The Fool's Speech

This morning, we have a chance to look into God's Word, and we've been in this series in 2 Corinthians. I think, by my estimation, we have about three more Sundays in 2 Corinthians.

So, very exciting to wrap up the book. And as we begin this morning, I'm going to ask you a question. I want you to think about this. Have there ever been moments in your life where you needed to adjust your approach to someone?

You needed to adjust how you were approaching them. Maybe it was a co-worker. Maybe it's a spouse. Maybe it's a child.

I know through the years of being around children, raising children, I know that it's not always the most helpful to speak to a child in exactly the same way you might speak to another adult.

I guess I'm talking to the adults. Experts tell us that an adult will more effectively communicate with a child, especially one that's emotional, if they simply stoop down to their level.

Some of us don't have as far to stoop. Getting down to a child's level, using simpler words that they're going to understand, trying to enter their little world for a moment.

Well, this might actually give us a sense of what the Apostle Paul is up to in our passage today. We're in 2 Corinthians 11. He stoops to speak.

Paul accommodates to his audience. They've been behaving foolishly. Foolishly putting up with the so-called super apostles. Who are treating them very badly.

Leading them astray. And they've gotten used to it, the church has. Gotten used to all their pretenses and errors and even abusive treatment.

And Paul's like, alright. We can do that. We'll speak at a fool's level. And so join me in verse 16. We're going to pick up this chapter in verse 16 as we read through verse 29.

I repeat,

Would you pray with me? Father, again, we come to your word, trusting in it.

Father, we ask you to speak to us today by your spirit. Make clear, Father, my words. Teach us. Train us. Help us, Lord, to be equipped in this life that we live for you.

And we pray this in the name of our holy Savior. In Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Well, let me do a little recap of where we are in this letter, this book.

Paul has planted this church in Corinth. This is modern-day Greece. Spent about 18 months here discipling them, training them up. And then he left them to do further missionary work.

In the meantime, our church here has kind of gone through some problems. You say, really? Well, there's a whole other letter, one before this called 1 Corinthians, that kind of gives you a survey of many of those problems.

Lately, more recently, Paul's own authority and his very legitimacy as an apostle has been called into question. By whom? By these newly arrived so-called super apostles.

Again, we're not sure if that's Paul's nickname for them or if they themselves were actually considering themselves and calling themselves super apostles.

These were men with big pedigrees, with all the best training in Greek rhetoric. Polished, shiny, happy people who were corrupting the gospel and trying to supplant Paul entirely.

So, Paul's come to this point here in this letter where he's getting ready to make another return visit. He's preparing them. And as we've seen in the weeks leading up to this, we've gotten the sense that the momentum is starting to turn in Paul's favor, which is good.

It's turning in favor of the true gospel that Paul represents. Remember, the true apostle and the true gospel at this point are inexplicably tied together.

So, when Paul's talking about you're rejecting me, he's talking about them rejecting the real true gospel. But there are still some problems.

Some lingering, very big problems. Some super problems. And so, starting out in verse 1, if you look back at verse 1 of our chapter, Paul starts out by saying, I wish you would bear with me in a little foolishness, please.

Do bear with me. He goes on and he warns them, hey church, don't be deceived like Eve was deceived in Genesis. Don't so easily accept another Jesus, a different gospel.

He also goes on to defend his own ministry practices with them, doesn't he? He says things like, you know, I didn't take your money. He wouldn't let them pay him to support him.

Although, other places he defends that and says, that's what a church should do. But he doesn't because he knows he cannot get entangled in any way with their very corrupt system of patronage where people get paid and if you get paid, you kind of get owned.

And as for your would-be super apostles, Paul says they're not real. They're not true. They're false apostles. What they are is they're deceitful workmen.

They're in disguise. They are actually Satan's servants. And so now as Paul comes here to verse 16, he is finally ready to launch into this, what's called the famous fool's speech.

Fool's speech. I hope you don't go away from this sermon today and people are like, what did your pastor preach on? Well, he gave a fool's speech.

He's kind of a fool. Anyway, I repeat, he says in verse 16, don't think me foolish, but even if you do, accept me as a fool so that I may boast a little.

In other words, it's like he's saying, don't let anybody take me for a fool, but you know, you're calling me that. And so if you're calling me that, I might as well act the part.

This isn't the Lord's way of normally doing things, verse 17, but I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to play the fool with you for a minute.

Because everybody else around you, that's what they're doing. That's how they're behaving. They're behaving like fools. They're boasting according to the flesh.

So I'm going to do it too, verse 19, because you guys, you Corinthians are only too happy to entertain fools being so wise yourselves. I mean, don't his words just kind of, you know, drip with sarcasm.

Paul's like, I got to show you the absurdity of this. Because it's the only way I'm going to regain your ear. They say that in ancient Greco-Roman society, that actually boasting in yourself was quite common.

It was the way that you would get glory. You would boast in your own accomplishments. Military leaders did this. Political leaders did this.

The rich did this. And one of the ways they would do it is they would actually inscribe their accomplishments on buildings. Maybe they would fund their own personal monuments.

We found many of these. Boasting in yourselves. And it's not just Greco-Roman. We know that it also bled over into Jewish culture too. I mean, in the days of Jesus' life when he walked the earth, who did you have?

The Pharisees. And what kinds of things did Jesus talk about the Pharisees doing? Remember the parable of the Pharisee in the temple, boasting in his own self-exalting prayer?

Luke 18. For you guys, you bear with it. Verse 20. If somebody makes a slave of you. Doesn't that sound like a really pleasant group of people?

Wow. Wow. Our super apostles. Scholars point to some similarities in actually an ancient Greek comedy writer. A man named Lucian of Samosota.

Once he wrote a book called The Parasite. That sounds like a fun book to read. The Parasite. And they say what it featured was kind of a stock character in comedy called The Parasite.

And this was a man who was very pompous and self-loathing. And in the story, he just arrogantly abuses everybody. His host. The other guests.

Paul's like, you Corinthians bear with this kind of behavior. Somebody treats you like a slave. That means they're bossing you around. Devouring you.

That means literally consuming you. Exploiting you. You know, I imagine if they had potluck dinners, that always, always the super apostles are the first in line.

But it probably is worse than that. They're probably like intercepting you in the parking lot. Those of you that have got your crock pots. And they're like, give me.

Let me have first. This is what they're doing. Taking advantage of you. Snatching whatever they can. Putting on airs. Self-exalting. Prideful behavior.

And then there's the striking you in the face part. And again, I talked about this a couple of weeks ago. We're not sure if it's actual like UFC violence or metaphorical.

It could be verbal insults. Brow beating. But there's probably good indication to think it's worse. That it is physical abuse. That the Corinthian churchgoers were getting slaps in the face when they said something that a super apostle didn't like.

Can you imagine that with one of our gentle elders? You say something in the foyer they don't like and they just kindly walk up to you and give you a backhand.

We don't do that here. What a total difference. Listen. What a total difference to how Paul describes his own ministry. I want you to hear this again.

This is back in 2 Corinthians chapter 7 verse 2. Listen to what he says. It has a stronger effect now. He says, we have wronged no one. We have corrupted no one.

2 Corinthians 7:2

We have taken advantage of no one. And I'm pretty sure he would say, we certainly didn't slap anyone. We don't do these things. Never have. Never will.

No. To my shame, I must say verse 21. To my shame, we were too weak for that. It's more irony. More sarcasm. If being strong, Paul says, means doing what the rival super apostles are doing to you, we're just too weak to do that.

Now by the time we come to the second half of verse 21, which in your Bible, my Bible, is probably a new paragraph. We see that Paul's ready to play the game.

He's ready to play the boasting game with them. Starts off with the pedigree stuff. He says, whatever anyone else would dare to boast of, I'm speaking as a fool.

I also dare to boast of that. Are they Hebrews? So am I. Israelites? So am I. Offspring of Abraham? So am I. These super apostles were apparently taking a lot of pride in their Jewish heritage.

Today, for you and I, that probably doesn't seem like something you would really be bragging about. But we have to remember that this church at this time is still a mostly Gentile church.

And we need to realize that these super apostles were doing this, bragging in their Jewish blood, Jewish heritage, to bolster their standing.

I don't know if you've ever been around one of these people. I hope it's not you. And somebody's going to come up afterward and tell me, yeah, it is me.

You ever met someone that's like, I am a descendant, a great, great, great so-and-so descendant of a pilgrim on the Mayflower? Well, number one, they're probably lying to you because I think almost everybody on the Mayflower died pretty soon after they got here.

But seriously, you hear someone say, my great, great so-and-so was an original signer of the Declaration, right? Or my great, great, great so-and-so was a Revolutionary War hero or a Civil War hero.

And then you think, like, on the northern side, right? But does that somehow make them, let me ask you, more American than you or me?

No. I mean, I'm like third generation, grandfather, yeah, third generation American. I'm just as American as somebody that traces back 20 generations or whatever it is.

I mean, I've got the same citizenship that they do. I vote like they do. I've got the same kind of driver's license in my wallet. And I certainly pay the same taxes.

And that's about as silly as what's happening here. So what? You're Jewish. All right. Good for you. Me too, Paul says. The only reason, though, that any of us in the church have citizenship in heaven, it's not because of our Jewish blood.

It's because of a Savior who died for us all. Jew, Gentile, barbarian, whatever you are. Our status, Paul would tell them, as God's sons and daughters is a direct result of the cross, not our birth identity.

So let's just kind of calm down on this whole Jewish blood thing. I got that too. Paul basically goes on to diffuse it and say, yeah, I'm a Hebrew.

Check. I'm an Israelite. Check. Offspring of Abraham. All the covenants. Check. But then he goes on and he gets to the next part in verse 23.

He says, are they servants of Christ? Now, he's only granting this for the sake of argument. Because let's not forget that just a few verses ago, he said they're false apostles and they're actually servants of Satan.

But here he just grants it for the sake of argument. Okay, you're servants of Christ. And he goes on and he says, I'm a better one. And I'm talking like a complete madman right now.

I'm in a bragging contest after all. And then what Paul goes on to do just after he says this is he goes on to offer us a list, a very, very strange list of, I would say a strange list for someone who's in a bragging contest.

He says, I've labored much harder. I've been in prison a lot more times. I've been beaten countless times and near death basically all the time.

It's an interesting choice of source material for Paul to brag on, to reach into the suffering persecutions bag, right? Strangely, there's nothing here about all the disciples he's made.

There's nothing here about all of his converts or the many mentees that he's trained up. Or the churches that he's planted and established all over this Greco-Roman world by this time.

There's nothing about the big authorities that Paul has very heroically confronted or his many healings or Paul's amazing miracle, you know, miracles.

He could have bragged on his miracles. I mean, just let me remind us, here's what the book of Acts tells us about Paul doing a few miracles.

Check this out. Acts chapter 19 verses 11 and 12. We're told that God was doing extraordinary miracles. Like, what's an extraordinary miracle?

Acts 19:11

Isn't a miracle already by definition extraordinary? Super extraordinary miracles through by the hands of Paul so that even handkerchiefs or aprons that had touched his skin were carried away to the sick and their diseases left them and the evil spirits came out of them.

I don't know. I think I would have bragged on that. I would have used that. If we're going to have a spitting contest on who's more legit, I would have pulled some of this stuff out.

But that's just me. Hey, super apostles, any of your inanimate handkerchiefs ever heal someone of an incurable disease? Oh, super apostles, any of you have a worker's apron?

Oh, wait. You guys don't work. You don't have those. But if you did, any of them drive out an evil spirit? Mine have. But Paul doesn't do that.

Instead, what Paul offers is a list of this. Verse 24. Five times I received at the hands of the Jews the 40 lashes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods.

Once I was stoned. Not that anyone's counting, but five times 39 is like, I already did the math. 195 scars on my body, Paul would say. Not that you can see them all.

If I were to take off my shirt, I would have to turn and show you the two-thirds that the Jews put on my back. And then they save the other one-third for the front.

But trust me, if I took off my shirt and showed you, you'd see 195 scars. And as far as what I got from the Roman authorities, that was just the Jewish guys.

The Romans, well, they couldn't scourge me because I'm a Roman citizen. But they could beat me with their rods. And they did many times. That doesn't sound pleasant.

Paul's like, I think it was three times, but I got hit in the head a lot so I could be off. And oh, yeah. There was that one time in Lystra.

Book of Acts chapter 16. Where the people got really mad at me because I wouldn't let them worship me. And they drug me out of the city and stoned me to death.

Acts 16 · chapter mention

I thought I was dead. Until I got back up in God's power and somehow went right back into the city. They say that floggings, I want you to understand this.

Floggings in particular. Now, this is a Jewish synagogue, a formal punishment. This isn't mob justice. And the synagogues in every city were authorized to administer this kind of discipline to the Jewish men.

And the reason they would do this is to basically kind of get them back in line. You wouldn't get flogged for, you know, tripping somebody. Or you had to do something really serious like blasphemy.

Like, say, Jesus is the Son of God. Which Paul had a habit of saying. So, synagogues could punish you, give you the 40 lashes minus one. But you had to consent to it.

So, in other words, if they wanted to punish you. They were basically saying, like, this is how you stay in the synagogue community. You got to take the 39 lashes.

A Jewish man, if he didn't want to, he could get excommunicated from the synagogue and walk away. And Paul has done this repeatedly where he takes the punishment.

Why? Because he wants to keep access. He wants to be able to go into a new Jewish synagogue in every town that he goes to. And start telling them about Jesus there.

And these scars. And these stories about Paul. Listen, they are not like the scars that we might see on a war hero today in our present day world.

You ever see somebody that's disfigured with scars from war? The kind of person you want to go up and shake their hand and say, thank you for your service.

It's not like that for Paul. Back in Paul's day, the kind of scars he was wearing were regarded as a disgrace. As a humiliation. As weakness.

It's like you're a despised loser, Paul. Everybody hates you and beats you up for it.

But then again, as Paul's going to say over in his letter to the Galatians. Galatians chapter 6, verse 17. He says, From now on, let no one cause me trouble, for I bear on my body the marks of Jesus.

Galatians 6:17

That's how he regarded the scars and the marks. The marks of Jesus.

Keeps going in verse 25, doesn't he? Now he shifts over to the dangers associated with life as a traveling missionary. His travels. Listen to this.

He says, verse 25. Three times I was shipwrecked. A night and a day I was adrift on the open sea. Verse 26. On frequent journeys. In danger from rivers.

From robbers. From my own people. From the Gentiles. In the city. In the wilderness. At sea. Danger from false brothers. I personally cannot imagine being shipwrecked.

Shipwrecked. Being absolutely terrified as I would be out on the open water drifting. And Paul spent 24 hours out there on clinging, I guess, to some piece of wreckage.

You know, and it's not exactly like you have the Roman Coast Guard that's going to be putzing around the Mediterranean to rescue you. Right?

You don't have a cell phone. You don't have May Day. You don't have pings or whatever it is. Crossing rivers. Some of us do that every day. We drive over the St. Joe River on the bridge.

Maybe you walk it. No big deal. Think nothing of it. But back in Paul's day, you had to ford the river. Maybe if there was a ferry, but that was only in major ports.

And Paul was all over the place. Floods killed a lot of people. A lot of people drowned crossing rivers. And then as far as traveling by road, sure, the main ones, you know, Roman Empire, Pax Romana, and all that.

The main ones had Roman soldiers and garrisons stationed here and there. But a lot of the interior roads that we read about Paul taking in the book of Acts, these interior roads would not have been protected from bandits and highwaymen who would waylay you so much as look at you.

City, wilderness, at sea, it truly was danger at every turn for Paul. But it's from people too. He goes on. He says, danger from my own Jewish people.

My own people want me dead for blasphemy, for becoming what I once persecuted. And danger from Gentiles too. I mean, how many of the cities I've been through saw me take a beating or get arrested or spend a night in jail or stir up a mob that chased me out?

And of course, as you Corinthians would know well, I'm in danger from false brothers too. Those trying to discredit me, undermine me, delegitimize me, delegitimize my calling, and distort the gospel.

Verse 27, in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night. Again, we've talked about how Paul worked with his hands as a tent maker by day here in the city of Corinth.

We know that he preached probably in the afternoons and into the evening, sometimes late into the night. Maybe this is one reason for the many sleepless nights that he had was the schedule that he kept.

And yet we learn of another reason for his sleepless nights down in verse 28, don't we? Take a look. Verse 28, he says this, and apart from all these other things, all the stuff I've mentioned, there is the daily pressure on me of my anxiety for all the churches.

Not just you guys, you Corinthians, as if the stress of all of you wasn't enough. I got other churches too, and I care deeply about them, and I get reports that sometimes weigh heavy on me, and my prayer life is intense.

What Paul's talking about here is the spiritual and emotional weight of ministry. A tiny bit of which pastors today might know something about as shepherds of a local church.

I know that throughout the years I've been with you guys, and I learn what's happening in your lives at certain points, and I hear about the things that you're facing.

That stuff weighs heavily on your pastors and your elders. It does. We care about you. We intercede for you. And some of you, I've got to be honest, once in a blue moon, some of you can be a lot, right?

Look at the person next to you. It's not you. Some of you can be a lot. Sometimes you get upset with each other. Sometimes you offend each other, or maybe you don't treat each other as well as you should, and there's misunderstandings.

And then the worst is that sometimes some of you run off and you listen to some crazy podcast that tells you your church is no good, you need to get out.

Listen, Paul, his shepherding was light years ahead of any of our own. I'm sure of that. And when he says in verse 29, who's weak and I'm not weak?

Or who is made to fall? He's talking about a believer falling. Who's made to fall? And I'm not indignant. The Greek there is literally, I'm not hot.

I'm not burning about it. Paul's like, somebody hurts? Man, I hurt with them. I feel a responsibility for all of you Corinthians as a spiritual father.

And whenever I hear or whenever I see that somebody is trying to lead you astray, lead you to fall in some way, yeah, I get really, really hot about that.

Yeah, the Lord sure knew what he was talking about way back when Paul was first called. Maybe you remember what was predicted by the Lord to Ananias about Paul in Acts 9.

This is just after the Damascus Road conversion. And this is what the Lord says to Ananias about Saul, Paul. Acts chapter 9, verse 16.

Acts 9:16

For I, the Lord, will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name.

Well, we're not done with the full speech. Paul's going to go on, but we're going to stop right here today. We're going to pause. Today, I think we need to ask ourselves, what does God want us to see in what we've seen here so far?

What's here for the church today? Even as we know, Paul's dealing with a very specific situation in Corinth, a very dysfunctional church. But what's here, why is it in Scripture?

I would suggest to us that even in his full speech here, which is essentially a master class rebuke, I would suggest to you that what Paul is really showing us is what faithful ministry looks like.

What faithful ministry looks like. You see, sadly, the Corinthian church had imported the values of their culture, the worldly values of their culture, worshiping strength and beauty and intelligence and being impressed with pedigrees

and the appearance of success from these so-called super apostles. And Paul, to turn all of that on its head, Paul goes off and he goes overboard by painting a very contrasting picture to show us this is what faithful ministry really is

and what it really looks like. So in the few minutes we have left, I want to highlight five aspects of this faithful ministry. Five aspects.

There are two that show us what faithful ministry doesn't do and then the other three are things that faithful ministry does do. Let me start with the first one.

Number one is this. Number one, faithful ministry doesn't use or abuse people. That's an interesting revelation. Verse 20. This is exactly what these super apostles were doing.

enslaving, devouring, taking advantage of the church people, putting on those heirs, verbally, maybe even physically, abusing them. Do I have to tell you that faithful ministry won't do that?

When we serve the Lord, it's not about us, we who serve, I'm not talking about just pastors, any of us who do ministry. It's not about us. It's not about us making ourselves look good or great or about us finding fulfillment.

We don't do ministry to perform or look good or make people think highly of us or to get something, to get anything from the people to whom we minister.

That's called exploiting. That is devouring behavior. We don't use the ministry opportunities God puts before us to advance ourselves. Whether it's financial or whether it's just for the attention

or for human glory or even just for personal fulfillment. For many years, I sat on our region's credentialing committee. This is the committee that interviews prospective pastors for a license.

And I remember that there was one thing that we were always on the lookout for. We were always on the lookout for the person that wanted to do ministry for themself.

The person wanting to self-actualize and be fulfilled in my calling.

I mean, if you're wanting to do ministry, that's great. If you're wanting to do ministry to self-actualize, do it for yourself, that's not great.

It is ministry done for the Lord's glory. So, some of you maybe want to consider ministry even beyond a lay capacity. You want to be a pastor someday?

You want to be on a worship team? Maybe you already are on. Maybe you want to be a ministry leader of some sort? I say, go do it. Answer that calling.

Get trained. And do it for God's glory. But remember, it's easy to sometimes slip into doing it for our own. And we don't want to do it for our own because God's glory, the glory of ministry, is not something that we can share.

It reminds me of an Old Testament passage like this one. It's from Isaiah. Isaiah 42, verse 8. God says, I am the Lord. That is my name. My glory I will give to no other.

Isaiah 42:8

And how much worse when a church leader or a parent who ministers to their family would engage in God's role of ministry to their family in a way that's abusive.

Faithful ministry does not use or abuse. Moving on. Verses 22 and 23, we get a second aspect. Number two. Number two is this. Faithful ministry doesn't entail boasting in our strengths.

Our strengths. Have we at least learned this from Paul? We don't boast in what we're really good at or in what advantages we have. I remember years ago when I was in seminary in Chicagoland, I took classes alongside of a lot of people

that came from really cool places. Some of them from all over the world. And some of them had interned with very impressive leaders, well-known people.

Some came from exotic places. I mean, a lot of students from Korea, from Australia, from Europe. And here was me. Here I came. From the humble fields of Indiana.

And we had this one professor. He was a great professor, but he liked to begin every semester. He would go around the classroom. I mean, 50 of us, 75 of us.

He wanted to hear where everybody was from. And I remember I was in a couple of his classes. And each time I was like, oh, here we go. And you could just see it on his face when he got to me.

And I'm like, I'm Jason. I'm from Indiana. He's like, okay.

Faithful ministry isn't about pedigrees or where we're from. Faithful ministry isn't about heirs that we put on. It's not about degrees that we would frame and put up on our wall or who we know or cool places we've come from or been.

Paul's going to have more to say about this kind of boasting. He's going to have more to say about what we should boast in, whether it should be our strengths or our weaknesses.

More on that later. Faithful ministry doesn't entail boasting in our strengths. Not your background, not your gifts, not your experiences, not even the opportunities before us.

Hebrew, Israelite, son of Abraham. Paul's like, really? So what? In Christ, who cares? All that matters is Christ. Let's go on to number three.

Number three. Third thing faithful ministry does is it encounters opposition. Faithful ministry does encounter opposition. This is where we slide from what faithful ministry doesn't do to now what it does do and what it quite often finds

and that is opposition. Look again at Paul's extensive but not exhaustive persecutions list. Verses 23, 24, 25. All the whippings, the beatings, the imprisonments.

I'd call that some pretty serious opposition. People motivated by the enemy do not want Paul's gospel to make inroads into new hearts. The enemy does not want people to find faith and hope in Jesus.

You realize that? It's still true today. Never forget that Satan absolutely does not want sinners separated from God to be reconciled to him through the death of his one and only son, Jesus, by his work on the cross.

To know that God loves them so much, even in their sin, that he sent his son to be the sacrifice they needed. I was just reading this past week another example of, I mean, opposition is real.

I read about a student at Boyce College. It's down in Louisville. Boyce College. She has a job at a local, she had a job at a local coffee shop and she was fired.

The reason? She shared some of the convictions of her faith. What happened was another co-worker, another barista, asked her what she thought.

What are your beliefs about gender and sexuality? And the interesting thing, I mean, the wonderful thing is that this student, this boy student, didn't just tell her what she thought about gender and sexuality, she also connected it to the gospel.

And what happened? The co-worker went to HR and the next thing you know, HR fired her and that was that. She's done. You can't say those things.

Ever. Apparently not even if you're asked about it. When you share this gospel, when your life is about this gospel, when your life and your words and your behavior are reflective of and are faithfully consistent with the true gospel,

guess what you should expect? Some opposition. Moving on. Number four. Let's go on. Number four. Faithful ministry does involve toil, struggle, and sacrifice.

Toil, struggle, and sacrifice. Toil is just plain old like labor. It's work. Sometimes hard work. Sometimes prolonged labor. I can tell you stories of parents, of grandparents who have labored in prayer for years on end.

Labored in prayer for a lost loved one. Maybe a son, a daughter, a grandson, a granddaughter to come back to their faith. That's a labor.

I can remember, speaking of toil, I remember being a sixth grade Sunday school kid. You know what? I don't know why we did this in our church where my dad was a pastor in Nebraska.

They put the sixth grade Sunday school boys by themselves in their own Sunday school class. Does that seem like a good idea? I remember what that Sunday school teacher put up with.

Him and his wife week after week. Pranks and conniptions of knuckle-headed youths. Do you realize, you know, we have a youth group. Do you realize that we have youth sponsors who actually go on retreats with the youth?

Here's a secret. It's not a retreat for the sponsors. Oh, how was the youth retreat? It's more like a sentence. They're giving things up. Giving up a weekend.

Giving up a decent night's sleep or two. Giving up a degree of sanity.

You know, we haven't even mentioned the people out there who put themselves at risk in ministries that involve things like travel, like a missionary.

We heard Paul talk about his travels. Or those who do ministry in hard places or dangerous places. Or maybe just plain old undesirable places.

Sometimes ministries get started in wonderful new areas. You know, when I met my daughter and son-in-law's pastor down in Westfield, Indiana.

You know what he told me? He said, we did a study. We wanted to see what's the fastest growing area in Indiana that has the least churches. And it was Westfield.

And so they're out there and like, it's beautiful down there. You know, there's no stoplights. It's all roundabouts and the people know how to drive in them.

It's an upwardly mobile, affluent area. The church is doing really well. It's like a perfect spot to plant a church. And God blessed them. But some of us are called to minister in harder places.

That might be you.

Sometimes we're called to revitalize something that feels a little worn out and given up on. But God never gives up. And God wants His children and His workers to work.

And when I have the occasional pity party that I don't get to, oh, enjoy the traditional weekend off that most of you do. I mean, lately it's gotten really bad because Saturday's my crunch day to finish my sermon.

And you know what I have a big, bright, bold view of now? A sports bar parking lot. And in the fall it's really tough. Everybody's just like got their gear on and they're going in to watch the game and I'm like, it is Saturday, isn't it?

Why do I take Mondays off? Because I'm a hollow shell by Monday. But you know, there's some sacrifices we make sometimes like when a pastor might take a Monday or a Saturday off.

You can't do the regular Saturday weekend things, boo-hoo, because your family's in school or your spouse might have a job or whatever. And then I think about the Apostle Paul and I say to myself, man up.

Or I think about one of our missionaries who's away from their family, away from civilization like one of our missionaries in Togo, a doctor who could be making a lot of money doing surgeries here.

I think about that. Faithful ministry does involve toil, struggle, and sacrifice. So I would say whatever it is about the ministry God has given you to do, whether you're serving the Lord here or going to go somewhere else, remember, remember that if it is faithful,

it's probably going to involve toil, struggle, and maybe even some sacrifice. Now let's finish up because we've got to go eat. Number five. Number five.

Faithful ministry does come with a mental and spiritual weight. Verse 28. What does Paul say is upon him daily pressure. Paul talks about his anxiety, his stress, his worry for all the churches,

not just Corinth. I think about that a lot because I only have one to worry about, you guys. And if you're a believer here this morning and you're involved in gospel ministry in some way with people around you and I hope you are, then you are likely,

very likely, going to feel this. If you're a parent, if you're an aunt or uncle, if you're a friend of someone who's going through something, if you're a co-worker of someone who's got some things going on in their lives, when people are far from Christ

or when people around you have messed up some way in their lives or when someone is just in it through no fault of their own even, when we do faithful ministry with them, it will come with a mental and spiritual weight.

It did for Paul. We're no better.

You'll wear it. You might wear it on your heart. You will probably wear it on your mind. Hopefully, you will wear it in your prayer life. And if you ever see someone you care about in a state of weakness, then yeah, maybe you can identify with what Paul says here at the end of the passage.

Who is weak and I'm not weak. I feel it. And if you ever see someone you care about be made to fall, you might also experience some of that burning indignation Paul talks about too.

But you know, it only reminds me of someone who wore a lot of this. In fact, he wore all of it. And the weight of it was so heavy that it literally had him sweating drops of blood in a garden on one fateful night,

didn't it? A few days earlier, what we celebrate today, this man, Jesus, it had made that weight, it had made him cry over a city that he loved so much and that he looked down and saw how harassed and helpless they were.

And on a day like today as we celebrate Palm Sunday, we remember that he rode right into that city knowing full well he was commencing a plan to pay the ultimate price for all those who desperately needed it to wear the weight of all of our sins

upon himself. So as we close and have a chance to sing one more song and then go celebrate with some dinner today, let's look to this one, Jesus, who bore all of our sinful weight to bring us

the light burden of surpassing grace. Will you stand with me? Let's pray as the team comes. Jesus, we celebrate you this morning, we thank you, we love you, we cannot imagine what you went through even as we enter into a holy week where we begin, Lord,

to consciously remember this is good for us, we know it, Lord, it's good for us to consciously take a week and remember the steps of Passion Week.

Day by day as you resolutely set your face to go to a Roman cross for us, we thank you, we praise you. Where would we be? We would not be a people with any pedigree, any hope without the blood that you shed for our sins, so we praise you for that.

And so, Lord, wherever we are in our lives, whatever realm you have put us in to be faithful, to do ministry to others, will you help us to do it in the ways that you teach us to do it as Paul shows us today in your word.

It's not about us, it's about you and your glory. And we praise you for that and we say all these things in the name of Jesus. Amen.