- Please open your Bibles to II Corinthians.
Our lesson will be taken from this passage,
II Corinthians chapter 12.
We'll read that in a moment.
I want to start with a question,
and the question is this:
have you ever noticed that there's always something
holding you back?
Ever noticed that?
Always something holding you back.
Let me put it to you another way.
Have you noticed that there's always a fly in the ointment?
There's always one or two things
that prevent you from having just about everything you want
or having it exactly your way?
You've got it almost your way except for this or that?
For example, you've got a great job and a great family,
but there's something wrong with your body:
headache or diabetes or sore back or whatever,
that interferes with total enjoyment.
You can say, "Well, I've just got everything,
"I'm so blessed, except for those migraines."
Or you've just built the house that you've always wanted,
and you discover that your neighbor
has a constantly barking dog,
or decided to raise chickens.
Or you've worked hard, you've saved up,
you've gotten the children settled, married, off,
you're ready to travel, finally,
and then your father dies,
leaving a sick mother to care for 24 hours a day.
Or you're young and you're strong and you're smart,
but you struggle with depression,
or perhaps a secret sin that only you know about
but that's just eatin' your lunch.
I mean, I could go on, but I think you get the picture.
It seems that no matter what is right in our lives,
there's always something that takes the shine off.
There's always something that spoils
what could have been just an ideal, perfect situation.
It happens to all of us.
Of course, we're not unique, as I said,
and this is not a new phenomenon in life.
Even Paul the Apostle, one of the most dynamic apostles,
experienced this type of disappointment
and he wrote about it, to our benefit.
Now, Paul the Apostle was undoubtedly
one of the most successful preachers,
writers, missionaries, apostles.
I mean, he performed miracles,
God used him to write a good portion of the New Testament,
he established most of the first congregations of the church
in the Roman Empire.
He was responsible for breaching the wall
between Jew and Gentile.
Certainly, Peter was the first one
to preach to the Gentiles,
but Paul did a lot of work with Gentiles,
especially given the ministry
that he was given by the Lord.
All of this success,
all of these blessings upon his ministry,
all of these things were tempered, however,
with many disappointments and frustrations.
He was often beaten and jailed.
Many times people within the church
and outside the church were attacking him and opposing him.
Several of his close associates abandoned him.
You know, when things got tough, they just left him.
It seemed that no matter what heights he scaled
in the service of the Lord,
there was always a spoiler,
there was always a competing negative force
making sure that the situation
was never completely satisfying.
Now, this pattern his life finally came to a head one day
when Paul was given a special vision,
a special revelation from the Lord
which literally took him out of this dimension
and somehow transported him into the heavenly
or the spiritual dimension.
Paul describes this experience in II Corinthians chapter 12.
Now, he's speaking of himself in the third person,
probably for humility's sake,
but he says of this experience in chapter 12
of II Corinthians beginning in verse one,
he says, "Boasting is necessary,
"though it is not profitable,
"but I will go on to visions and revelations of the Lord.
"I know a man in Christ who 14 years ago,
"whether in the body I do not know
"or out of the body I do not know, God knows,
"such a man was caught up to the third heaven.
"And I know how such a man,
"whether in the body or apart from the body
"I do not know, God knows,
"was caught up into Paradise,
"and heard inexpressible words,
"which a man is not permitted to speak."
Think about this for a moment.
Imagine the feeling, imagine the absolute thrill
of being brought into the heavenly realm
while still in your earthly body.
Certainly it's a promise for all of us one day.
But imagine being in that dimension
while still in your earthly body.
Imagine the joy, imagine the sense of empowerment,
imagine the gratitude, the zeal,
the renewed faith that this could give a person.
Boy, a guy would be on fire.
You think you're on fire sometimes
when you hear a good lesson
or you read a passage in scripture or something like that,
you think you're really on fire.
Imagine how on fire you'd be for the Lord
if you were actually in heaven.
The assurance, the knowledge.
I mean, if Paul was a mighty preacher and teacher,
if he was a zealous missionary before this experience,
imagine what he could be after such a vision.
What a spiritual boost to consciously see
and experience heaven before you die.
Now, just as he is spiritually pumped,
just as he is spiritually invincible
because of this vision, look at what happens.
See what he says comes along immediately
after his mountaintop experience.
Go down to verse seven.
He says, "Because of the surpassing greatness
"of the revelations,
"for this reason, to keep me,"
now he realizes he's talking about himself,
I mean, he's telling his readers,
"I'm really talking about myself,"
he says, "for this reason to keep me from exalting myself,
"there was given me a thorn in the flesh,
"a messenger of Satan to torment me,
"to keep me from exalting myself."
So no sooner than he was at the top,
a thorn, a restriction,
a spoiler, a downer,
was added to the mix by the Lord.
Now, there's a lot of discussion
about what exactly happened to him.
You know, a lot of people like to debate,
was it a vision problem, a disease?
But who cares what it was, I mean, physically.
The point that Paul makes is that for him,
it was a burden, it was a restriction,
it was a spoiler, it was a thorn.
A thorn is the way he refers to it.
Does it matter if it's a sore back or a migraine
or low vision or high blood pressure, dizzy spells, vertigo?
Does it matter what it is?
It don't matter what it is.
What matters is he says, this was a thorn in my flesh,
something that caused pain
and diverted his attention from the sublime experience
that he had planned to enjoy
to a discomforting annoyance always present.
Now I'll tell you that this is where Christians, you know,
part company with the rest of the world.
For unbelievers, when there is a problem,
the objective is to minimize and eliminate the thorns
as quickly and as painfully as possible.
If you're not a believer and there's a thorn,
the objective is, let's just get rid of this thorn,
the faster the better.
But for unbelievers, excuse me,
for unbelievers, the ultimate goal is personal happiness
and freedom from thorns.
That's what everybody's chasing after.
Christians, on the other hand, have a different approach,
one articulated by Paul
in his effort to deal with this particular thorn.
I think, you know, him talking about
how he dealt with his thorn
that was spoiling his great vision
perhaps gives us some information
on how we can deal with our thorns
that spoil the blessings
and the wonderful life that we may have.
You see for Christians, there are three possible responses
for the spoiler elements in life,
for the thorns that often come into our lives
to threaten our peace, to threaten our happiness,
to spoil our contentment.
They're all in the passage.
The first response of a Christian to the thorns of life:
prayer, prayer.
Verse eight he says, "Concerning this,
"I implored the Lord three times
that it might lead me, leave me."
You see, Paul prayed a legitimate prayer,
that the thorn be removed.
Notice also that he kept on praying
until he had some kind of relief, some kind of response.
I mean, simply resigning ourselves to difficulties
and obstacles, to the thorns of life,
that is not necessarily the Christian thing to do.
Some people think, you know, you have a thorn,
you just say, "Well, I guess that's what the Lord wants,
"I'm just going to take it."
You know, that's not, that's doormat, I think.
That's doormat living.
It's okay to aggressively seek to remove those things
that reduce our joy and our satisfaction in life,
our peace and our happiness.
I'm going to tell ya, if there's a cure, I want it.
If there's a solution, I want it.
If there's a way out, show me.
I'm going to be praying for that.
Having exhausted his natural resources
in dealing with the problem,
Paul began to beat on the door of heaven
through prayer for relief.
Not once, and I don't mean like three times in a day.
He's talking about he is intensely coming to the Lord
about this issue.
Prayer is our effective tool
in removing the many thorns of life
that often spoil what could be a good life,
or could be the difference
between a fair life and a great life.
Sometimes our prayers for relief are answered
and we simply continue on in the way we were
before our thorn began to cause us pain, hallelujah.
Like my mother used to teach me,
somebody gives you something, just say thank you.
The Lord answers your prayer, just say thank you.
Don't need to say why,
"Why did you answer my prayer?"
Who cares why?
Thank you Lord, thank you.
Sometimes, our prayers for relief are answered,
but not in the way that we had hoped.
Sometimes God chooses to leave the thorn in place
for an indefinite amount of time.
In these cases, we have another response
which Paul describes in verse nine, and that is submission.
Verse nine he says, "And He," meaning God,
"And He has said to me,
"'My grace is sufficient for you,
"'for power is perfected in weakness.'
"Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast
"about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ
"may dwell in me."
Second response to a thorn, submission.
In this verse, God speaks to Paul,
and Paul responds to the Lord,
and God's answer to his prayers
is to remind Paul of the spiritual principle
that the thorn has been sent to teach him.
He prays, he says, "God, please take away the thorn."
He's focused on the thorn,
and God answers his prayers, how?
By explaining to Paul why the thorn is there.
The reason the thorn has been sent to him
is to teach him that God's power
is more easily and clearly seen
in a person who is weak and dependent on God
than one who is strong and self-sufficient.
What a lesson to learn.
You know, I didn't think about this,
but what a lesson to learn on Father's Day,
because isn't that what men do?
Isn't that what men want?
They want to be self-sufficient.
They don't want the thorn,
because if the thorn comes,
they may have to depend on somebody,
so they don't want the thorn.
You know, it would be easy for Paul,
the miracle worker, the prolific missionary,
the insightful teacher,
to stumble into pride and conceit
on account of all his incredible achievements
and then add to that
being in the heavenly realm in bodily form.
It would be easy for the church to exalt the man, Paul,
for his abilities and success above other men.
But this thorn reduced him to dependence on others
to do his work.
This thorn drove him to his knees in prayer for strength.
Why is it that when we're happy
and everything's going great, we pray standing up,
and then when everything, you know,
blows up and falls apart,
then we think of kneeling down?
I wonder if things would go better
if we knelt down when things were going well
and gave thanks?
So despite his great success and prestige in the church,
this thorn served to reveal
the true source of his power in ministry.
This thorn was a constant reminder
that his was a fragile life
held delicately in the hand of God.
You see, Paul's submission was not necessarily a submission
to the presence of the thorn.
That's the best that unbelievers can do
when they have a thorn that won't go away,
they simply accept its constant presence
and they carry on.
That's called stoicism.
That's not Christianity.
No, Paul's submission was to the purpose
that God had for allowing the thorn to enter him
and to remain in his life.
He didn't accept the pain, he accepted the purpose,
the purpose for the thorn.
This type of response is a response of faith.
This is what he says when he answers the Lord.
He submits to the change in circumstances,
the shift that his life has taken because of the thorn.
You see, it went beyond just the thorn.
He's gone from being a strong, independent man
to a physically weak and dependent man,
and he submits to God's new demand of him.
You're wondering, well, what demand is that?
That he suffer?
What demand is God making of him,
that he accept the thorn and stop whining, moaning?
No, the new demand is that he now witness Christ
through his weakness
rather than through his former strength.
That's the demand.
Rather than be depressed and angry
or refuse to accept the new reality,
Paul sees the opportunity to reveal Christ
in a way that he could not do before,
and that is through his weaknesses.
So as Christians, we submit to the thorns of life
by learning to glorify God and serve Christ
as people with thorns.
Do you see the difference?
Some people simply learn to live with their thorns.
They make the best of it.
But Christians like Paul are called upon,
not just to make the best of life with their thorns.
They're called upon to glorify God despite their thorns.
So what are the responses that Paul makes
to the thorn in his flesh?
One, prayer, two, submission, and finally,
when the thorns of life come, we as Christians
can do one other thing: we can rise above.
We can rise above.
Verse 10, Paul says,
"Therefore I am well content with weaknesses."
Whoa, what did he say?
He's just gone from beating on the door of heaven saying,
"Take this thorn away from me,"
and a couple of verses down he says,
"Therefore, I am well content with weaknesses,
"with insults, with distresses,
"with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ's sake.
"For when I am weak, I am strong."
We give lip service to that,
"When I am weak, I am strong."
You know why, 'cause we don't want to be weak.
We like to say, "When I am strong, I'm strong."
We don't like to say, "When I'm weak, I'm strong."
When I say rise above,
I don't mean to ignore the problem
or pretend it doesn't exist, or try to be
as much like a person without a thorn as I can be.
Look at what Paul says.
He is well-content with weaknesses,
you know, the particular thorn that he prayed about.
He is also well-content with all other thorns
that he's had to suffer as well.
Insults, that's a thorn, distress, that's a thorn,
persecution, that's a thorn.
He acknowledges that he is a man with many thorns,
and yet, he is content.
Whoa, wait a minute, something wrong here?
Isn't contentment what we are looking for?
Isn't contentment what we think we're going to find
when we remove all the thorns,
all the restraints, all the spoilers?
If we can get rid of all those things,
then we're going to be content.
But Paul says here, "Yeah, you know all those thorns?
"I'm content."
What is he, a masochist?
He goes on to acknowledge that to bear with thorns,
and here's the key, for Christ's sake,
there's the key, right there,
to bear with thorns for Christ's sake,
to be made weak for the sake of Christ,
that makes him strong.
So this man with many thorns finds contentment and strength,
the very same thing that people are searching for
by trying to remove all the thorns,
he finds it by leaving the thorns in.
What's the point?
What's the difference?
Here it is.
Enduring the thorns for Christ's sake,
meaning with and for one's faith in Jesus,
gives you the same thing,
and that is contentment and strength,
that removing all the thorns is supposed to give you.
The only difference is
that you can never remove all the thorns.
They are always there in one way or another.
You remove one, another one shows up.
So for a Christian, to submit to the thorns of life
that chooses, that God chooses to leave in your flesh,
the thorns of life that God chooses to leave in your life,
is really the way to rise above the ordinary pursuit
of happiness and power
and ultimately gain for oneself
contentment and true strength through Christ Jesus.
We often say, "Well, you know,
"I show Christ through my weakness,"
you know, and we always think,
"My weakness is, oh, well, I'm not perfect."
We think that's my weakness: "Oh, I'm not perfect."
But try showing Christ through your failures, try that.
Try showing Christ when the doctor says,
"We can't do anything for you anymore."
Or try showing Christ when your spouse
is not a spouse to you anymore,
because she is ill or he is gone or whatever.
Try it then.
So the weaker I become, the stronger Christ becomes in me.
The less of me that I am,
the more of him becomes visible.
The poorer I am in this world,
the richer I become in Christ.
The thornier my life becomes,
the greater my dependence
and consequently my contentment is in Christ.
Don't we see it?
The more I depend on God
for every, every, every, everything,
the more I find contentment and peace.
Sometimes, God has to nudge us along
by putting some thorns in us.
You know, they say everybody wants to go to heaven
but nobody wants to die.
Well, in the same way,
it seems that everybody wants more of Jesus in their lives,
but nobody wants the thorns that will bring him in.
You know, we don't always realize it,
but God's answer to Paul's prayer
is still very much the answer
to our own daily prayers
concerning the various thorns that we all struggle with.
When we apply these words to ourselves,
we see that God's grace is truly sufficient
in every way now as it was for Paul then.
For example, his grace is still sufficient
to supply every one of our needs.
That wasn't just a first century thing.
That's a forever thing.
Whether it's food or shelter
or help with troubles and sickness,
God still supplies according to his grace,
which is boundless.
There's no need to trust in worldly riches
or the power of man.
God's grace is able to supply our every need.
We need only to ask, believing that he hears.
Secondly, his grace is still sufficient to cover our sins.
Jesus died once for all,
and he died for all people, and all sin.
I John one, we talked about that last week, nine and 10.
When coming to God for forgiveness,
let's realize that his grace covers every sin
that you have committed.
There's no need to fear, no need to worry.
Why should someone who's been a Christian for 20 years
worry about sin?
Now, we always need to be on guard for sin, of course.
The tempter is always at work.
The tempter is always trying to distract us
and to seduce us.
So I am on guard, but I'm not worried.
There's a big difference.
And his still sufficient to complete
our final transformation.
What the law could not accomplish,
the grace of Christ completes in full.
I read another passage in Romans chapter eight,
verse three and four, Paul says,
"For what the Law could not do,
"weak as it was through the flesh, God did:
"sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh
"and as an offering for sin,
"he condemned sin in the flesh,
"so that the requirements of the Law
"might be fulfilled in us,
"who do not walk according to the flesh,
"but according to the Spirit."
So our final resurrection to glory
and exaltation to the right hand of God
is powered by grace,
and there is sufficient grace
to transform every believer into an eternal being.
Isn't it amazing that God has given us
not only the resurrection of Christ
to confirm our faith in him,
but he's also given us the experience of Paul,
an ordinary man like us.
Paul was not the God-man that Jesus is.
Paul was an ordinary man like us,
and yet he was in heaven,
seeing and hearing things
he says that we ought not to say, why?
Because, well, we can't speak of these things,
they're too wonderful.
Yet, we have that example to encourage us.
Paul the Apostle learned that what he needed
was not relief from the thorn
or more strength to overcome the thorn,
but rather the realization that if he had God's grace,
he had everything he would ever need
to achieve all he ever desired in Christ.
So I ask you this evening,
do you have God's grace working in your life?
It begins to work in you
when you submit to his command
to believe in Jesus Christ, repent of your sins,
be united with him in the waters of baptism,
it begins there.
It continues to work in you
as you submit to God's plan for you life,
whatever that is, whatever many thorns that may include.
It's not as if God made a mistake,
it's not as if God forgot you.
It's not as if God fumbled the ball somehow
when it comes to your life.
You are exactly where you're supposed to be,
if you're a Christian.
If you're not a Christian,
you're supposed to be in Christ.
But if you are in Christ,
you are exactly where you are supposed to be.
It completes this grace, completes its work,
when Jesus returns for you in death or in glory
for the final and the eternal transformation.
I am so anxious, so looking forward,
to being me without sin.
I'm looking so forward
to seeing you without sin,
that we can have fellowship,
where neither of us are subject to sin any longer.
I mean, we have a wonderful fellowship
right here and now and we're still sinners.
We're forgiven sinners, you know,
and yet somehow we have this wonderful fellowship.
Can you imagine how wonderful it will be
if you just remove the weakness of the flesh
and we have the glorified body without sin,
without reference to sin,
how marvelous it will be?
Truly they call it heaven for a reason.
God's grace is sufficient for you,
and if you need to submit to his grace
or to respond to him in any way this evening,
whether it be to be baptized or to be restored,
to place membership with this congregation
that you might be under the leadership of our elders
and give us the right hand of fellowship
if that's what you need to do.
Whatever it is, we encourage you to come forward now.