor was your reputation and your reputation was your life. If you wanted someone else’s honor all you had to do was call them out in public. For example, understanding the rules you get why the pharisees were always so mad at Jesus. Every time they were out in public in the scriptures and you see men asking Jesus a question publically, a battle was being fought. They were publically trying to undermine Jesus’ teaching by putting him in a situation to make him look foolish. Yet, Jesus won all of these encounters in a sort of back and forth tennis match. They lob a question at him, seeking to dishonor him, he lobs back a perfect answer, and they stumble being able to answer it. They loose honor for themselves, Jesus collects it, they go away mad. You could ask a question privately but to do so publically, in the open square among all the people was to throw down a challenge.

Rule number 2, repeat after me, “THE BEST DEFENSE IS A GOOD OFFENSE.”

Often, in order to keep yourself from being challenged, you would either publically boast about yourself, or have your fanboys do it for you. It would not be unheard of for the pharisees to enter the market, the temple or the public square and have their disciples publically announce, herald style, of their piousness, their education, their righteousness, or their generous nature. It would be like you going down your halls at school and having a middle-schooler being all like,

“Make way people, get out of the way, Juston is coming through and you aren’t even worthy to share the same hall with him, he hit two homeruns last game.”

This practice was called boasting. It was done to sort of build yourself up but also to keep others from trying to come at you at all.

Rule number 3, repeat after me, “IT’S ALL ABOUT WHO YOU KNOW AND WHO KNOWS YOU.” The world in Corinth and all throughout the Roman controlled world was run with this gas in its tank. If you were a mid tier family, no real money, no real power, no real honor, you would seek to get in close with people who were. You could do this by befriending someone, sometime marrying your kids off together (which might excite you but they might be getting the short end of the stick), you might give favorable trades or work for them for free so that they owed you one. Sometimes this would be outright obvious too. You might literally send them a big gift or an expensive one, sometimes most of what your family could afford. In the event that they accepted you had them on the hook and could then use that gift to extract favors from them.

Which brings us to rule number 4, repeat after me, “ALL GIFTS HAVE STRINGS ATTACHED.” There was never a free lunch and if you befriend someone, accepted a gift, arranged a marriage between your families, you could almost always expect someone to call in a favor from you at some point.

I say all of this to let you know the kind of social games and back and fourths that were plaguing the peoples lives all the time. It was a tense way to live and one that they grew up in their whole life. So, asking the question again, “What is the difference between our world and theirs?” are you starting to see what I’m getting at? Very little actually.

With the advent of social, internet, and texting the world is open and available to all of us to access hundreds of different beliefs, cultures, foods, religions, and practices. Its all at the touch of our fingers with all our devices.

While we might not call it honor, we value our reputations so much that we will do almost anything to fit in and be apart of the crowd. Things that make you stand out or feel unique are often discouraged and our friends and the people we live life with tend to let us know which beliefs and actions are appropriate and which ones need to fall in line.

While we wouldn’t call it boasting or braging, we spend a great deal of time and mental energy cultivating a perfect image of who we want the world to see us as. We take 32 selfies and post the one we deem the best. #sundayfunday #nofilter #mycoffeevibe #feeligncute.

While we might not call it for what it is, I’ve met very few people who can honestly describe the effect that our peers, our firends, and our culture have on us. Why is the music that is popular, popular? Why is it that we all have to have a certain phone and if you do you’re in, and if you don’t you are classified differently? Why is it that if you were at that party, or dating that person, or engaged in that activity, you are fine and cool if if you aren’t you just aren’t?

You see, we are closer than we’d like to think we are. So, now, knowing these things, understanding them a little bit, in order to answer our last question, “What is the timeless message that we should put into our lives” let’s take what we know and re-read our verses now.

2 Corinthians 12:1–6 (ESV)

1 I must go on boasting. Though there is nothing to be gained by it, I will go on to visions and revelations of the Lord.

Paul is talking about Boasting here, bragging. He declares the entire practice to be stupid. This is dumb. Why? Because nobody in the church is lifted up by me bragging about my credentials as an apostle or as a holy person. His critics, those who were calling out his leadership and his teaching in the church (yet again, challenging his honor and trying to take it for themselves by belittling Paul’s right to teach or lead). The people they were listening too claimed to have special insight into the things of God that no one else did. “Paul where is your secret knowledge, huh?” They preached and taught int he public square with enlightened words and fancy speeches. “Paul, how come you don’t do that?”

However, Paul decides that he will play their game but he gets to change the rules. “I will go on to vision and revelations of the Lord.” Paul decides he won’t brag about himself and his accomplishments or his pedigree, but boast in the Lord.

2 I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows.

3 And I know that this man was caught up into paradise—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows—

4 and he heard things that cannot be told, which man may not utter.

Paul decides to not even give his name here but only refers to himself as “a man in Christ,” as a way to take himself and his own glory out of it. Apparently, 14 years ago, sometime in the years 42-44 a.d., before Paul’s missionary journeys, Paul was given a vision of what he refers to here as “the 3rd heaven.” According to Luke 23:43 and Rev 2:7 this is the dwelling place of Christ and the saints which Jesus himself called “paradise”. According to Paul, he didn’t have any concept of space or time during this encounter (whether in body or out of the body I do not know) and what he saw, experienced, and felt in that moment he was forbidden to communicate with anyone else. But whatever it was, it solidified Paul’s conviction that “our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.” (2 Cor. 4:17).

In essence, Paul is saying I have the secret knowledge and experience that your teachers claim they have. I’ve been there and I’ve seen things that they can only wonder at but I’m not going to tell you or brag about myself because of it. I’m not going to give you what you want or be what you want. I’m not going to play your games because I have a higher goal.

5 On behalf of this man I will boast, but on my own behalf I will not boast, except of my weaknesses—

6 though if I should wish to boast, I would not be a fool, for I would be speaking the truth; but I refrain from it, so that no one may think more of me than he sees in me or hears from me.

You see, Paul decided that what he wanted most was not the back pats, the accolades, or the recognition the people could give him. He wasn’t concerned with what they thought of him or his ministry or his status. He could give them all the things they wanted and be all the things that would make him popular in their eyes. The eyes of the people of Corinth, and the eyes of the church. But instead, he decided that his only concern would be with God’s work through him and the gospel that he preached.

Landing

As we start off camp this week, we are going to be really looking at the idea of being “Empowered” in Christ. That we seek to get our validation, our strength, and our confidence in him. Which brings us to tonight's main point, and the heart of what Paul was getting at in tonight's passage. “Critics don’t have the final say about us: God does.”

Paul’s world was filled with people who cared so much about who the world thought they were that they’d do anything to fit in or stand out as an important person in the ways that they world craved. And that went for the people in the church of Corinth as well. They’d fallen to the trappings and allure of the world in a effort to feel relevant and popular and had missed the point. What was the point? Paul didn’t care if any of them thought much of him, only that the people heard the real Gospel and thought much of Christ.

If we are honest, in the room this size, we could probably all recognize the pull that fitting in or popularity or the deisire to impress our friends, family, classmates has on us. We could probably think in on some things we did, even this year, or are still doing that we know we shouldn’t be associated with, just so we can fit in. We can’t probably even think on times when we distanced ourselves from Christ so that we could better fit in.

I’m not here to beat anyone up this week but I think, If we are ever going to be the people we’ve been called to be, even as teenagers who have decided to follow Jesus, we have to come to grips with this part of ourselves. Do we care more about what the world says about us, or about what Christ says about us? do we want to please them more than we want to please him? Do we want to stand for his gospel or do we feel the need to create our own?

Pray and Dismiss.

Questions

Tonight Juston talked about the desire to fit in and feel like we are apart of the crowd. How would you describe this pull in your own words, the pull/desire to fit in?

In what ways do we let the world categorize us or divide us into camps? Why do you think people care so much about such labels?

Juston described the 4 rules of Paul’s world and their social game. 1. Honor is the only game in town. 2. The best defence is a good offense (bragging/boasting) 3. It’s all about who you know and who knows you. 4. All gifts come with strings attached. Do you see any similarities between how the ancient Roman society worked and the games we play in our own social circles today? In what ways do you think we are different and how are we the same?

Paul’s desire was the for people to not attach to him and his reputation as much as they did to the Gospel of Christ. While it can be a struggle to be honest with ourselves all the time, on a scale of 1 (being I care exclusively about what people think of me) to 10 (I actively want people to see Christ and not me) where would you put yourself as you currently are?

Why is it so important for us as Christians to look at our identity through and in Christ, rather than letting the world tell us who we are?

What are you looking forward to in your time at camp this week? What do you think God could be wanting for you this week?