2 Corinthians, 12:1-10

Turn in your Bibles to 2 Corinthians chapter 12. We'll read verses 1-10. Bill, would you care to read that for us? It is not expedient for me, God rest the glory, I will come to visions and revelations of the Lord. I knew a man in Christ about fourteen years ago, whether in the body I cannot tell or whether out of the body I cannot tell, God knows. such a one caught up to the third heaven. And I knew such a man, whether in the body or out of the body, I cannot tell, God knows, how that he was caught up into paradise and heard unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for man to utter.

Of such a one I will glory, yet of myself I will not glory, but in my infirmities. For though I would desire to glory, I shall not be a fool, for I will say the truth. But now I forbear, lest any man should think of me above that which he seeth me to be, or that with that he heareth of me.

And lest I should be exalted above measure through the abundance of the revelations, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I should be exalted above all measure. For this thing I besought the Lord thrice, that it might depart from me. And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee, for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly, therefore, I will rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon them. Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ's sake.

For when I am weak, then I am strong. This passage, this scripture, has probably settled and calmed more hearts of believers than anyone other than I know. Although, let me say, this is one of them that has calmed more hearts of believers who are going through adversities and problems, etc. Last week we left off at verse 6 We're going to begin in verse 7 today. Bill read from the King James and I quoted the New American Standards so you see the difference.

It says, Because of the suppressing greatness of the revelations, for this reason, to keep me from exalting myself, there is given to me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan, to buffet me, to keep me from exalting myself. And we kind of asked the questions last week in terms of, does it appear that God was allowing Satan to buffet Paul, to give him this thorn in the flesh? And why would God allow the evil one to do this to a believer? And I think it was Bill that brought up, well, how about Job? Didn't God do the same thing and allow Satan to take Job's children, to cause him to be sick with boils and everything else? We'll see that in a minute. I just want you to notice, it says, and because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations.

So Paul was given these revelations, he was caught up into the third heaven, he was caught up into paradise, and he was given these surpassing revelations. So what does that mean? The word surpassing there is huperbole, And it consists of two parts. Hupere, which means above and beyond, and bole, just means to throw. We need somebody on the Rockies to be able to throw beyond. And this is a throwing beyond.

Literally, that's what it means. Figuratively, it means that it's that these revelations were just so beyond human thought, human understanding. So when you look at God's revelations to Paul, they concerned heavenly things and in the heavenly realm. Thus, because they did, they surpassed and went beyond all human understanding. There is no way that one can understand what these revelations were.

And what's interesting to me is when the Lord Jesus Christ was talking to Nicodemus, and he says, Nicodemus, you must be born again. And what was Nicodemus' response? How can I enter my... So the first thought he had was a human birth. So he thought of earthly things. How can I enter my mother's womb a second time?

So, in that discourse, the Lord Jesus Christ says to him in John 3.12, if I told you earthly things and you did not believe, How shall you believe it if I tell you heavenly things? So here is Nicodemus who really wants to know and understand things, but he has much difficulty in understanding heavenly things. So I think the same thing would be true if Paul were to reveal what he saw and what he heard.

I think we could not probably understand them. So this huperbole, this throwing me on, it was beyond any human measure. Over in 1 Corinthians 2, 9 and 10, Paul says this, but as it is written, eye has not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for them that love Him, but God has revealed them unto us by His Spirit. When it comes to the spiritual realm and spiritual things, notice that eye has not seen nor ear heard.

This is the empirical method, and when we try to understand things in the physical realm, we come at it from empiricism. We come at it from the empirical method. And the thing is, the empirical method doesn't work. So like, Bob is a research scientist, and he's in the lab, and he's in there with the genes and the chromosomes and DNA, and he's observing. with the eye, and the scientists that he's working with are observing with the eye, to understand things in the physical realm.

But as much as we can understand the physical realm with the eye and the ear, we cannot understand anything in the spiritual realm by empiricism, by observation, by hearing. Nor can we understand it by our heart, by rationalism, that we can rationalize in our mind and in our heart. There's no way to understand spiritual things by the rational method. There's only one way that we can understand spiritual things, that God has to reveal them to us. How? By His Spirit. There is no other way. So. Sure. OK. You're going you're going back to verse. OK. Right.

Was that when he was out in the desert, out in the wilderness? Or was that after that, another event? They know that he was caught by Jesus, four years out in the wilderness. Was that another separate event, or the same time? Paul is writing in about, what did we figure out last time?

62 AD, and if you go back 14 years, And we looked at that date, and that was about the time of the beginning of his first missionary journey, or maybe he was into his first missionary journey. So it was in around that time. So, it was not when he spent three years in Arabia with the Lord. It was after that.

So all we know is the approximate time frame about the start of his first missionary journey or into it. There are some expositors that say, well, when he was at Lystra on his first missionary journey, he was stoned, he was drug out of the city, and he was left for dead. That's when Paul was caught up into the third heaven or paradise. But we don't know. It's in that time frame. Does that answer the question? OK. OK. Here's here's the question. Now.

If you could put yourself in Paul's shoes, and maybe you don't have to, but how do you think Paul's sin nature and our sin nature would respond to God's revelation? God gives this revelation to Paul. Think about the sin nature. Think about what the sin nature is like. And I don't have to tell you much about the sin nature, right? Because you know all about it. You have a sin nature. You know the subtlety of the sinfulness of the sin nature. So, what would the sin nature's response be to something like this revelation which was so glorious? What would the sin nature's response be? Pride? Okay. Think about this.

We are a fellowship where we're concerned about the exposition of the Word of God, verse by verse. We're concerned about doctrine, and we're concerned about being very faithful to the doctrine or to the teaching in the Word of God. And what happens if you're here long enough, you are built up in the faith, in the body of truth. You come to know truths, spirits of truths. What does that tend to do? Pride being boastful, I know that, and think about it in your own mind, because yours truly has done this, to say, we got the corner on truth here at Holly Hills Bible Church. We are really solid and we really have the truth. Now maybe we do, but you see there's that boastfulness, there's that pride that we've got it.

And what you do is you tend to put everybody else down. You tend to put other churches down, other believers down. And it's very, very subtle. And so, often times people walk into a doctrinal church and they say, you know, That was like walking into a refrigerator and they find it very cold because we've got this pride that we know the doctrine.

So that's what happens. The sin nature exalts itself. The sin nature is puffed up by knowledge. Does God know that? God tells us the heart is deceitful and desperately wicked. Who can know it? And He is the only one that knows it. So He knows the very sin nature of Paul.

And it can get puffed up. It can exalt itself. So, God's solution. Now, we look at this from a human point of view, and look at God's solution, is to give Paul, and sometimes us, this thorn in the flesh. And we say, that could never be by His grace. That is inconsistent with His love. Right? I mean, we would never add this. that God gave Paul a thorn in the flesh, we would, from a human point of view, never say, by his grace. Would we? But God, in his grace, gave Paul that thorn in his flesh.

And a thorn can be painful. It can be painful physically. It can be painful mentally. You may have a physical disability, and it may not be painful physically, but it can be painful mentally. And I think Paul's physical, whatever his thorn in the flesh was, probably more mental than physical in terms of pain. But it impacted his physical appearance. But, you know, Scripture is kind of silent. We don't know if he went through physical pain.

But the other thing is that with physical disabilities, oftentimes a physical disability can be shameful in man's eyes. So you just think about young kids in school. And think about a kid who has a physical disability, and what do the other kids do? They're cruel, and they criticize, right? And where do you think all that comes from?

And do you think the sin nature changes because we get older? It's the same yesterday and today. No, that doesn't apply. And so Paul says in Galatians chapter 4, he says about his thorn in the side, and yet although my physical condition was such a trial to you, You did not regard it with contempt. Listen to the sin nature, how the sin nature responds to a thorn in the side of someone else or a physical disability. It responds with contempt, scorn, it loathes and rejects a person. There's Paul saying, this is a response. He says, but you did not do that. He says, but you received me as an angel of God, even as Christ, Jesus himself. And you looked past the physical disability. You didn't even consider that. And what you saw was Christ through me. Wonderful. OK.

So I just kind of conclude this to say that God and His grace allow thorns in our lives for the following reasons. Number one, it produces self-restraint. Self-restraint from us exalting in self, because we could be very proud and we can exalt ourself. The other thing, it does produce humility. There's a humbleness.

And as I say, There's nothing like being nothing. When we have a physical disability or some thorn in our side, whatever that may be, you soon come to the point where you see that that there's no sufficiency in and of yourself because you don't have any control of that zero. And the only thing you can do is just rest in the Lord in it. There's no other resource. We just have to rest in Him.

And so, because what we tend to do is that we're going to fix the problem. We're going to cure the problem. But we can't. I often say this, this is a wonderful place to be in your life. Feeling like nothing. Feeling like a zero. Because when we feel like a zero, it's then and only then that we can put our dependence upon Him. Otherwise, we're depending upon self. There's so much dependence upon self.

And I quoted 2 Corinthians 3.5. Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think anything of ourselves, but our sufficiency is of God. That's where it is. If you have questions as we go along here, So, here are the questions that come up as we go through this passage of scripture.

Would God use Satan to buffet, inflict harm to a believer? Answer? So the question is, does he personally tell Satan, OK, Satan, this is what you can do. That's Satan's business. That's the business of the world. It's a fallen world. So, in circumstances, our choices, a lot of times, are our own choices. We're going to have consequences of the world, and I think the Lord allows those things to happen. He uses all those things to still accomplish His goal, which is to ultimately bring glory to Himself through us. And that's true. Let me ask the question a different way.

Does Satan have free reign in our lives that he can do as he pleases in our life? Say again? Okay, if it wasn't for the Holy Spirit he would. Bob, you? In a general way, but in a specific way, like we talked about Job, in a specific way, Was Satan directly involved in inflicting physical hailment on Job? Yeah, he sure was. And the interesting thing is this, as you look at that account in Job chapter 1, In each case, when Satan comes before the throne and has the discourse with God, and God says, what do you think of my righteous servant down there?

Wow, he's righteous and he loves you only because you've put this hedge around him and you've given him everything he's needed. He's got all these children, he's got 15,000 head of cattle, whatever. And God says, no, that's not the reason he loves me. And so Satan says, this is what Satan says to God, you, you take that away from him and you'll see that he doesn't love you. So Satan knew that it wasn't in his power to do that. It was not in his power. Then God says to Satan, now I'm going to allow you to do that.

Isn't that interesting? He limited what he could do. He limited, that's true. He limited, and the question was brought up by Bill last week, is how come God didn't take Job's wife? He took all his children. My answer to that question was this, that I think Satan understood the marriage relationship that God instituted. That God instituted the marriage relationship and that man shall leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife and the two shall be what? One flesh. I think Satan understood that Job and his wife were one flesh. He couldn't touch Job, therefore he couldn't touch his wife. But now the 15,000 head of cattle are gone, the ten children have died, and Satan comes back before the throne, and God asks the same question, what do you think of my righteous servant, Job?

Well, the only reason why he still loves you is because he still has his health. You take that away from him, and you'll see that he'll curse you. And then God says, Okay, you now have my permission to inflict harm on him or affect his health, but you can't take his life. And so Satan does that and here's all the boils and everything else. So the question, why would God use Satan to buff and inflict harm to a believer? And why would God use an angel who is evil? And does he? Right? Yes. Why would God allow an overwhelming trial if he truly loves us?

Okay, that's a good answer to keep us dependent upon him. I've just listed a couple of things here in terms of to think about. Number one, because when that happens to us, what's the first thing we think of? That God's not with us anymore. Or why me? What have we done? And I've got this one lady who says to me, you know something? God's out for lunch. He's in Hawaii. He is not here with me. That's where He is. He's in Hawaii. So, is her frame of reference that God is against her? Absolutely. But now the next question, is God sovereign?

And will He use Satan? to accomplish his purpose. And we've just seen in the book of Job, he will use Satan to accomplish his purpose. Did he use Satan to accomplish his purpose with Paul? I think he sure did. God knew what the sin nature is all about, and to prevent the sin nature from exalting itself, God allowed Satan to put that thorn in Paul's flesh.

But now, the other side of the coin is this. Does God work all things, even thorns in our flesh, for the good? In other words, God allowed something, if you will, bad to happen from our from our frame of reference, right? It's a bad thing, or it's a tragic thing. And I've often said, and people challenge me on this, that I don't think there is a tragedy that can happen in your life or in my life.

Do you agree with that? Yes. Think about that. But let's see. OK. OK. It's a marriage citizenship. Absolutely. So if you're looking at it from an earthly frame of reference, as opposed to a heavenly frame of reference, from an earthly frame of reference, it's a tragedy. From a heavenly frame of reference, it cannot be a tragedy.

I don't think. because then you might as well throw out Romans 8.28 because it says that God is working not some of the things, not most of the things but he's working all things and it doesn't matter what it is in your life or my life he's working all things together for the good so he is going to use whatever that is, whatever whatever we consider a tragedy, he's going to use it for the good. Is that good? Isn't that wonderful?

That he would use what we consider a tragedy for the good. For his good. For his honor. For his glory. He will use it. Okay. And is God in the way? No way. Because Satan, as powerful as he is, has as much power as the Lord allows him to have. And his power is limited. It's limited within the confines of God's sovereignty and God's permissive will. Satan cannot operate out from the permissive will of God. And Satan can never separate us from the love of Christ, because there's no principality, there's no power.

As you go through Romans chapter 8, starting at verse 35 through 39, there's a list there of things that cannot separate us from the love of Christ. And as you go through that list, you find that it's everything in the entire universe. There is not one thing left out of that list, including ourselves. Because a lot of believers think that they can separate themselves from the love of Christ. Well, no they can't. It's impossible.

As he goes on to say in verses 8 and 9, it says, My strength is made perfect in your weakness. So here is God talking to Paul and saying, My strength is made perfect in your weakness. Now the pronouns are not in the text, but it's understood. The text says, strength is made perfect in weakness. That's what the text says. But understood, it's my strength, that is God's strength, is made perfect in your weakness. And just to take a look at some of these things here.

When it talks about strength, It's this word, dunamis, and it's just talking about God's almighty power, which is intrinsic. It's His omnipotence. He has this intrinsic power. It's the intrinsic power that raised Christ from the dead. There is no greater power in this universe to accomplish that. Raising Christ from the dead took the greatest power in this universe. It took more power to raise Christ from the dead than to create this world, than to create this universe. So that's the power. That's his power.

And we read about it in 1 Corinthians 6.14, Paul says, and God has both raised up the Lord and will raise us up raise up us by His own power, His own dunamis, His own almighty power, His intrinsic power. This is the very power that energized Paul in his ministry. Paul knew that he had no sufficiency in and of himself. Paul understood that he was a zero, that he was a nothing. And the only strength that he had was the word strength.

And so he says in 1 Corinthians 2, 3, and 4, And I was with you in weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling, and my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man's wisdom, but, look at the but, here's the big but, but in demonstration of the spirit of and of power, and of dunamis, and of the mighty power of God.

What was Paul fearing and trembling in his ministry? Here he was, in his ministry to the Corinthians believers, he was with them in weakness, we understand that, but he was in fear and trembling. What's all that about? Who is he fearing? Who is he trembling? What caused him to tremble? What caused the fear? Did the false apostles cause him to fear and tremble? Did those who were persecuting him cause him to fear and tremble?

Okay, and that is true. He did not feel confident in his own power. But if anybody knew that he didn't have any power, he was a zero, and that he had to rely on God's power, it was Paul. So it wasn't the fact that that there was a lack of power, but yet there was this fear and trembling.

You know what I think it is? Think about, in Philippians, it says, work out your own salvation. How? In fear and trembling. And so, now, what does that mean to us, that we're to work out our salvation in fear and trembling? Are we too? What I think it means is fear and trembling in our ministry, in our life, of not glorifying the Lord Jesus Christ, of not honoring Him. So when when I know, when I come up here and Bob and Jim come up here to teach, we come in fear and trembling in terms of, Lord, that we are, Lord, we want to be true to your word and we're concerned about being true to your word and to honor you and glorify you. So, we always think of you know, things like fear and trembling as negative.

But there's a positive aspect of these words. I don't care. Any words you take in the New Testament, there's always the positive aspect and the negative aspect. A lot of words are used in the negative aspect, but they're also used in the positive aspect. And we saw that with the word agape, right? Agape, we always think of God's love. Always what?

Positive or negative? Positive. But you go over to John chapter 3 and it says that men loved agape darkness rather than light. Positive or negative? Negative. Same thing with the word flesh. We've seen that several times. The word flesh can be negative, it can be positive. And the confidence is where?

It's got to be. Yeah, it's got to be. Okay. Perfected. When it says that my strength is made perfect or is perfected in your weakness, what it's saying is, it uses this word teleo, which means to come to a goal or to bring to its intended goal or purpose. It's a passive voice. We don't do that. We're being acted upon.

And so, when you think of God's intended purpose or goal, always think of God's eternal purpose. His eternal purpose is to reveal and share His glory through us. And so, His purpose is perfected through our weakness, that His glory is revealed and shared through you and through me in our weakness. And I say, how cool is that? Is that cool? So, whatever weakness you have, God will use that in terms of perfecting his goal, to bring his goal of revealing and sharing his glory through you. And he'll do that. So, something to think about.

Thorns in trial take us in our condition where truth has us in our position. So we have all this truth in the Word of God, but the thorns and the trials take us in our condition to where truth has us in our position, to where we have to rest and trust in the truth. And then our condition is the same as our position. And a comment is this, what a step in spiritual growth when we fully accept our thorn of trial. totally assured and resting in the sufficiency of His grace.

That's a giant step in spiritual growth. Giant. So here's my question to you. What is your response to your thorn in the flesh? And can your response, can my response, be Paul's response? Is it possible for you and for me to say what Paul said? Most gladly, therefore, will I rather glory in my infirmities or weaknesses that the power of Christ may rest upon me." Giant step in spiritual growth if we come to that truth.

Interesting, when he says, there's two adverbs here. when he says, most gladly, the most gladly is a superlative adverb which talks about something that is sweet and pleasant. Can a thorn in one's flesh be sweet and pleasant? That's what Paul is saying, is that this thorn in his flesh is sweet and pleasant. That which is sweet and pleasant And what he's saying, you know, I'm thrilled, I am thrilled to have this thorn in the flesh. The other adverb, it says, most gladly, therefore, will I rather, the word rather is a comparative adverb, and it makes a comparison.

So what he's saying is, rather than have my thorn removed, Because what's our typical prayer request? You call up somebody and say this is a prayer request and Smedley is in the hospital and has this physical problem and what's our prayer request? That God would remove it, right? Isn't that our prayer request? And my question is, should that be our prayer request? How do we know what God's purpose is in Smedley's life who's in the hospital? Okay, we ask it in God's will. Okay, very good.

But we don't know. So our prayer is, Lord, if it be your will. We never see in the church bulletin, Lord, thank you for this horrible trial. You never say that. You may say, Lord, whatever your will is, but still, I think, underneath that, underlying that is still, Lord, we still hope that it comes out positive for them. that they be cured, right?

And that's an excellent point. Bob. And because my grace is sufficient for you, therefore you will glory in the power of Christ's great blessing. You see what I mean? In other words, if we're not glorying in our infirmities and in our thorns, then that rest will never come. It's the grace that precedes our glory. Okay. And it's resting in that grace. And so Bob's question is, is it conditional? Right? That was your question. I don't know. The power of Christ will not give it rest. Right? Okay. What do you think?

Grace is not causable. I said grace is not causable. Grace is there no matter what. We don't have anything to do with the grace, but the rest on the other hand... Okay, so grace is 24-7? Sure. Is the rest 24-7? It's the acceptance. The acceptance is not 24-7. Acceptance is not 24-7.

Okay. Absolutely. And that's true. And that's true with any truth in scripture. You have to rest in it. It's the fact. It's a fact. That grace, that God's grace, is going to rest upon me. We have to look at this word rest upon me somehow. Where do I have it? Oh, okay, here, because it's a very interesting word. I think it's only used one time, and that's here in the New Testament.

When it says, rest over me, it means to pitch a tent. That's what the word means. So, now, I want you to think about pitching a tent. Now, you know, a tent is to protect a person, right? And you pitch a tent. and a tent comes over somebody and encapsulates a person, right? Have you ever done any backpacking in high country? You have a tent and it encapsulates you.

And that's what the power of Christ does. It encapsulates us. As Bill and Bob said, there needs to be the acceptance that we're resting in His grace. That we're just trusting Him. And when we're trusting Him, there's this encapsulation of His power over us.

And it's an incredible... We don't like to talk about experiences, but the thing is, this is the truth. This is fact. And then, when you trust and rest in the fact, the experience comes. And many of you have had that experience in terms of the power of Christ coming upon you. And not only that, the peace that comes along with it, that surpasses all human understanding. And so it becomes experiential.

And that's okay. But we never want to put the experience first. before the truth. We always put the truth first and the experience later. Okay. There is so much truth in just this little passage of scripture that you We could spend two months instead of two hours going through this passage. Let's close.

Our Father, we do thank you for the truth that you have given to us through your faithful servant, Paul. how wonderful it is to know that in each and every one of our infirmities, our trials, our sufferings, our circumstances in life, that your grace is sufficient for us. It's not only, Father, is it enough to get the job done, but it is all-sufficient. And it comes with Your power, with Your almighty power. And Father, how thankful we are that as we rest and trust by faith in Your grace, that Your encompassing power is there in our trials and circumstances in life. How wonderful it is that our hearts be settled in this, that we just give you the praise and the honor and the glory. In Jesus' name, amen.