Now, Paul has finished his teaching
about giving. We've studied that these last
several weeks. And now in chapter 10, he turns his attention back
to these false teachers that he had been dealing with earlier
in the epistle. And I thought this week, I bet
what Paul just got done teaching them about giving is substantially
different than what those fellas had been telling them about giving.
There's a stark contrast there. Now, you know, the Lord raised
a great church in Corinth. Yet this city is where Paul had
the most enemies. And the reason for that is Satan
always attacks where the gospel is being preached in power, where
the Lord is working in mercy and grace. That's where Satan
attacks. And that's why the situation
had come up in Corinth that Paul is forced to deal with. So in
verse one of chapter 10, He says, Now I, Paul, myself, beseech
you by the meekness and gentleness of Christ, who in presence and
base among you, but being absent and bold towards you. Now these
false teachers had accused Paul of being meek and humble when
he was with the people there in person. And that was true.
That's the way he did conduct himself with them, meek and humble.
And isn't it something that that's a charge against you? that you're
meek and gentle and kind when you're with people. But they
said now when he went away and he wasn't with them face to face,
he was harsh and forceful in his letters when he wasn't with
them face to face. And that's true, too. These two
epistles that Paul wrote to the church there in Corinth, Paul
pulled no punches. But you know, there was no need
for him to be that bold and forceful when he was with them in person.
These errors of doctrine and conduct did not go on when Paul
had been there in person. And they kind of failed to mention
that, that the fact that he had gotten to be more bold and forceful
when he was not with them is because those things didn't go
on when he was there in person. And they're trying to turn the
hearts of the people away from Paul by saying, well, he'd been
so meek. He's so meek all the time when
he's with people. Well, you know why they used
that, they tried to use that against him? They didn't see
any value in being meek and gentle and humble. And you know why
they saw no value in being meek and gentle and humble? They'd
never seen the Lord Jesus Christ. Paul conducted himself that way,
following the example of Christ. Who is more meek and humble than
the Lord Jesus? God clothed himself in human
flesh. You can't get more humble than
that. And as a man, he was a humble man compared to other men. He
was a humble man. He lived as a homeless person,
even though he's Lord of all. Meek and humble and gentle. Our Lord is so gentle with sinners. You never read of him being harsh
to a sinner. Now to the Pharisees, to the
self-righteous, it's different, but to a sinner who's broken,
who's needy, gentle. And aren't you glad? Aren't we
thankful the Lord is gentle with sinners? Our Lord is so gentle,
he prayed for those who crucified him. If you don't see the value in
that, you've never been saved. And that's the way that we should
all strive to conduct ourselves. Patient. I wish I was more patient. Patient and kind with people.
Following the example of Christ. Yet, always be bold and never
compromise the truth. Never compromise the truth of
the gospel. Never compromise the truth of
Christ. Yet remain patient with people.
Look at 1 Thessalonians chapter 2. That can be done. To be kind
and patient with people, yet remain bold and never compromise
the truth of the gospel. 1 Thessalonians 2 verse 7. How was Paul when he was with
the folks in Thessalonica? The same as he was in Corinth.
He says, We were gentle among you, even as a nurse cherisheth
her children. So being affectionately desirous
of you, We were willing to have imparted unto you, not the gospel
of God only, but also our own souls, because you were dear
to us. When Paul was gentle and cherished
someone, what did he do? He gave them the truth, the gospel
of God. Look over at 2 Timothy chapter
2. 2 Timothy 2, verse 24. And the servant of the Lord must
not strive, but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient,
in meekness instructing those that oppose themselves, if God
perventure would give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth.
Be kind and gentle and patient, yet still bold and uncompromising,
if God perventure would grant them repentance. Be patient until
he does. But you know, there may come
a time, even though we're patient and gentle with people, there
may come a time for plain speaking, for correction. Look in verse
2 back in our text in 2 Corinthians 10, that was the case here at
Corinth. He said in verse 2, he says, but I beseech you that
I may not be bold when I am present with that confidence, wherewith
I think to be bold against some, which think of us as if we walked
according to the flesh. Now, if we're going to follow
a man, we do as believers, we follow a man to an extent. We
follow his message. We submit to the authority of
our pastor. We submit to the authority of
his message. And we'd be wise if we find a
man who's preaching Christ to follow him, to follow his message,
to follow him as he follows Christ and to not follow him if he's
not following Christ. That's God's ordained way. Now
the apostles had even more authority than pastors today have. That's
authority that was given to them by God. But Paul didn't want
to go everywhere he went waving the stick of that authority.
That's not the way he wanted to do. He didn't want to come
back to Corinth using his authority as a rod of correction. But he
would if it was necessary. Remember back in first Corinthians
chapter four, he told him this is now he'd come that way if
it was necessary. First Corinthians four. Verse
21. What will ye? Shall I come unto
you with the rod or in love and in the spirit of meekness? He
could do both. He says it's up to you. I could
do both, but it's up to you. And no one likes to be corrected. Nobody does. No one does. But it's for our own good if
we are corrected. It's just like our children. They don't like
to be spanked. They don't like to be corrected.
But we do it for their own good to keep them from being a brat
nobody can stand being around. The same thing is true of us,
isn't it? We need to be corrected. And I'll tell you how that's
done. Through the preaching of the Word. The same Word that
feeds the sheep also corrects and reproves and rebukes the
sheep. Nothing will fix our wagon like
God's Word. And a common trick of false teachers
is what they did here in Corinth. They tried to turn the light
away from themselves by accusing Paul of doing the very same thing
they were doing. That's a common way these fellows
conduct themselves. And they accused Paul of doing
the very same thing they were doing. They accused him of seeking
his own worldly fleshly advantage by using fleshly wisdom and fleshly
tricks to manipulate people rather than preaching the word and being
dependent on the Lord to provide. In one thing certain, I never
met the Apostle Paul, but from what I've read about him, I can
tell you this with a hundred percent degree of certainty.
He did not walk after the flesh. Look at verse three. He says,
for though we walk in the flesh, We do not war after the flesh. Now there's a great big difference
between walking in the flesh and walking after the flesh.
Unfortunately, we all have to walk in the flesh. It's the body
we're trapped in. You have to walk in this flesh.
We're trapped in this flesh and we'll be subject to the sin and
weakness of this flesh until it dies and the Lord takes us
home. It's just we suffer weakness and sickness trapped in this
body of flesh. You talk about frustrating. You
have to walk in the flesh. But you don't have to walk after
the flesh. A believer does not walk after
the flesh to fulfill the desires of the flesh and of the mind
anymore. We've been delivered from that,
from walking after the flesh. We've not been delivered from
walking in the flesh yet. But we have been delivered from
walking after the flesh. We don't seek to please the flesh
and to live for the flesh anymore. The believer's goal is not to
please the flesh. It's to win Christ and be found
in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that
which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which
is of God by faith. That's our goal. Our goal is
the glory of God, not the glory of this flesh. Now, every believer,
from the Apostle Paul to us, every believer has a life to
live. The Lord doesn't just save you
and take you home. He leaves you here to be the
salt of the earth. My dear friend, Jim Meadows,
told me a hundred times, I don't know why the Lord leaves me here.
I just don't know why. All these years ago, he saved
me. He took me home then. I don't know why he leaves me
here. I told him, I know for my good. He's my neighbor for my good.
And we've got a life to live. And since that life is in this
flesh, it's going to be a life of warfare. It must be. There's a war outside. A war
against untruth. I don't know if untruth is a
word, but untruth. There's a war against false prophets. There's a war against spiritual
wickedness in high places. There's a war without. And I'm
telling you, there's a war within. Because of this flesh and every
believer, there is a war within. Look back at Romans chapter 7. Romans 7 verse 22. For I delight
in the law of God after the inward man, but I see another law in
my members. warring against the law of my
mind and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin, which is in
my members. Oh, wretched man that I am, who
shall deliver me from the body of this death? Well, I thank
God through Jesus Christ, our Lord. That's who's going to deliver
me. So then with the mind, I serve
the law of God, but with the flesh, the law of sin, and that
war is going to continue to the flesh dies. Look over at James
chapter three. James 3 verse 17 But the wisdom that is from above
is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be entreated,
full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, without hypocrisy. And the fruit of righteousness
is sown in peace of them that make peace. Boy, there's a life
of peace, isn't it? But look what he says in chapter
4 verse 1. From whence come wars and fighting among you? Come
they not hence even of your lusts that war in your members? That
war, you love peace, a believer is a peaceable, peace-loving
person. Where does this warfare come
from? The flesh. That's where it comes from. One
more, 2 Peter chapter 2. I'm sorry, 1 Peter. 1 Peter chapter
2. Verse 11, Dearly beloved, I beseech
you as strangers and pilgrims abstain from fleshly lusts, which
war against the soul. Where's the war come from? Flesh,
fleshly lusts. And there's going to be a war.
Now, we live a life of a warfare and that war is not one with
fleshly wisdom, fleshly understanding and fleshly weapons. It's not
the way it's won. One of the writers said this.
In order to win this war, use the power of truth and the meekness
of wisdom. Now that's not the fleshly way.
We don't go overseas to fight a war in meekness, do we? We
do it with the fierceness and all the power we can muster.
You win this war with the meekness of wisdom. And here in verse
four is how we fight this war. Here's the weapons of our warfare.
For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal. But mighty through
God, to the pulling down of strongholds. The weapons of our warfare are
spiritual weapons because we're in a spiritual war. We're not
in a carnal war. Look over at 1 Timothy chapter
6. This is a spiritual warfare. 1 Timothy 6. Verse 12. Fight the good fight of faith.
Lay hold on eternal life, whereunto thou art also called and has
professed a good profession before many witnesses. What's our fight? The fight of faith. What's the
goal of our fight? To lay hold on eternal life. Those are spiritual matters.
Our goal is for us and for men, men and women that we preach
to, to lay hold on eternal life. That they'd be given faith so
that they'd be like Jacob and lay hold on the Lord Jesus Christ
and never let go. That's our goal. That's a spiritual
warfare. Our goal, the goal of this warfare
is not outward reformation. It'd be great if everybody cleaned
up their act and let the police be a whole lot less busy, but
that's not our goal. Our goal is that God would make
a man a new creature in Christ Jesus. That's the goal. And I'm
telling you, that's not done with the Law of Moses. That's
not done with carnal reasoning. You're not going to produce spiritual
results with carnal reasoning. It's impossible to come to a
spiritual knowledge of Christ through carnal reasoning. The
carnal mind is enmity against God. You can't come to a spiritual
knowledge of Christ through the carnal mind. You can't come to
a spiritual knowledge of Christ through the light of nature.
It takes the power of God and the grace of God through the
preaching of the word of God. If you're still there in Timothy,
look back at 1 Timothy chapter 1. Here's how we fight this battle
in verse 18 of chapter 1. This charge I commit unto thee,
son Timothy, according to the prophecies which went before
on thee, that thou by them mightest war a good warfare. Holding faith
and a good conscience. That's how we fight this warfare
with the word of God. Our weapon is the word of God,
the sword of the spirit, the prophecies that went on before.
That's the Old Testament. He's telling Timothy, you take
the scriptures, the word of God, and that's your weapon to fight
this warfare. And you preach holding faith
and a good conscience, holding faith in God, believing him. that he'll bless his words as
preached. If God doesn't work in us and for us, our preaching
is in vain. He must do all the work. So we preach, not depending on
the power of our flesh or, you know, how good we can speak and
come up with these great, you know, oratory. It's depending
on God to do the work. And preaching in a good conscience,
declaring all the counsel of God. So that we're innocent of
the blood of all men, but completely dependent on the Lord to give
faith. If he doesn't grant faith and
make it effectual, we're just beaten there. And our weapons
are spiritual because our enemies are spiritual. Our weapons are
the word of God. Prayer. The truth of God. Love and faith. These are our
weapons. And the only way that these spiritual
strongholds are going to be pulled down is if the Lord does it.
These strongholds that we fight against is first a dead nature. We're fighting a dead nature. We're preaching to people that
have a dead nature. That's a stronghold that must
be pulled down. There's a stronghold of the bondage
to the law. Even a believer feels the pull
of that bondage to the law. There's a stronghold of the bondage
of Satan. If you don't think it's a stronghold,
try to set yourself free from it. Stronghold. Spiritual blindness. Stronghold. You can preach until you're blue
in the face and read and read and read and read and somebody
says, I don't see what you're saying. Blindness. And it can't be overcome with
human carnal abilities. It's not going to work. There's
one person that can set you free from all those strongholds. Look
at Isaiah 61. One person. The Lord Jesus Christ, here's
a prophecy of him in Isaiah 61. The spirit of the Lord God is
upon me. because the Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings
unto the meek. He has sent me to bind up the
brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and the opening
of the prison, the opening of those strongholds to them that
are bound, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord and the day
of vengeance of our God, to comfort all that mourn, to appoint unto
them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the
oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit
of heaviness, that they might be called trees of righteousness,
the planning of the Lord, that he might be glorified. He sets
us free from all those spiritual strongholds. And that's why we
preach Christ and him alone, because he's the one that sets
us free from these strongholds. Now, look at verse five back
at 2 Corinthians 10. Here's more of Satan's strongholds. That must be torn down, casting
down imagination. and every high thing that exalteth
itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity
every thought to the obedience of Christ. Satan's strongholds
are ignorance, the lust of the flesh, the pride of life, lies,
vain imaginations, vain imaginations about God, too low of thoughts
about God, and vain imaginations about men, too high of thoughts
of us. Vain imaginations. Now where are all these strongholds
found? Where are you going to find them? They're found in the
hearts of men. That's where this ignorance and
lust and vain imaginations, that's where all this comes from is
the heart of men. Flesh. They come from human reasonings. That word imaginations there
is reasonings. It comes from human reasonings.
Getting an imagination of who we think God is. It'll always
be wrong because it comes from a carnal mind. And that must
be torn down. And carnal reasoning can't pull
down that stronghold. You've got to have something
a whole lot more strong than that. A whole lot more powerful
than human reasoning. It's got to be more powerful
than Satan. He's got the stronghold. The only person who's that strong
is the Lord Jesus Christ. And the preaching of Christ will
pull down those strongholds. every time. To God's sheep it
will. And we preach and depend on the Lord to make that preaching
effectual, knowing that faith is the gift of God. That's the
only place we're going to get is a gift of God. And if the
Lord grants faith in Christ and belief of the truth, those strongholds
will be torn down and we'll become willing, loving bond slaves of
the Lord Jesus Christ and only the truth of the gospel will
produce obedience to Christ. It's not a forced obedience,
it's willing obedience. Now, we can never tolerate a
departure from that gospel, from the gospel of Christ. That's
the only gospel that'll tear down these strongholds and set
men free. Then we can never tolerate a
departure from it. Even though we're meek and patient,
we can never tolerate a departure from Christ, from the truth.
Paul didn't look at verse six. And having in a readiness to
revenge all disobedience when your obedience is fulfilled.
Now, Paul proved he would never tolerate another gospel. He proved
he was very ready and quick to correct disobedience, to reprove.
And the church at Corinth followed his instructions. Now, most people
think here that Paul is referring to that incestuous man who'd
been excommunicated by the church after Paul wrote to correct that
matter. They followed his instruction. And now that man had repented.
He'd been brought back into fellowship. But that's not the only error
Paul wrote to correct there in 1 Corinthians. He corrected many
different errors. So he proved he was ready to
correct bad doctrine and bad behavior that brought reproach
on the gospel. Now, we never do these things lightly. Paul
acted and corrected these things. And we may face a situation like
that, but you never react to those things rashly. If that
kind of situation would ever come up, it's to be handled very
prayerfully and very carefully. Now, it's necessary to deal with.
You can't just let it go. It's necessary, but painful. Correction is painful. But if
handled correctly, the Lord could use it to lead to repentance,
just like He did that in an incestuous man. Remember, the goal is repentance. The goal is always for a person
to win Christ and be found in Him, to lay hold on Christ. And
that's how those situations are to be handled. Now, verse 7,
he says, Do you look on things after the outward appearance?
If any man trusts to himself that he is Christ, let him of
himself think this again. That as he is Christ, even so
are we Christ. Now, Paul goes back to this matter
of his physical appearance. Apparently he was physically,
you know, a weak looking man and maybe small and didn't have
a very strong voice or something. What does that got to do with
anything? I mean, for goodness sakes, didn't Samuel, when Samuel
went down to the house of Jesse to anoint a king, didn't that
teach us anything? Samuel saw that. So I said, oh,
this must be the king. Look at him. He's huge. He's
big. He's, you know, he looks like a leader. God said, that's
not the man. Men look on outward appearances. God looks on the heart. So these
false prophets weren't talking about the heart, were they? They
were talking about the outward appearance. They always make
us waste our time on things that do not matter, on things that
are not the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, we're going to decide if
Paul, the Apostle Paul, is a servant of God because he's got a good
preacher voice or he doesn't have a good preacher voice. Does
he have this great, you know, physical presence when he's in
the pulpit? Is that how you decide if he's God's servant or not?
This is a fact. A person, a man, can have all
the physical tools of a great preacher. I mean, he's got the
voice, he's got the pulpit presence. He's got all the social skills
of a great leader. He can memorize a little bit
of scripture. He can memorize all the jargon. And at least
in public, you know, he can act pretty gracious. And I'm telling
you, he's not God's man. King Saul proved that. He looked
like the king, didn't he? For a while, he acted like the
king. He was never the king. He was
never God's man. And what Paul's saying is if
these false prophets who come to you and they say they're servants
of the Lord, then they should be able to recognize we're the
servants of the Lord too. How? Their message is the same. Their message matches. It's not
outward countenance. They look different. They have
different races, different backgrounds, different cultures, but the message
is the same. It's one and the same. And you can't always judge a
believer. from outward appearances. Now,
the general conduct of our life will be to follow Christ without
question. But you can't take a snapshot
of a man or a woman and use that snapshot to decide if they know
the Lord or not. David was a man after God's own
heart. Could you tell that when he was
lying with Bathsheba in adultery and was planning to kill Uriah?
No, you couldn't. Peter was an apostle of Christ. He loved the Lord. Could you
tell it when that little girl made him deny the Lord three
times? No, you couldn't. We better be mighty careful judging
who's saved and who's lost. That's not our business, because
all we can see is the outward countenance, and that's not how
that matters. Judge the outward countenance. And if we're going
to judge, let's remember this. Think of ourselves. If we have
a saving knowledge of Christ, if we've been washed in the blood
of Christ, if the Lord's given us faith in Him to look to Him,
then the Lord can save anyone. The greatest miracle I've ever
known is that the Lord had mercy on me. biggest rebel that's ever
walked the face of this earth, then that tells me the Lord be
merciful to somebody else, too. The Lord be gracious to somebody
else, too. He'll be merciful to somebody
else, too. Could be both of us are sinners
saved by grace. Now, we're still sinners. That's
why you can't judge from the outward appearance all the time.
And our hope is not in our actions. Our hope is the Lord Jesus Christ,
in him and him alone. Henry said this in his outline.
I'll give you this in close. He said, by the grace of God,
we are what we are. And his grace is effectual to
save even those who differ from us. And we'd be wise to remember
that. The difference, aren't you thankful
that the difference is God's grace, not something I did or
I decided. All right. Lord bless you.