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Karen Beilharz: Welcome to Moore in the Word, a podcast of Moore Theological College in Sydney, Australia that seeks

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to glorify God through biblically sound, thought-provoking and challenging talks and interviews. In this episode,

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from a chapel service held on Friday the 14th of March 2025, Archie Poulos, Director for the Centre for Ministry Development and lecturer in the Ministry

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Department at Moore Theological College, speaks on 2 Corinthians chapter 12 and the undermining of Paul's ministry by the so-called “super apostles”.

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He reminds us that even though a Christian life and ministry can be full of pain and suffering,

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God is in control and he will use such things for his glory and for the blessing of his people.

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We hope you find the episode helpful.

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Archie Poulos: Lord God, again, we thank you for these words, these precious words that you have caused to be written and that we have heard.

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We ask you that you might extend your mercy so that we might believe, understand, and put into practice what you've written.

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Amen.

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Imagine if you were with the Apostle Paul, one of those people who at the end of two Corinthians send their greetings.

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What advice would you give to the apostle about how to relate to these Corinthians?

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Because Paul is their appointed powerful, great apostles.

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He was commissioned by God.

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He'd experienced things in the presence of God that can't even be spoken of.

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We just heard in verse two 14 years ago, he was caught up into the third heaven and so great,

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and mind spinning was that experience that God forbade him to tell anybody about what he'd seen.

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He was accredited to the Corinthians by signs and wonders and miracles in their midst.

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And after Jesus, he is the most pivotal human being used by God to spread the gospel.

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And yet as this letter is being penned, he is being undermined.

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His actions, while they are pure, are spun by the opponents, by the super apostles to be.

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Or at least appear to be evil or driven by false motives.

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In an attempt to destroy Paul and the super apostles sowed their wicked seed, they claim that Paul was inferior to them and to the other apostles,

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and it was having an impact because rather than commending their apostle, the Corinthians are in danger of believing that lie and rejecting Paul.

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They mocked Paul because Paul took no money from the Corinthians.

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His motive was absolute purity.

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He didn't want to make them think that he was doing it outta something he could get from them.

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It was for their sake that he took no money.

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But this generous action they had spun to say that he wasn't even impressive enough to dare to ask for money.

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His actions, they, they spun as trickery, as craftiness, craftiness, like the devil in the, the serpent in the garden, for example.

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Driven by his love and his concern for the Corinthians, and unable to go to visit them himself.

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He sent Titus to them to find out what was going on.

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This action.

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The super apostles accused Paul of, oh, he is strong in his letters, but he's weak face to face, and that's why weak Paul sent Titus.

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He was cunning.

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He was trying to exploit them.

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No matter what he was doing, out of good motives, they were spinning as evil.

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Have you ever experienced anything or something like that?

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We all have mixed motives as far as possible.

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There are times where we act for the benefit of others.

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We act for the benefit of others at cost to ourselves, and we have negative motives attributed to us.

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Have you ever experienced the pain that that causes the uncertainty about how to correct things?

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And so we have God's appointed apostle who has seen so much.

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Having his actions and motives undermined so that the Corinthians might disregard him,

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but the stakes are much higher than just their attitude towards the apostle and maybe his hurt feelings.

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This is much more than personal for to follow.

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You know this to follow the Apostle Paul.

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Is to secure your souls.

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To not follow the apostle Paul is to jeopardize your very souls.

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And so in chapter 10, he uses really strong language, almost cultic language.

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He says, I want to take every thought captive to make it obedient to Christ.

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Paul is so zealous because their eternal destiny hangs on them continuing in what he taught.

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It was for their sakes.

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What a weight the Apostle has to carry to carefully navigate the way he relates to them, his

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attitude to them, knowing that in every decision, their eternal souls way in the balance.

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I don't know about you, but as every chapter of two Corinthians has been read this term,

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I've thought this might be the most sobering and moving chapter of the New Testament.

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As the apostle wrestles with so many big eternity shaping issues, and do you feel it here in chapter 12 as Kessie just read it to us.

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He has so much, he's experienced so much to give with the possibility of being jettisoned to the scrap heap

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by the Corinthians, coupled with the anguish of knowing that if that occurs, they could lose their salvation.

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Now this is Paul's situation.

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Perhaps in a smaller font, it's actually the reality of all ministry.

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So what would we advise the Apostle Paul to do?

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What should he do?

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Well, to learn from what the Apostle does, we're going to look at the chapter in two parts.

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Firstly, Paul's dealing with the Corinthians, and secondly, the dealing with supernatural agents.

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So firstly, the Corinthians in chapter 11, which we didn't get a chance to look

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at at Tuesday, and one of our chapels didn't get to look at on Wednesday either.

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Paul says that he's gonna engage in some foolish speech, foolish speech, particularly is the foolishness of boasting.

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Because it looks like he might defend himself and his ministry through the argument.

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Look at me.

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I'm the great one.

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Give me credit.

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And the reason for that is the hope that they might accept and listen to him and to our ears

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Boasting his automatically negative, isn't it as negative connotations to it, but it need not.

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Sometimes the word which we translate boasting is translated as glory.

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Sometimes as rejoicing, it's actually holding up something for others to enjoy and benefit from.

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Like, like when you sing the praises of your spouse, what you're doing is you're ing their

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praises is calling on other people to rejoice in the blessings that flow from this person.

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But of course, even that can turn dark, can't it?

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It can become about you.

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Look at the wife I've got.

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So boasting in and of itself isn't a problem.

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It's that it's can so easily tip over into extolling of yourself, and that's

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why it gets such a negative rap in our world and when the dark side of boasting.

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Is in play.

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It draws attention to the wrong things.

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And so Paul says he won't boast about himself in verse six because what it does

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is make you focus on the person and not on what he does and why he does it.

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And he won't talk about what he experienced in the third heaven because that's what will

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consume them, and it will take their attention away from their relationship with him.

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And so in chapters 11 and 12, Paul boasts.

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But not in his greatness, but in what God is doing for the Corinthians through the work of the Apostle Paul, it is not self extolling.

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It's so that the Corinthians can delight in what God's doing in them, so they

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can clearly see that God is the conduit that God uses for his marvelous work.

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Because if Paul boasts about himself, despite any positive benefits it might bring, it will suck the oxygen from the

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deep relational care that he has for the Corinthians and divert their attention from the relationship to his experience.

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And so there are two specific things that Paul says in his chapter about that relationship.

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First one is Paul displays acted love.

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The language of Paul in this chapter is so caringly and lovingly evocative.

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Verse 14.

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Now I'm ready to visit you for a third time and I won't be a burden to you.

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'cause what I want is not your possessions but you, after all children shouldn't have to save up for their parents, but parents for their children.

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So I'll gladly spend for you everything that I have and expend myself as well.

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If I love you more, will you love me less?

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See what he says there.

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I want not your possessions but you.

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You see he's not using them for his own ends to get something for himself.

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This is the language of deep, intimate, and exclusive relationship.

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If you're a super apostle, maybe you would call this language claustrophobically, smothering, something

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that the apostle does to fulfill some psychological need in himself, but that's far from the truth.

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Paul explains the nature of this relationship as a parent to their child.

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Parents go through sleepless nights.

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Many of you know this.

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And it doesn't end when they turn two, you worry every day of their life for them, and you'll gladly do it again.

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And again.

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Parents surrender their freedoms for the good of their children.

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They give up their personal resources for their children.

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The traffic is one way from the parent to the child.

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They do it willingly and lovingly, willingly and lovingly, and a great personal cost.

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Here, Paul, in verse 14, I will gladly spend for you everything that I have, and he goes further and expend myself as well.

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This expression of love is limitless.

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It unleashes everything that I have.

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For your benefit, and this is how the great Apostle Paul describes his relationship with the so often recalcitrant Corinthians,

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but parental love like this has the danger that it cares so much for maintaining relationship.

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That the parent does whatever they can to preserve it, especially if the relationship's fragile, like it's with the Corinthians.

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And that can make you timid, not wanting to rock the boat, soft peddling hard words.

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That should be said, but that is not how Paul loves.

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He calls out bad behavior.

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Maybe it was the Super Apostles who let the Corinthians get away with all sorts of bad behavior, but that would destroy them and dishonor God.

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Rather for Paul, the life that God calls people to is the best life for them and it's the

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parent's responsibility to call it out when that is not the case in the call for change.

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And so in love, Paul will discipline them despite how they might respond to him in this tenuous relationship.

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For the end of the chapter verses 19 to 21, have you been thinking all along that I've been defending ourselves to you?

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We've been speaking in the sight of God as those in Christ and everything we do dear friends, is for your strengthening

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for I'm afraid that when I come, I won't find you as I want you to be and you may not find me as you want me to be.

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I fear that there may be discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, slander, gossip, arrogance, and disorder.

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Wow.

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Um, I'm afraid that when I come, my God will humble me before you and I'll be grieved over many who

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have sinned earlier and have not repented of impurity, sexual sin, debauchery in which you've indulged.

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Okay?

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I am not going to soft pedal things.

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It is for your sake and for the glory of God that I'm gonna call these things out.

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I. By the way, I think the humbling that Paul speaks of here is the humbling that a father feels when their child goes astray.

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A humbling that originates in the grief of poor behavior and it mourns the loss of the child walking in the right way.

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Yet another example of the love that Paul has for the Corinthians and so love enacted love that is not timid is a great lesson for we pastors.

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But there is much more to these verses.

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It's not just Paul's relationship with the Corinthians that's addressed here.

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It's the supernatural dimension that we actually are permitted a glimpse here.

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Now, I dunno if you've ever watched the movie The Truman Show.

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Any of you seen it?

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Yeah.

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Okay, great.

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Some of you wouldn't 'cause you're young.

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Um, it was actually one of the most influential movies of the 1990s and it still challenges our obsession with reality tv.

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It's the story of a baby who was discarded at birth, who is raised on a sound stage called Sea Haven Island, where

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he's surrounded by actors his whole life and every day of his life becomes a reality show, and yet he doesn't know it.

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He never gets the chance to leave the island.

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A fabricated island is his entire reality.

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That's all his existence knows.

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But one day he thinks that there might be more to existence than just this

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island, and so he sails across the water and hits the edge of the sound stage.

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That's what you can see there, where he exits the reality that he had always known and there he sees in existence that he had never imagined.

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Now, while we don't know what Paul saw in the third heaven, in verses seven to 10, we get

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a glimpse of this bigger universe like Truman does as he exits the sound stage verse seven.

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In order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger from Satan to torment me three times.

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I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me, but he said to me, my grace is sufficient for you, for my powers made perfect in weakness.

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Therefore, I'll boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me.

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That's why for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties.

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For when I'm weak, then I'm strong.

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And so let's think about Paul, God and the devil.

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These words in verses seven to 10 are so familiar to us.

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Familiar, especially in times of torment that we can lose the shockingness of

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them because Paul is the divinely appointed apostle who had experienced so much.

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He grieve constantly for the, and the dangers for the souls of the Corinthians.

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And what will God do in that circumstance?

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God who is all powerful, who is always active in his world, what will he do if you are a friend of Paul back in the first century?

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What would you pray for, expose, bring to an end the destructive super apostles.

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Would you pray for that?

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Restrain the work of Satan?

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Would you pray for that?

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I've prayed prayers like that for milder, but somewhat similar circumstances, and I think there are

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appropriate prayers and that's why when we read these verses that come from outside of the sound stage.

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They're so shocking.

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Verse seven, after all that I've experienced, for the sake of God, Paul says, in order to keep me

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from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in the flesh, a messenger from Satan to torment me,

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to keep me from becoming conceited.

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What about what's going on for the Corinthians?

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What we see here is God's intimate and deep care for the individual.

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The individual matters to God.

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Paul, as great as he is, he's not just an operative to be used by God.

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God cares for this saint soul, and his concern for this saint is that he grow in Christ's likeness, and so he intervenes for him with the thorn.

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Thorn in the flesh.

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You can read all of the options and you won't be able to come up with an answer.

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What we do know though, is it was painful and it was a torment, and I think we do ask, what is God doing here?

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Here is God's man deeply exercised in his concern for the Corinthians, and yet given another excruciating torment.

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Why would God do this?

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And I think a reasonable answer is, oh, it's not God.

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It was the cunning, crafty work of Satan after all the thorns called a messenger from Satan.

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That's true, but it doesn't absolve God because Paul knows that this torment is actually in God's hands because he asks God three times.

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No, he doesn't ask God.

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He pleads with God three times to remove the thorn.

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Paul knows that God stands over all like Job did that we just read of in chapter 13 a moment ago.

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By the way, it's not wrong to ask God to take pain away, and it's also not a sign of indifference on God's part or anger towards you.

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If God's answer to you is no, that's one of the things we can learn from this, but how can Satan.

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God both be involved in the same activity.

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How can the thorn be both from God and a messenger from Satan?

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Either it's gotta be God or it's gotta be Satan, hasn't it?

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And here is part of the solution.

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Uh, just a quick di uh, digression.

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Uh, some of you have, see, heard me speak about this before.

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When can a circle be a triangle?

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If you've, if I've given you the answer, don't yell it out.

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The answer is it can't be.

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Because a triangle has three sides.

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A circle has an infant number of sides.

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It's impossible for the two to coexist.

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Isn it, it can't.

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A circle can't be a triangle, except if next slide,

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you move into three dimensions and you look at a cone.

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You look at a cone from the top and you see a circle.

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You look at a cone from the side and you see a triangle.

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It's only when you move outside of the situation that you are in.

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Into the third dimension that you actually understand things and so you say, how can God and Satan both be intimately involved?

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The answer is, we are humans.

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We're like two dimensional beings.

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God is in absolute control, and yet this is a messenger from Satan used entirely for the purposes of God.

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And so the thorn is good for Paul's soul, and the pain is used by God to purify Paul and to keep him from conceit.

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And so he can say, when I am weak, then I am strong.

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Eight small words, easy to say, really hard to believe, and really hard to bring inside your very being.

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How easily the devil can deceive us.

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He takes good things like our successes and uses them to lead us astray.

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Weakness enables us to see things properly, but even more astoundingly than that, God uses this

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thorn, not as an afterthought, as if, oh, the devil gave it, so what can I do to make it useful?

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God deliberately uses it for his glory.

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Verse 10 is where Paul says, when I am weak, then I am strong.

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We need to hear that because that's a subversion of our world's paradigm, but it is not merely a subverting of the world's paradigm.

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It is not merely whoever wants to be great must become least.

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We must learn that we must learn, don't view reality the way the world does.

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That is important and true.

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To leave it there is to only pay attention to the end of verse 10 and ignore the most important part, which is the beginning of verse 10.

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So in verse 10, that is why for Christ's sake, I delight in weakness, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties.

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For when I'm weak, then I'm strong.

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Verse 10.

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The motivation is not the subversion of a paradigm.

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It's for Christ's sake, the paradigm is not subverted because it's good that things be overturned.

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It's not subverted in order to keep people on their toes, like the tactics that some of our ward leaders use, everything

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that Paul does, all that he endures is for the sake of Christ, for the glory of God, and what a model for us is that.

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Over the last few days, as I've been reading two Corinthians 12, I've been challenged by how I pray, and so I've interrogated

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my prayers and I've asked myself after I have prayed, am I asking for my ease or am I asking for the glory of God?

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Are the things I am asking for because I think I know a better, easier way for me.

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Rather than the pathway I think that God has set out for me, and as I've asked those questions, it's changed my prayers.

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My prayers are now less about things and events, and more about promoting boasting

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glorying in Christ about perseverance so that God might be praised and to my shame.

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It's only now that these themes are much more common in my prayers.

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And so to finish, we are not the apostle.

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I assume that none of you have experienced the third heaven, and Howard would be able to confirm

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it even if you say you have, and nor do we have the certainty of Paul for the source of the th.

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And so what do we learn?

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Well, Paul is a great model.

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Pray for such love.

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For the flock that bites that's entrusted to us.

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Pray for wisdom to best relate to them.

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Pray for resoluteness and perseverance.

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Pray that you'll be spared from self ag grandest because of your office or the experiences that you'll have,

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and pray that in the midst of difficulties, no matter how tormenting God will be glorified through them.

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But I wanna add.

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Also know and be convinced that this life, this Christian life has tormenting pain and the experiences of pain while

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they're the result of our broken, fallen world are under the hand of God, that God might be glorified and people blessed.

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Only you have that message.

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To bring to our world

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the revelation of God through his apostle takes us outta sea haven Island Distress not ease is a normal experience of life.

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And unless you've seen beyond the island, no one knows how to handle distress.

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Living appropriately in this distress blesses you and glorifies God, and no one naturally thinks like that.

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It is the blessed gospel.

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Our only hope.

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Anyone's only hope that makes sense of torment and only you Christian have something to say that no one else can say.

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Only you have the answers to the reality of our existence, and these answers are true for when I am weak, then I am strong.

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For Christ's sake,

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Karen Beilharz: Thank you for listening to Moore in the Word, a podcast of Moore Theological College.

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Our vision as a College is to see God glorified by men and women living for

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and proclaiming Jesus Christ, growing healthy churches and reaching the lost.

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As you come to teach others the Bible, do you wish you had the skills to approach a

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passage or different books and genres from the Old and New Testament with confidence?

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Graduates testify to the value of the Diploma of Biblical Theology or DBT, an accredited

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online course with the flexibility to undertake study part-time or full-time.

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The DBT enables you to study wherever you are.

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As Jude, a recent graduate of the DBT, says,

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Jude: For me, the DBT has really enhanced me with the knowledge and capacity to be able to help the people I work with and minister to

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to come to that knowledge and experience of the Lord Jesus Christ.

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Karen Beilharz: Find out more or apply by visiting 

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moore.edu.au/dbt.

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That's moore.edu.au/dbt.

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You can find out more and register by going to the Moore College website:

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moore.edu.au

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That's moore.edu.au

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If you have not already done so, we encourage you to subscribe to our podcast through your favourite podcast

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platform so that you'll never miss an episode. For past episodes, further resources, and to make a tax deductible,

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donation to support the work of the College and its mission, please visit our website at moore.edu.au.

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If you found this episode helpful, please share it with a friend and leave a review on your platform of choice.

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We always benefit from feedback from our listeners, so if you'd like to get in touch, you can email us at comms@moore.edu.au.

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The Moore in the Word podcast was edited and produced by me, Karen Beilharz and the Communications Team at Moore Theological College.

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The music for our podcast was provided by MarkJuly from Pixa Bay.

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Until next time.