Of Weakness Roy Clements

1 ROY CLEMENTS The Strength o f W eakness For tiie congregation of Eden Baptist Church, Cambridge, who first heard these chapters as Sunday morning sermons and to whose patience and encouragement this preacher owes a very great debt. of Weakness Roy Clements Christian Focus Publications © Roy Clements ISBN 1-85792-073-2 Published by Christian Focus Publications Ltd Geanies House, Feam, Ross-shire, IV20 1TW, Scotland, Great Britain. First published in 1994. Reprinted 1995,1998 Cover design by Donna Macleod Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are from The New International Version, © 1973,1978, 1984 by the International Bible Society. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of Christian Focus Publications. c Foreword The Christian world is afflicted with many kinds of bad sermons. Some are racy and interesting, but have only the most m arginal connection with the Bible. Others are long on pedantic exegesis and minute detail, but sound rather more like academic lectures than the voice of God addressing lost human beings. Some are more or less orthodox, but are characterised by bombast, not thought. Some are faithful to Scripture and genuinely address human beings, but only the human beings of the 1950s: the preacher has exerted little effort both to understand the times and to address them. But above all, many sermons today, for what ever reason, are ineffably boring: there is no fire, no unction, no grace, no power. Bring on the musicians and the drama groups: at least they enable us to escape boredom. Mercifully, God never leaves himself without witness. In every generation he raises up particularly gifted teachers and preachers of the Word of God who set a standard of better th in g s and point the way forward. As much as he will be embarrassed to read these words - the impetus for this Foreword comes from the Publishers, not from him —Roy Clements is one of those people. O f course, there are many unknown preachers who work faithfully at their task. They are unsung heroes, and should not be despised when we offer our thanks to God for the more gifted. But in reality, provided they have escaped the sins o f ministerial j ealousy, they will be the first to give thanks to God for particularly gifted leaders ofthe church of God. They not only nourish the people of God, they also set a standard and a model that encourage the rest of us to stretch forward to improve our own service to God. The sermons in this book are lightly edited versions of the regular ministry at Eden Baptist Church, Cambridge. They will help all who take the Bible seriously not only to understand 2 Corinthians better but also to apply that letter from Paul’s hand 5 6 F orew ord tousw holiveat the end ofthe twentieth century. So Paul,though dead, still speaks; more, God himself speaks -in the words given once for all in a particular time and place and language and culture, and by his Spirit in the renewing application of those words to our own time. Here is instruction, rebuke, correction, call to repentance, edification. Above all, here is powerful exposition of the gospel of God — spiritual nourishment for believers everywhere, and a robust model for preachers who want to improve their own gifts. D. A. Carson Contents 1. How to View Your Troubles............................................ 9 (2 Corinthians 1:1-11) 2. Love Hurts.......................... ............................................................. 29 (2 Corinthians 1:12-2:11) 3. The Lifted V eil................................................................................ 51 (2 Corinthians 2:12-3:18) 4. Why be a Preacher?.........................................................................69 (2 Corinthians 4:1-15) 5. What Happens After Death?...........................................................89 (2 Corinthians 4:16-5:8) 6. Why be an Evangelist?.................................................................109 (2 Corinthians 5:9-6:2) 7. Living as the Gospel Demands....................................................129 (2 Corinthians 6:3-7:1) 8. Two Kinds o f R epentance........................................................149 (2 Corinthians 7:2-16) 9. Christian G iving..............................................................................169 (2 Corinthians 8:1-9:15) 10. The Wimp who Conquered Continents....................................187 (2 Corinthians 10:1-18) 11. Die Amateur who Fathered Churches......... ............................ 203 (2 Corinthians 11:1-15) 12. The Clown who Glimpsed Heaven........................................... 221 (2 Corinthians 11:16-12:10) 13. Profile of an Apostle.................................................................... 237 (2 Corinthians 12:11-13:14) Paul’s farewell 248 How to View Your Troubles (2 Corinthians 1:1-11) 10 How To V iew Y o u r T roubles Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy our brother, To the church of God in Corinth, together with all the saints throughout Achaia: Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all Our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God. For just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows. If we are distressed, it is for your comfort and salvation; if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which produces in you patient endurance of the same sufferings we suffer. And our hope for you is firm, because we know that just as you share in our sufferings, so also you share in our comfort. We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about the hardships we suffered in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life. Indeed, in our hearts we felt the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead. He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will continue to deliver us, as you help us by your prayers. Then many will give thanks on our behalf for the gracious favour granted us in answer to the prayers of many (2 Corinthians 1:1-11). 2 C orinthians 1:1-11 11 Let me ask you: What is your image of a great leader? Let me ask you another question: What is your image of a great Christian leader? Now let me ask you a third question. Did the insertion of the word ‘Christian’ into the second question materially change your original answer? For many of us the answer, I suspect, would be ‘No’. The qualities we look for in a bishop are m uch the same as those w e look for in a prime minister. We could summarise them in one word: strength. To be a great leader in any context a man or woman must be strong, forceful, tough. The words of great leaders must be trenchant, admitting no contradiction; their actions must be bold, accepting no defeat. They must be people who knowhowto gettheir own way; there must be nothing feeble or wimpish about them. There must be no sign of weakness or evidence of failure. A leader must be somebody whom others can trust without question; so they must project an image as invincible as the Bismarck and as infallible as the Pope. That was, for example, the image of Margaret Thatcher when Prime Minister of Britain: she exuded self-assurance and strength. But somebody like George Bush who in many aspects of his presidency possessed a much less assertive and pontifical manner, received public criticism, disillusion and finally rejection precisely because he seemed vulnerable to the charge of weakness. Ifthat is the way political leaders are perceived, it is even more true of leaders of churches. They too are expected to be strong. Pastors are not allowed to be nervous. They are not allowed to be tired. Others may be overwhelmed by personal problems, but a minister always copes-and he has ample resources left over to help others to cope as well. After all, a Christian leader, like Hercules, is on the side of the gods; so even the queen of the Amazons should be unable to resist his supematurally-assisted heroics. That, at any rate, is the myth. But of course, it is only a myth. I believe that Paul’s central purpose in his second letter to the 12 How To V iew Y our T roubles Corinthians is to expose to us the fallacy of that myth: that he is saying to us, ‘You are wrong to base your ideas of Christian leadership on the models you derive from your secular culture. Christian leadership is altogether different. Great Christian lead ers are not necessarily strong at all, at least not in the way we usually mean that word. On the contrary, it is the primary qualification of any man or woman who is going to be mightily used by God that they should be painfully aware of their inad equacies, and their incompetence.’ That is why I have given this series of studies a title which is aparadox: The Strength ofWeakness. It is aparadox we are going to encounter again and again as we make our way through the chapters of this book. It will find its climax when we come to Chapter 12, where Paul states baldly: ‘When I am weak, then I am strong.’ 1. The Background to Paul's Letter What were the circumstances that lie behind this letter and determine its central theme? You can read in the book ofActs how Paul founded die church in Corinth during his missionary travels.

Load more