Speaker 1: 0:00

Pray your anointing on Brother Byron as he speaks your truth and shares your word with us. Lord, anoint us, as hearers as well, to take what you have for us this morning. We will give you the honor and the glory and we ask you to grant the increase. I pray this on your name. Amen. God bless you. Thank you, sir.

Speaker 1: 0:25

Well, greetings to you all here in Dover, ohio, from the great city of Detroit. We have moved there only for a few months, so we're pretty new to the city, to the church there, but we're really enjoying life in the big city, and before that we did live in southwest Ohio for a number of years, and so we have migrated north. I know that's a little bit of a controversial move in some quarters. Move in some quarters. Before we start here, my son told me I needed to tell a joke or two, and so I'll start with that. My jokes that I tell in front of people usually aren't very funny, but I am a father and so I can always come up with a dad joke. So let me do that, and then we'll get on with things. So what do you call a spying hot drink that charges you money to drink it? What do you call a spying hot drink that charges you money to drink it. What do you call a spying hot drink that charges you money to drink it? The name is fee Coffee, coffee. So there's my joke. Discharge is my duty there to my son. Discharge this to my duty there to my son.

Speaker 1: 2:11

Okay, the name of my sermon this morning is Needy People, and I'd actually like to. We've done a lot of singing this morning, but I'd like to sing another song. Maybe you have not come across this song before. If you can put that up, it's a very simple song called Jesus Remember Me, and it evokes the thief on the cross and his posture as he was hanging there and asking for the mercy and grace of Jesus. So let's just sing. Let's sing it in unison to start with, and we'll sing it a few times here and then, as time permits, we'll circle back around to it at the end as well.

Speaker 2: 3:13

Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom. Jesus, remember Now. You can sing parts if you'd like. Remember me when you come into your kingdom. Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom. One more time, jesus. One more time. Jesus. Remember me when you come into your kingdom. Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.

Speaker 1: 4:33

Thank you. We can switch back to the slides there. So my text today is from 2 Corinthians, 12, verses 9 and 10. 12, verses 9 and 10. 2 Corinthians, chapter 12, verses 9 and 10. So let me read that out of the New King James. And he said to me my grace is sufficient for you, for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Therefore, most gladly, I will rather boast in my infirmities. That the power of Christ may rest upon me. Therefore, I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in needs, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ's sake.

Speaker 1: 5:33

So in this passage in 2 Corinthians 12, paul is continuing an idea, an argument that he's been developing in the previous chapter, and you might summarize it as boasting is good. If you understand it rightly, nt Wright explains that in this letter of 2 Corinthians, paul was responding to some like suspicion about his, about whether he was a legitimate apostle. Um, and you know they expected him to have certain experiences and certain um, uh, things that he could explain Like this is why I am a legitimate apostle. And he seemed to be coming up short in their eyes. And you know what was happening to him is he was getting beat up. Instead of having great victories, he was getting run out of town instead of you know glorious apostolic visions. You know glorious apostolic visions.

Speaker 1: 6:50

And so Paul's sort of saying like, okay, if you want me to boast about being an apostle and being a legitimate person in this position, I'll boast, but I'm actually going to boast in those things that you actually think show my weakness and show that I'm not a legitimate apostle. And back in chapter 11, verses 25 to 30, is where he's sort of talking through that Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked A night and a day. I have been in the deep In journeys, often in perils of water, in perils of robbers, in perils of my own countrymen. He just goes on and on and on. And he goes on to verse 30, though, and he says, if I must boast, I will boast in the things which concern my infirmity, which concern my infirmity. Okay, so if I have to boast, I'm going to go ahead and boast in those distresses, infirmities, weaknesses. Then he goes on in chapter 12, the beginning of chapter 12, and he says, okay, well, there was this one experience that I had. Okay, he doesn't actually for sure name himself as the person he talks about in the third person.

Speaker 1: 8:08

But we think that it was Paul who experienced this, this ecstatic experience where he had this vision caught up to the third heaven, and it was like a really heady thing, like if you had this happen to you and you understood that it was God taking you up into this vision. It could lead you to pride, it could lead you to boast. And verse six though I might desire to boast, I will not be a fool. And verse 6, though I might desire to boast, I will not be a fool. And verse 7, lest I should be exalted above measure by the abundance of the revelations. So in case I might be tempted to get proud, god gave me a thorn in the flesh. And whatever this thorn in the flesh was, it was very difficult for him and he pleaded with the Lord three times that it might depart from him. And that leads us into our text.

Speaker 1: 9:21

As a response to that, jesus said to me my grace is sufficient for you. My strength is made perfect in weakness. Therefore, most gladly, I will rather boast in my infirmities that the power of christ may rest upon me. Therefore, I take pleasure in infirmities and reproaches and needs and persecutions and distresses for christ's sake, for when I am weak then I am strong, as is so common with the teaching of Christ. This teaching subverts what we might usually think.

Speaker 1: 10:04

When people boast, they do that to gain some advantage. They do that typically to lift themselves up in the eyes of others. Maybe they can gain some more power, maybe they can gain some more prestige, maybe they can gain some advantage. And so we boast about the things that we think are pretty cool, pretty good, pretty amazing about ourselves. But here Paul, through the inspiration of the Spirit of God, turns that around, flips that on its end and says, hey, the way to receive spiritual power is actually to acknowledge our weakness, our difficulties. So the points that I want to make this morning are number one, we are all needy people. And number two, god's power is manifest in us when we are weak. We are all needy people. That is the truth. That is the truth Paul is expressing his need in this passage, in these verses. And I am quite confident that if you sit quietly in your prayer closet and say, lord, I need you, that the Lord will bring to your heart and mind areas in your life, areas adjacent to your life, where the Lord is desperately needed. Some of those will be very big things, like heavy things, some of those will be small things, but they will be there and recognizing and acknowledging those needs is a Christian teaching, it's a Christian truth, or it's a Christian command, I better say, in some of the other epistles 1, peter and James God resisteth the proud but giveth grace to the humble.

Speaker 1: 12:28

In Luke 4, listen to the words that Jesus quoted from Isaiah in his debut. He was his as a rabbi. He came to this place in Nazareth and synagogue in Nazareth and he quoted Isaiah and he said this the spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor. He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed. So what do all of these types of people that Jesus is referring to here have in common? The poor, the brokenhearted, the captives, the blind, the oppressed. They all have very clear and present needs, and that's who Jesus came for. He came for those people.

Speaker 1: 13:49

Some years ago we were part of a Bible study that we were going through the book of Luke, and one of the things that I realized and really impressed me as we went through that was how often in that set of scriptures, humility was rewarded, acknowledged by Jesus. And I could go through a dozen examples of that, but let me just pick out a few. In Luke 6, it's Luke's version of the Beatitudes which we read this morning, and he has a blessing on the poor. It, and woe to the group who might feel like they don't have a need. In Luke 18, 10 to 14, we have the tax collector and the tax, the Pharisee, the parable that Jesus told, and you have that comparison of the Pharisee who comes and says I have it all together, I do the fasting, I don't do the sins and I'm pretty good. Please accept me on that basis. The tax collector you know, you know the story. He couldn't even look up to heaven, but he recognized his great need. And Jesus says he who humbles himself will be exalted. Says he who humbles himself will be exalted.

Speaker 1: 15:59

And then that passage referred to in the song that we sang is on the cross, luke 23.39. Then one of the criminals who were hanged blasphemed him, saying If you are the Christ, save yourself and us. But the other, answering, rebuked him, saying Do you not even fear God, seeing. You are under the same condemnation, and we indeed justly, for we receive the due reward of our deeds. But this man has done nothing wrong. Then he said to Jesus Lord, remember me when you come into your kingdom. And Jesus said to him Assuredly I say to you today, you will be with me in paradise. This man had a need. He recognized it, he acknowledged it and Jesus acknowledged him.

Speaker 1: 17:04

So when we think about poverty, we usually think of a need, we usually think of a financial difficulty that a person may have. There's a book called when Helping Hurts by Steve Corbett and Brian Fickert, and in that book they talk about poverty in a larger way. They make the point that it's not just finances that define an impoverished person, because finances, our relationship to the material world, is only a small part of our reality, of our lives. There's relationships with other people, there's how we view ourselves, and then there's also a relationship with God, and they say that if any of those are out of balance, then that's poverty. So if we have lots of money and we're working with people who are financially poor, our temptation is to lord ourselves over, to sort of think of ourselves as superior because we're helping them, we're reaching down, but a lot of us may have poverty in other areas. Maybe relationships aren't as they should be, maybe our relationship with the Lord is not as it should be. And they make another point, and that is we usually think of poverty as a lack, but it's better to think of poverty as a lack of shalom, as a lack of something out of balance in our lives. And so a person who has more money than they need and is laying up treasures on earth, or is not giving to a person that asks, as Jesus tells us, if we are not using the abundance that we have in a way that honors the Lord and that advances His kingdom, then we have poverty when it comes to finances too. So you can have poverty in this way of thinking, which I think is insightful, even if you have too much and you're not using it faithfully. So here's the point.

Speaker 1: 19:33

The point is that we all are impoverished. We all have needs in various areas of our lives. Will they be as dramatic as Paul's needs, as his distresses and infirmities? I mean, he had a pretty impressive list of terrible things that have happened to him. Maybe they won't all be like that, but maybe some will. Maybe some will be even heavier in various ways than what Paul describes. But we all do have needs In my life. Sometimes the needs are obvious and sometimes the needs aren't so obvious. There's nothing pressing, but at any time, whether the needs are obvious or not, I can sit before the Lord and I can name things that he can bring to my heart, needs that I have in my life.

Speaker 1: 21:00

Two things quickly on on needs. Um, one is if you think you are winning at life. Some people don't really appear to have needs. Some people are like things are going, things are going great, things are going great. If you are at that point where you can't sit down and realize and recognize and acknowledge needs, then I'm afraid you might be more in the woe to the rich category than the blessed are the poor category. It's not so much for the rich that they had a lot of money we have examples in the New Testament where people were wealthy and used their money for good things but it's more that they don't recognize the needs that they have and they're sort of self-satisfied in their riches. They don't recognize the needs that they have and they're sort of self-satisfied in their riches. They don't need the Lord. So please don't be in that category, don't be in the category of a person who's like I'm winning at life, life is good and I don't have any needs.

Speaker 1: 22:03

The other thing is, some of you may feel like you have needy people in your life, the needy person that takes a lot of energy, there's a lot of drama that follows them and you may have to put up boundaries in certain ways for this to have healthy relationships with this sort of a needy person. And this is a little bit of a different category than what I'm talking about this morning. We can be healthy people that are emotionally healthy, that are not dependent on others, that are independent or even interdependent, as we want to be, but we still need the Lord. We still need the Lord. And if there are needy people in that other way that are dependent and are not independent, then that's a journey of discipleship for them. If they're Christians, then that's a journey of discipleship for them if they're Christians but we don't sort of obtain a good level of emotional health and interdependence and then all of a sudden we don't have needs anymore. We still need the Lord, and telling your needs to the Lord, to Jesus, is only the first step. We want to develop the ability, the humility, to be able to tell others our needs as well, trusted Christians. So we are all needy people. I pray that we all can say, with the thief on the cross Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom. We need the Lord to help us control our tempers. We need the Lord to heal broken relationships in our families. We need the Lord to give us wisdom and patience in parenting our children, to make us selfless with our spouses, with our friends. We need the Lord in all these ways and many, many others. Now, if that was the end, then it would be a little depressing Just a bunch of needy people sitting around wallowing in our neediness. That's not the end of the story.

Speaker 1: 24:52

Second point is God's power is manifest when we are weak. It's only part of the story to acknowledge and even in some way glory in our weaknesses. The other part is the power we receive when we acknowledge our needs. In our passage, Paul testifies that when he is weak, then he is strong. Testifies that when he is weak, then he is strong. He testifies that he wants to boast in his infirmities so that the power of Christ can rest upon him. So this is fantastic news, this is amazing news for us, news for us that in our weakness, that we all have, the power of God can be shown, can be made manifest in our lives. Now it's not like a machine that we can just input needs and output power. It's not like a prosperity gospel sort of thing. If we just do the right thing then we're going to have some spiritual experience and power.

Speaker 1: 26:13

So I don't want to give that impression, to make it too formulaic, but this is Paul's experience, that if you want God's power in your life, you can recognize your needs and God's power will be shown. And I can tell you this from my own experience too. There is great comfort and power in telling your needs to the Lord. You know practical suggestion here as part of your regular prayer time you might add a section where you just open your heart to the Lord, open your mind to God and acknowledge your needs. Let him speak of the needs that are in your heart and are around you, and in that act of acknowledging your need, the Spirit of God will provide you comfort. I can say this from my own experience and power against the problem. It's not going to immediately solve the problem, necessarily, but there will be both comfort and power. You will recognize that God is with you by that time of just direct acknowledgement. You will recognize that God is with you and that alone will give you comfort and strength.

Speaker 1: 27:47

And the other thing that can happen here when you have this connection with the Lord around your needs and, by the way, this shouldn't be the only thing you pray about my needs, my needs. But when you do that, you know how, in our 21st century, post-enlightenment, materialist society and culture, you know how often it seems that the spiritual is like foreign and it's not even real. It's just all we have is like the physical around us and we just don't have that sense of the transcendent as we go from day to day. That's my experience. I don't know if it's you all's experience, but one of the things, one of the powerful things about church and about some of the things like communion and baptism, some of those practices, is they can thin out that barrier. Sometimes the barrier between the physical and the spiritual seems so thick it's like is that even real over there, the transcendent? But it can thin that barrier to give us more or more glimpses and maybe even some more direct access to the spiritual, and that's a little bit how I think of this practice as well, of the practice of acknowledging the needs that you have to the Lord, to the Lord, who has power over not just the physical world, but the spiritual as well. So this can be a way to thin that barrier, to get closer to the spiritual and the transcendent. Send it. I want to share with you my own testimony and experience related to this.

Speaker 1: 29:58

In 2020, our family lived in Hamilton Ohio, southwest Ohio, and in many ways, we had a comfortable life. I had a good job at Miami University, we had a lot of friends in the area, we had a small church plant that we had been involved with for a number of years, and it was struggling to get its footing. At this point in 2020, covid was happening and it seemed maybe to bring to the surface some problems that hadn't previously been addressed. Clearly, and all of a sudden, this effort that we had been involved in for maybe eight years was blowing up in our face. It seemed like and this involved difficult and painful things. At that point, we felt like we really had no plan B, like all our eggs were in the church planting Hamilton Ohio basket and I didn't know what to do. I hadn't experienced anything like that before and for certain reasons I didn't feel like I could share what was going on with anyone outside of my wife and the Lord. It felt like we had to bear this. For some reason it felt like that we had to bear it on our own and during that time, you know, I felt my weakness and inadequacy to an extent that probably I've never felt before. Thankfully, eventually we found some people to talk to. We were able to move forward. We weren't able to salvage that effort, that small community that we had, weren't able to salvage that effort, that small community that we had, and the demise of that work is why we're in Detroit today.

Speaker 1: 32:13

But through those dark, dark times, I also experienced God's presence and his power in a way that I hadn't before. You know, it seemed like the harder the situation, the more I don't know, the closer the Lord seemed, and it was a little bit like I had no other option. You know this was I had to. I was very clear that I had needs, that I was inadequate, that I couldn't do this on my own, but when that happened, when I was weak, then I became strong. There was a sense of spiritual closeness to the Lord and a sense of spiritual growth that to the Lord, and a sense of spiritual growth that I probably haven't experienced since and I hadn't experienced before. It was a really tough time, but it produced a lot of really good fruit.

Speaker 1: 33:21

But, of course, the challenge so you may be in a crisis like that right now Hopefully not, but maybe For the rest of us who aren't in such a crisis, how can we continue to recognize our need, continue to experience the blessings and the fruit of that when we aren't in crisis? We still have needs, but maybe we're not at that desperate place. This is a question that that's sort of out there and I think, building practices into our lives where we regularly confront our needs, share them with the Lord and share them with others. So I want to reiterate that point. There's a reason that we are instructed in the Bible to confess our faults to each other.

Speaker 1: 34:18

We were made for community. We were made for closeness and intimacy with other people. We were made for closeness and intimacy with other people and if you, like me, struggle at times with pride, then it's especially important that you confess your faults, that you share your needs with other people. Because I will tell you from experience, nothing brings you down to size like sharing with another person something that really, honestly, is not very nice about yourself. That will humble you like very little else. So Come back here. So we are all needy people, but God's power is manifested in us when we are weak. So may we all have the attitude to express our need, just like the thief on the cross. So you can put up that song again. We'll sing just a few more times. Jesus, remember me.

Speaker 2: 35:51

Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom. Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom. Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom. Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom. Jesus, your kingdom. Jesus. Remember me when you come into your kingdom. Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom. Thank you.