Sermon Tone Analysis
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Good morning church family!
It’s great to be here with you this morning.
It’s always great to get to open up God’s Word together for us to be encouraged together as a faith family.
I hope you have had a steady diet of God’s Word throughout the week and I hope you are coming here as a supplement to your daily spiritual diet.
LAST WEDNESDAY EVENING… after I made sure all our students were with their parents to get home.
My girls had already evacuated Buffalo Gap and I told Adrian I would go back by the house to see what else I could pick up.
Really what I was focused on was trying to grab some more clothes for the girls and a few other things I didn’t want to burn.
As I was leaving the house I can remember praying,
Lord I obviously do not want our home to burn.
Lord please protect our home.
(We had just spent about 5 months waiting for this house to be finished, and so far we had only live in it 2 months.)
But God, I know this is not our real home, our home is with You.
And wherever you lead us Lord we will go.
To tell you the truth, I felt completely weak.
I felt like there just wasn’t much I could do if that fire came over those hills.
I had just spent all day trying to help fight the fire, and I STILL FELT USELESS AND POWERLESS.
I was in my daily reading this last week reading where I read a devotional that I decided to flesh out more this morning.
The reason I decided I wanted to flesh it out more, is because it really resinated with me, from this last week yes, but also with much of my life.
And I think many of us here, if we admitted it, would say the same.
In the beginning of this devotional Paul Tripp says,
I don’t know about you, but I tend to not like being weak.
I don’t enjoy physical or spiritual weakness.
I want to be right, strong, able, and in control.
I don’t want to feel like I’m not up to the challenge.
I don’t want to be confused or unready.
I don’t want to feel unqualified for the task at hand.
I don’t want to be the one who is keeping things from getting done or is holding others back.
I don’t like it when it seems that there are things I should know that I don’t know.
I don’t want to look back with regret, wishing that I had had a stronger resolve and the power to follow through.
I don’t want to stare failure in the face.
I don’t want to let myself or others down.
I want to have a track record that I am proud of.
I DON’T FIND WEAKNESS TO BE VERY COMFORTABLE.
I GUESS WHAT I’M SAYING IS THAT I DON’T WANT TO BE WHO I AM OR FACE WHO I AM.
AND I SUSPECT YOU’RE A LOT LIKE ME.
I read that the other day and it hit me as hard as I had been hit in a while by my readings.
We can all fall into this trap of needing to look like we are strong, have it all together and have no weaknesses.
Honestly this whole year so far I have felt like I have been behind the 8 ball and have not felt like I can catch up...
(MAYBE IT’S HAVING THREE KIDS?
MAYBE WE OVERLOADED OURSELVES OR OUR SCHEDULE)
IDK
But this year particularly I have felt weak.
I have felt not ready,
I have felt at times not able,
I have felt at times not good enough,
and not in control.
Maybe this is something that You have felt this year or in different seasons of your life?
Seasons where for no apparent reason, we just feel weaker than others.
Or a particular piece of our lives where it just seems like God has aloud things to happen against us.
Tripp refers to 2 Cor.
12:9 where Paul, the GREAT APOSTLE PAUL.
Paul begins to understand this about his own life.
That God will allow suffering in our lives along with the blessings in our lives.
He says here,
I briefly spoke last week at the baccalaureate service about how God take the things of this world and he flips them upside down.
Like the reality that God MOSTLY WORKS THRU OUR WEAKNESSES.
HOW DID PAUL COME TO THIS UNDERSTANDING?
I want to take a look at this today.
I do not enjoy being weak.
So how can we gravitate more to this reality and understanding in our own lives?
How can we understand also that God gives us this sufficient grace for the trials and tribulations in our lives.
Let’s dive into the passage for today’s sermon...
God Honored Him (2 Cor.
12:1-6)
NOW going back to 2 Cor.
11.
Paul has been dealing with False apostles.
We have this understanding that the Corinthians still are wanting proof of HIS OWN APOSTLESHIP.
For whatever reason they still did not believe him.
That he is an apostle sent by Christ.
Even after him starting the church there in Corinth.
And so, much like his opponents, he decides to boast since that is what the Corinthians want.
He asks the Corinthians to in chapter 11, “accept me as a fool, so that I too may boast a little.”
Apparently the Corinthians expected reports of apparitions of Christ from an apostle.
Some of the Corinthians found in their “apostle”, whoever it might have been a direct link to the risen Christ.
We know from scripture that the Corinthians also had a lot of interest in spiritual power like speaking in tongues and revelations which were all a regular elements with the worship of the church (1 Cor.
14:6, 26).
You can see already some similarities between Corinth and our American culture today.
We as Americans sometimes don’t even realize the interest we have in our own strength and power.
We are raised up in this culture of independent strength.
That I can do it or that I can figure it out myself.
We drive the latest cars, have the latest technology, many times have to have the nicest houses.
Unconsciously seeking this independent strength as an American.
The Corinthians were all about Spiritual Power.
If they did not see Spiritual Power from you, they did not believe really that you were a Christian and for sure not an apostle.
Paul had already taught them about everything being for the building up of the church.
We also cannot assume that the converted Gentiles made a clean break with their religious past.
Some of the converts here in Corinth may still have been influenced by their religious background concerning visionary experiences.
And so we see Paul reserved to speak about such things because he does not believe that recounting one’s extraordinary mystical visions will do anything to build up the community.
Nevertheless, in chapter 12 Paul turns to “appearances and revelations of the Lord.”
This would serve to substantiate the claim to be an apostle sent by Christ.
Paul here for whatever reason tells this story in the third person.
By doing so he takes on the attitude of not really wanting to boast of this experience that he went through 14 years ago.
He refers to himself as a man in Christ.
Again showing that he believes that this experience does not set him apart from others.
In his understand, he remains no different from anyone, A WEAK VESSEL OF CLAY WHO CAN ONLY BE SUSTAINED BY THE GRACE OF GOD.
IT SOUNDS AS IF PAUL DOESN’T KNOW THE CIRCUMSTANCES OF HIS ASCENT.
PAUL GENUINELY DOESN’T KNOW.
By continue to say “GOD KNOWS”.
He tells the Corinthians of this man being caught up into paradise.
He hears things that cannot be told, which man may not utter.
He does not say of anything he saw, but just that he heard.
SO WHY?
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