"Strength in Weakness" 2 Corinthians 12:1-10 Sunday Morning Worship Service

2 Corinthians 12, I'm gonna read for us verses 1 and I'll read down through verse 10.

Paul says, I must go on boasting.

Though there is nothing to be gained by it, I will go on to visions and revelations of the Lord.

I know a man in Christ who 14 years ago was caught up to the third heaven.

Whether in the body or out of the body, I don't know.

God knows.

And I know that this man was caught up into paradise.

Whether in the body or out of the body, I don't know.

God knows.

And he heard things that cannot be told, which man may not utter.

On behalf of this man, I will boast, but on my own behalf I will not boast except in my weakness.

Though if I should wish to boast, I would not be a fool.

I would be speaking the truth, but I refrain from it, so that no one may think more of me than he sees or hears from me.

So to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelation, a thorn was given to me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan, to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited.

Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this that it should leave me.

But he said to me, My grace is sufficient for you, my power is made perfect in weakness.

Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so the power of Christ may rest upon me.

For the sake of Christ, then I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities.

For when I am weak, then I am strong.

This is the word of the Lord, and I pray that He would seal it on your hearts.

The last three weeks we have been looking at different passages of 2 Corinthians, and I that's what I've been reading in my devotional life, and that's why I've wanted to uh to preach there.

We set aside going through Ephesians, and so I figured I can preach what I'm I'm reading in my devotional life, and so that's what that's what you've been receiving.

But I focus on a couple different verses that I feel like we have a new appreciation for, that we hear through a new lens because of the coronavirus, because of the lockdowns we're we're having.

And let me remind you of that.

Uh, three weeks ago, we looked at 2 Corinthians 7, verse 1, where Paul commands us to cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit.

2 Corinthians 7:1

And that's a typical command for sanctification, but I hope that you heard it differently now that we're all attuned to how to cleanse our body from defilement.

We think in terms of viruses and what we touch and how we can get contaminated and what we breathe and who breathed that air last and who touched that door last.

Like we're trained to think that way.

And I hope that you think that way about your soul, that you don't feed your soul now things that have been contaminated, that you take your soul, the cleanliness of your soul, with the same severity you take cleanliness of your body.

That was the point of 2 Corinthians 7.1.

Last week we looked at uh chapter 8, verse 9.

And there, where Paul uh talks about the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, how he came to us, though he was rich, he became poor for our sake.

God had the riches of heaven at his disposal, the Son of God, and the Son of God set those riches aside, set all the rights of deity aside to become a man.

He took on a human nature, a human body, and human flesh, a human soul.

Now he didn't empty himself of God, he didn't cease being God, he didn't cease having the attributes of deity.

Of course, he had them.

He just ceased the free use of them.

He set aside the rights that were his for the purpose of humiliation to help the weak, so that through his suffering we who are weak might become strong.

And I hope you heard that through a new lens, because that's of course what we're doing under a lockdown right now.

We have the right to go out, we have the right to assemble, we have the right, all kinds of freedoms we have.

We set them aside for the purpose of helping those who are weak, helping those who could be afflicted.

We don't cease to have those rights just because we set them aside for a moment.

They're not emptied of us, they still exist, they're still ours.

We cease to take advantage of them for the sake of the weak.

And that's, I hope you heard that through a new lens of what Christ did.

He didn't stop being God, but he ceased using the freedoms he had as God for the sake of us who are weak.

And of course, that leads to the entire gospel, which we looked at last week.

2 Corinthians 12 is where Paul gets personal with this.

It's not abstract a command to the church to pursue physical and then spiritual sanctification.

It's not theological here in the sense of this is what Jesus did for us.

For here it becomes personal.

And so the question I want to look at this morning that's asked and answered by 2 Corinthians 12 is why does God allow suffering?

Why does God allow hardships?

Why does God allow the evils like coronavirus to run through the world?

We know that God works all things for the good of those who are called.

This is the Bible makes this very clear.

All things work for the good of those who are called by God for salvation.

All things do not work good in the world for everybody.

This is a restrictive promise.

The Bible does not say that all things in the world work out for the good of every single person.

No, it says all things in the world work for the good of those who are called by God, of his elect, those whom he has called with a purpose, for salvation.

And then as you go through that promise from Romans 8, as you go through it, you see the phrase again at the end of Romans 8 that in all these things are more than conquerors.

We're being put to death all day long, Paul says.

So God is working all things for our good and for his glory, and part of his working all things for our good and his glory is that Christians are dying.

But in all these things are more than conquerors.

In all these things we proclaim to the world that eternal life is more glorious than physical life, that heaven is more real than this world, and that our heart is set on heaven, not on this world.

So that's a broad statement that all things work for the good of all of those who are called to God's purpose.

And we understand why that all things work for God's glory.

I mean, that's true, period.

Everything that happens in the world works for the glory of God.

The Bible doesn't say it's easy to see how God is glorified in all things.

Sometimes, especially in sin and moral evil, God is glorified just by his judgment of those things.

Through the severity of hell, God is glorified.

Some things through nature's beauty, for example, God is glorified through us marveling at the wonder of our Creator.

And so those are, I mean, the nature is the easy one, sin is the hard one, everything else lies in the middle.

And so here in 2 Corinthians 12, Paul is going to deal with an actual moral evil in the world.

There is moral evil in the world, and he's going to say, we know this works for the good of people who are called according to his purpose, but how does it work for his personal good?

Why is suffering for one believer, why is suffering for lots of believers working for our good through his glory of the Lord?

Why do high school students today, for example, have their senior year canceled, testing they needed to get into their college, not able to take?

Why do college students miss graduation?

Why do families have to line up for food from food banks?

Why do 30 million Americans lose their jobs?

Why do 240,000 people or so around the world die from this virus?

How can God let that happen?

What is God doing in those circumstances?

The big picture is he's glorifying himself in ways that are hard to comprehend.

I want us to look at 2 Corinthians 12 to see a small picture.

One person.

How is one person being served by this kind of suffering and moral evil in the world?

The big picture question is why do, big picture question, why do bad things happen?

Where there's a good God on the throne.

There's all kinds of big picture answers.

But I want to give a small, not a forest answer or a tree answer.

Why do bad things happen to the Apostle Paul?

Again, big picture, we understand that God redeems sin.

Better to have a world with a cross and an empty grave than a world with a tree and all of its fruit.

In other words, that God is more glorified in a world with the crucified and resurrected Redeemer than he would have been in the paradise of the original Garden of Eden.

But that's generally speaking, specifically, 2 Corinthians 12, Paul's going to address evil in his own life, how it is working for his personal good.

Now he does that in an unexpected way in the book of 2 Corinthians.

He does that through the lens of boasting.

And the most common word, I mean, apart from like is and the, the most common noun in the book of 2 Corinthians is the word boast.

It is used at least 32 times in the book of 2 Corinthians.

The word boast.

It's a refrain that Paul goes to over and over and over again.

He begins the book in chapter 1, verse 12, by saying that he will boast in his own clear conscience.

That's how he starts this book off.

He begins the narrative structure of 2 Corinthians by saying, he will boast to the Corinthians that his conscience is clear in how he interacted with them.

In chapter 1, verse 14, he says, I'm looking forward to the day where Jesus will boast about us.

And then he says, and I will boast about you to him.

And Paul's looking forward to heaven, and he says, Jesus is going to brag on the Corinthian church.

And Paul says, I'm going to brag to Jesus about how good they are.

He's excited about how he poured out his life in this church, which when you get to the end of the book, you almost can't believe that chapter one is part of the same book, because by the end of the book, it's Paul's brought out that they have fully turned on him.

They are fully antagonistic towards Paul.

And that he still says, I look forward to the day when I can brag about you in heaven.

Well, in chapter 7 through 9, a big part of Paul's appeal to money, and we looked at that last week, he's appealing that they would give generously for the sake of the suffering church in Jerusalem, those who are struck by famine in Jerusalem.

He wants them to give generally generously, and he tells them, I hope you give generally because I've been bragging to people about how much you would give.

I've been boasting about your generosity.

The guy's coming for the collection, don't make my boast a lie.

I mean, how's that for motivation to give?

So he does that in chapter 7 through 9.

He's returning to the theme of boasting in chapter 12 because he's refuting these false apostles that are just devastating the Corinthian church.

Remember, Paul helped plant the Corinthian church, he loved them, he ministered there for a while, he left them.

False teachers rose there after him.

They told lies about Paul, they spread their false teaching, they just really wrecked the church.

They were a sexually immoral church, they were a church that was often getting drunk, they were suing each other, they were not leading godly lives.

Meanwhile, they were boasting in all of their so-called spiritual gifts.

And this was fanned, the flame of this was fanned by these false teachers who were bragging about their own spiritual gifts, who were saying, you know, they could cast out demons better than anybody, they could speak in gibberish, I mean, tongues better than anybody.

They were faking all of these spiritual gifts.

They could heal people with lower back pain like nobody's business.

And so they said, don't listen to Paul.

He's a false apostle.

He's a false apostle.

And so how's Paul going to respond to that?

I mean, they're basically challenging Paul to a showdown over spiritual gifts.

These guys don't actually speak in tongues.

They don't actually have the heavenly gift of language, the sign of the apostle.

They speak in gibberish and they bring such a frenzy with them that people don't know what to make of it and assume that it's genuine, or they assume they must be spiritual.

Not a lot different than a lot of today's hardcore charismatics that act in the same way.

So what's Paul supposed to do?

Challenge them to a Pentecost showdown?

Who can speak in Latin?

Well, they all spoke Latin.

Greek too, Hebrew, you know, but who can speak in Portuguese?

It hasn't been invented yet.

No one can judge.

Only the angels would know who won.

Is that the kind of contest you should have?

Or who can who can heal people of their diseases the fastest?

It'd be condescending for Paul to do this.

Remember, Paul has actually raised the dead.

These fake apostles haven't raised anybody.

Paul has resurrected someone from the dead.

So of course he would win this showdown, but is that the field on which this game should be played?

Should he really go toe-to-toe with these fake apostles about who can do the most signs and who can speak in the most languages and who can raise the most dead people?

And so Paul says that he doesn't want to play that game in chapter 11.

He doesn't want to.

Instead, he would rather compare how many times he's been beaten for Christ to how many times these false apostles have been beaten for Christ.

Paul says, let's switch from that stadium to this stadium.

Who's been in jail more for the gospel?

And then he's afraid at the end of chapter 11 that that's not good enough.

That maybe that won't be persuasive because that is humiliating, isn't it?

These false apostles haven't been beaten for anything.

They haven't paid the cost for the gospel.

They've gotten rich off the gospel, they haven't paid for it.

Meanwhile, Paul's gotten poor physically off the gospel.

Look at the last line of chapter 11.

It's a sad line.

It can sound like it's out of place here.

Sometimes this is one of those verses that people write a question mark next to the end of chapter 11.

Paul talks about how under in Damascus, under King Aretus, he was seized and gonna be seized and arrested, but he was let down in a basket to the window and a wall and escaped his hands.

And we read that, and we've seen too many movies.

We think that's like a global, I mean a glorious and noble escape.

We're like, why does he talk?

Where did that come from?

That's kind of cool.

He snuck out in a basket.

No, it's humiliating, is the point.

These false apostles have never been smuggled out of anywhere in a basket.

But Paul had to leave Damascus hidden in a basket.

I mean, how can he brag about that?

But he says in chapter 12, verse 1, I must go on boasting.

So I'm going to look at boasting, and I want to show you how Paul takes boasting from this concept he uses throughout this book and makes it his answer to the question, why, how is God at work in suffering?

Let me give you an outline this morning.

Three lessons in boasting from a nobody.

Three lessons in boasting from a nobody.

And you would think, if you want to learn about boasting, why would you learn about it from a nobody?

Because this nobody is actually somebody, and he's quite good at boasting.

But he ends his description of boasting here in the middle of chapter 12 by describing himself, I believe it's in verse 11, as a nobody.

He says, I was inferior to all these so-called superapostles in chapter, or chapter 12, verse 11.

Even though I am nothing, and that's the phrase, that's the word for nobody.

Paul says, even though I'm a nobody, let me teach you about boasting.

And so we're going to look at his lessons on boasting from verses 1 through 10.

Lessons on boasting from a nobody.

The first lesson that we have here is what I'm going to call the lesson of paradise.

The lesson of paradise.

You shouldn't boast in your credentials.

Don't boast in your credentials.

The super apostles, and that's so-called super apostles in verse 11, they have the sarcastic quote marks around them, the super apostles.

I think that's Paul's phrase almost to mock them.

Like these guys are such good apostles that the word apostle doesn't even do them justice.

They're super apostles.

They've seen so many incredible things and faked so many languages and so many signs and wonders.

It's amazing, those super apostles.

Paul's going to contrast his own experience with theirs.

He says, verse one, I must go on boasting.

Though there is nothing to be gained by it.

And the word there, by the way, is the word profitable.

It's the Greek word for profitable.

It's not profitable to do this.

It's not profitable to boast in this regard.

It's not profitable to boast about your experiences or about your dreams or about your visions.

It's not profitable.

There's no good that comes from that.

This is earlier to the Corinthians, Paul told them all things are lawful, but not all things are profitable, he told them.

Remember?

You have freedom in Christ to do whatever you want, but that doesn't make it helpful to you.

So set aside things that aren't spiritually beneficial.

So here he's saying, if I have to go on boasting to show you that I'm actually the right teacher and these false apostles are faking everything, then I guess I will go on boasting, even though nothing can possibly be gained by bragging and boasting.

Yet I've got to go on to it.

Let's talk about visions.

Let's talk about revelations from the Lord, because these false apostles, these so-called super apostles, they were full of these false visions.

They had all kinds of stories about the Lord told them this and the Lord told them that, and they had this experience and that experience.

Meanwhile, Paul, who has actually had those experiences, what is he supposed to do?

And by the way, we know that Paul had these experiences.

We know that he's had visions and revelations from the Lord.

As he says in verse 1.

Let's talk about visions and revelations from the Lord.

Paul's had several of them that are described in the Bible.

In Acts chapter 9, his conversion, remember, he was struck blind.

Acts 9 · chapter mention

He was led to the next city, and there he had a vision where the Lord appeared to him and told him, a man named Ananias is going to come and open your eyes.

That's Acts chapter 9.

Acts 9 · chapter mention

In Acts chapter 16, verse 9, Paul had another vision where he saw a Macedonian man saying, Come to Macedonia and help us.

Acts 16:9

That was the vision the Lord used to make Paul a missionary to the Gentiles.

When Paul was in Jerusalem praying in the temple, the Lord appeared to him and told him to flee the persecution, go out into the world.

Another vision by God to get him to be a missionary to the Gentiles, the apostle of the Gentiles.

When Paul was put in jail on his return to Israel later, the Lord came to him in a vision after his trial and said, Just as you've been a witness in Jerusalem, I will make you now a witness to me in Rome.

So Paul knew he had confidence to stand before the judges and the kings.

He had confidence to appeal his case and want to be sent to Caesar, even though they would have let him free.

They found him not guilty.

But Paul said, I appeal to Caesar anyway, because he had a vision from the Lord.

Remember his shipwreck back to Rome, where the boat was caught in a storm, and everybody thought they were going to die, and the captain abdicated, and the sailors and the were powerless, and the prisoners took over the boat.

An angel appeared to Paul in a vision, is the word that Luke uses in Acts there, and told him that he would make it to Rome and he would stand before Caesar, and that nobody on the boat would die.

And remember, Paul says that to everybody.

I had a vision from God.

Listen, we're all gonna die.

But I had a vision that said nobody's gonna die.

So if you believe my vision, we'll all live.

Follow me.

And they do.

And they all make it to shore.

But significantly, in the founding of the church at Corinth, Paul was preaching the gospel in Corinth, and people were being severely persecuted.

And Paul was tempted to leave.

Because there were other churches that he had already worked with.

His heart was in other places as well.

He was tempted to leave.

And the Lord came to a vision in Corinth and told Paul in the vision, stay here because I have many more elect people who have not heard the gospel.

Stay here, Paul.

And so Paul went on to faithfully preach the gospel in Corinth because the Lord came to him in a vision.

Those are all visions he's had from the Lord, giving him truth, that were used to help the church in Corinth.

And now they have these false prophets who are there bragging about their visions and telling him, Don't listen to Paul.

Well, Paul doesn't even go down those roads.

All those visions I just told you, Paul doesn't reference any of them here.

Although he could have.

Any one of those should have been enough to defeat the false apostles, but he doesn't go to any of them.

Instead, verse 2, he says, I know a man in Christ who 14 years ago was caught up to the third heaven.

I don't know if he was in his body or not, but God knows.

And I know this man was caught up into paradise.

Again, don't know if it was in the body or out of the body.

And he heard things that cannot be told, which man may not utter.

Okay, so there's the vision.

This was obviously the Apostle Paul.

He says, I know a man.

Why is he putting it in the third person?

Is a question people ask, and he's putting in the third person, because remember, the whole premise here is that you shouldn't be bragging in your credentials.

It's not going to actually be helpful.

So now Paul says, if I do want to play your game on this field, I know that I would win.

But I'm my whole point here is that I don't want to play that game.

But if I did, I would introduce you a guy, we can call him Paul, who went to the third heaven.

Third heaven here is that he makes a parallel with the concept of paradise.

This is where the souls of the righteous go when they die.

It's the same word Jesus uses on the cross of the thief.

Today you will be with me in paradise.

In the Old Testament, paradise was considered down.

It was part of the realm of Sheol.

The souls of the righteous dead went there.

Jesus descended there, releases the righteous souls, and brings them in triumph up to glory.

He reorients heaven, he reorients paradise.

It's now no longer below.

In the Old Testament, it was always down.

In the New Testament, after Jesus' ascension, it's always up, up, up, up, up.

And here Paul says that.

He says, I went up to heaven.

Up to paradise, up to the third heaven.

Third heaven was a phrase that Solomon used in his prayer in 1 Kings 8, not as a place where the souls of the righteous go.

Solomon uses that in 1 Kings 8 as the place where God Himself dwells on his throne.

It's as high as you get.

You can't outrank that place.

There might be a heaven where the angels are.

There might be a heaven where the demonic beings come in and out, the fallen angels where God assembles with them in the book of Job, for example.

And Solomon says, I'm not praying through any of those places.

I'm going right to the top.

And Paul uses that phrase here, attaches paradise to it, and gives new revelation by saying, It is up in the heavens, and by the way, I've been there.

What are the false apostles going to do about that?

And they can't respond to that.

They can't respond to it.

Psalm 123, verse 1, Yahweh is enthroned in heaven.

Psalms 123:1

And Paul says, there's this guy who's been there.

And he saw things that nobody can talk about.

They're too marvelous.

They're too marvelous.

Now, you should pause here.

When did this happen?

Fourteen years earlier.

Fourteen years earlier.

It's amazing to me, probably 4380 or so.

It's amazing to me that Paul has been quiet about that through all of his missionary journeys, through all of his church planning endeavors.

He hasn't mentioned this for over a decade.

Fourteen years have gone by, and he hasn't said a word about it until now.

And that's remarkable.

Why would he not tell people this?

Because he says it's not profitable.

It's not to anyone's benefit to tell people about it.

First of all, he says he can't even say the details of it because it's too marvelous that you can't speak it.

But secondly, he's saying it's not profitable because how would you even know that it's true?

It's not replicatable.

Paul's whole thing, his whole approach to ministry here, he tells the Corinthians in chapter 3 of 2 Corinthians that you are my certification.

You are my resume.

The transformed lives you have.

That's how you know I'm an authentic apostle.

That's what Paul tells them.

You want to know how I'm an authentic apostle, Paul says?

Look at your own changed life through my ministry.

What a deviation between false teachers and real teachers.

Real teachers say, You want to know my credentials?

Look at the power of the word in your life.

False teachers say, You want to know my credentials?

I had a dream.

I had a vision.

I can do these miracles.

I can do these signs.

Paul didn't want people to esteem him based on his experiences.

He wanted people to respect him based upon the working of the word in their life.

That's the difference.

So Paul says, I'm not going to boast in my credentials.

Now, if he wanted to, in verse 6, if I wished to boast, I wouldn't be a fool, for I'd be speaking the truth.

He said, I could tell you about it.

I could drop the third person and say, Paul did this.

By the way, you might ask, why, how do I know it was Paul and not actually a person that he knows?

Well, a couple reasons.

One, he says they can't be translated into words.

So had whoever had this experience can't describe it.

And so there's no way they could have described it to Paul.

And secondly, God gives him a thorn in the flesh to keep him humble because of the experience.

The thorn didn't go to some random person whom he knows.

The thorn went to him.

So this is obviously him.

And he says, I could brag about it, but what good would that do?

It wouldn't do any good.

Rather, he says at the end of verse 6, I don't want anyone to think more of me than he sees or hears from me.

I mean, I just want you to appreciate the integrity that takes somebody to say that.

I don't want you to think any more of me than I really am.

How do you know who I am?

Spend time with me.

Get to know me.

Listen to me.

Talk to me.

That's how you know who I am.

Watch my life.

That's how I know who you am.

And Paul says, I don't want you to think a millimeter of me more than what I really am.

And so I'm not going to talk to you about going up to heaven.

I'm not going to talk to you about the angels I saw there.

It just wouldn't be helpful.

It wouldn't be helpful.

Again, this is a staggering contrast with people today.

A staggering contrast where it seems like so often people are eager to share any vision, any revelation they have, no matter how flimsy, no matter how dubious, they might say, Oh, I had a dream and Jesus told me in my dream, and what they follow may or may not even be true.

It kind of doesn't matter.

But they're just saying it.

And whenever somebody asks me, I get this question often, you know, so-and-so had a dream, or the Lord said this, or the Lord did that, what do you make of that?

And based upon this passage, it's very easy to answer.

What do I make of that?

Either it's true, and the person is very immature for talking about it.

Because a mature believer, if it was true, wouldn't mention it.

Or it's false.

Either way, not profitable to share.

There's a guy who came for baptism, and uh his baptism testimony, part of his conversion story, was that he went up to the third heaven and he saw things too miraculous.

He was quoting this passage, saw things too miraculous to say, but he wanted to share his experience from the waters of baptism with the church so that everybody would know how real heaven is and how real Jesus is.

And that was, he was gonna say that in his baptism testimony.

And I didn't know how to respond there.

That was not covered in seminary, that class.

And so I actually told him, I said, you know what?

I think your conversion and your belief in Jesus is good enough.

And if you started talking about the angels and the spinning wheels and everything you saw in your visit to the third heaven, that would be distracting from the story of your conversion.

So let's just skip that.

And uh, he agreed to skip it.

But I'll tell you, I was ready for the leg sweep in the baptismal waters.

If he would have said in third heaven, you would have seen him under so fast.

Paul says this kind of thing's not helpful or profitable to talk about.

Rather, rather esteem him as a minister based upon his integrity, based upon who he really is in Jesus Christ.

Having a dream does not make you spiritual.

Having a dream about Jesus doesn't make you spiritual.

Having a dream about Jesus that is real and authentic doesn't make you spiritual.

What makes you spiritual is having a love for the Lord in your life, applying the truths of the Bible to your life.

And so, let the dreamer dream, Jeremiah says.

Jeremiah says, because Jeremiah had the same problem.

All the apostles were wandering around saying, I had a dream that God was going to deliver Jerusalem.

I had a dream that the Babylonians weren't going to defeat us.

I had a dream that it would be victory, victory, victory.

And Jeremiah says, let the dreamer dream.

A dreamer has his dream and vision.

Let him have his dream.

Let him have his vision.

But the one with the word of the Lord, let him speak the word of the Lord.

That's where Paul does here.

You want to talk about dreams?

I can beat you in that.

I just don't want to play that game.

The first principle.

First lesson in boasting from a nobody.

Don't boast in your credentials.

Don't boast in your credentials.

Secondly, second lesson.

Do boast in your weaknesses.

Do boast in your weaknesses.

And Paul says here in the middle of verse 5, this man I will boast, but not on my own behalf.

I won't boast.

And here he says, Except in my weaknesses.

Paul says, it's okay to boast in your weaknesses.

And then in verse 6, we looked at that already.

If I did want to boast in the man who went to heaven, I wouldn't be lying, I would be telling the truth, but I want to refrain it from it.

We looked at that verse now.

But in verse 7, he says, So to keep me from becoming conceited, because the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given to me in the flesh.

A messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited.

So he says in verse 5, it's bad to boast in your credentials, it's great to boast in your weaknesses.

And you think, okay, I don't want to necessarily go around bragging about my weaknesses.

And what are my weaknesses, honestly?

I look in the mirror and hmm, I have a hard time thinking of my weaknesses.

I can think of a couple, but I mean, honestly, I'm pretty so God, boom, will humble you and expose to you.

You have a hard time thinking of your weaknesses?

Man, do not say that in your prayer life because the Lord will expose them quickly.

And so that's what happens to Paul.

He returns from heaven, he's traveling around in his missionary journeys, he's planting churches left and right, and he is being quiet about his vision to heaven.

He's not 14 years go by.

He's not telling anybody about it.

He's just doing the work of the church.

But in his heart, in his mind, he starts to climb the ladder in his heart and in his mind, and he starts to get a little bit arrogant when, and I'm not even saying that's necessarily bad or unthinkable.

I mean, he went, he had a vision that nobody else has had before.

Certainly that's going to do something to your mind.

I mean, we're humans, and so Paul starts to get a little bit more arrogant.

Just inside, just a little inside.

And so the Lord has the remedy for that.

A thorn in the flesh that it says twice in this passage, it says, it was given to him to bring him down, to keep him from being conceited.

Now, what is this thorn in the flesh?

He describes it, and you know, he says it's a messenger of Satan.

The Greek word is ungalos, it's an angel of Satan, and the word ungalos is used repeatedly in the New Testament, and it almost always means a person, 175 times in the New Testament, by the way, and it almost always is a person.

Sometimes it's not a person, sometimes it's an angel, like at the birth of Christ, for example, or Jesus in the wilderness says he could summon them to himself.

But the normal use of this word would be a messenger, and it's a it's a hard word to discern between the two, and it seems here that it's a messenger of Satan, so you don't even need to distinguish between if it's a person or if it's an angel, because either way he's sent from the devil.

So this is a messenger who is dispatched from the where where Satan dwells to do harm to Paul.

That's who this that's what the storm in the flesh is.

An ungulos of the devil, a messenger sent from Satan.

Now, this is a phrase that is not unusual.

This is a phrase that appears elsewhere, our concept, at least it appears elsewhere in the Bible.

It appears with Job, where Satan uh appears before God in the throne of heaven, and God asks the devil, have you considered Job?

And Satan says, Of course I know Job.

You've given him so much, that's why he worships you.

Let me take everything from him.

And God says, Go for it.

And the Lord uh allows the devil to go after Job, and his family dies.

And then the Lord calls Satan back, and the Lord tells Satan, Look, Job still worships me, and Satan says, because he has his health, skin for skin, let me take his health from them.

And the Lord says, Okay.

And the devil comes back to Job and takes his health.

So you see the afflictions there, and even the raiding, marauding band that pillaged Job's property, those were people that were under the influence of the devil.

Now they didn't know they were.

If you would have asked one of the civilians, you know, why are you stealing everything from Job?

He wouldn't have said the devil made me do it.

But he was clearly, Job, one makes it so clear, he was sent by the devil, even though he's unknowing.

Are you thinking the false prophets?

This is, I think, is the most helpful uh Old Testament example of this, 1 Kings 22.

The false prophets, and the king asks, I'm gonna go to war.

I'm gonna go to war.

This is Ahab and Jehoiakim, I'm gonna go to war, and uh is God gonna give us victory?

And they summon the prophet Mekaiah, and Mekaiah comes, and Mekah says, I don't know, what do your prophets say?

Which is a funny answer.

And they have Ahab has all these false prophets that are prancing around.

One of them puts on horns.

It's a really hilarious scene.

This is 1 Kings 22.

He straps on fake horns on his head and starts dancing around the two kings and says, Of course you're gonna win, just like the bull will gorge his opponent.

You know, God has given me a vision that you're gonna win.

And Micaiah, I mean, you've got to picture a real prophet in that kind of room.

Have you ever seen a real prophet strap on horns and prance around the stage?

I mean, it's the whole thing is hilarious.

And Micaiah says, you know, you gotta be joking me.

You're gonna die, is what's gonna happen.

And Ahab says, You're going to jail.

You're going to jail.

And Micaiah says, Let me tell you why this is happening.

God in heaven asked all the angels, how can I get Ahab to do this foolish thing?

And different angels had different ideas, but one angel was a lying angel.

We're going to go ahead and call a demon.

And the demon said, I can go, and being a lying, a lying spirit in the mouth of his prophet, and he'll listen to the lying spirit.

And God says, Go for it.

This is a messenger of lies, a messenger of Satan in the form of a false prophet to lead God's people astray.

It's 1 Kings 22, if you want to read about it on your own.

This is Paul's experience right now.

Paul has a messenger from the devil sent into his life to afflict him and torment him.

And we don't know the guy's name, but we know his work.

Satan himself, Paul tells the Corinthians, masquerades like an angel of light.

So it wouldn't be surprising that when he attacks the church, he does so in the form of somebody who's acting like a messenger of light.

And what is this messenger doing?

He's bringing demonic teaching to the church.

False signs, false wonders.

All the things Paul's described about to the Corinthians, the sexual immorality, the drunkenness at communion, the lawsuits, the division, the strife, the rejecting Paul's leadership.

All of this is his work.

All of it is.

Paul loves this church so much.

They're under demonic attack.

And Paul prays over and over and over again.

He prays.

Lord, take this away.

And the Lord says no.

The Lord says no.

So I want you to picture this.

This is what I mean by a moral evil.

It's an entire church that is under demonic attack with real people going through real suffering, and Paul knows them.

These are people Paul knows and loves.

Why would God let this happen?

Because God hates arrogance, is why.

Proverbs 16, verse 5.

Proverbs 16:5

Everyone who is arrogant in his heart is an abomination to Yahweh.

Isaiah 13, verse 11, I will put an end to the arrogant, God says.

Isaiah 13:11

Matthew 23, verse 12, whoever exalts himself will be humbled.

Matthew 23:12

And so God gives this messenger from Satan to harass Paul by attacking this church.

What do we know about this messenger?

He hurt Paul.

He humbled Paul.

Paul prayed for him to be taken away.

He regarded him as an attack from the devil.

The attack made Paul humble.

It was humiliating to him, much like being lowered out of the basket.

That's why chapter 11 ends that way.

And it made Paul feel weak.

Paul is just desperate here.

It made him feel so weak.

Look at verse 8.

Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this that he would leave me.

But God didn't take it away.

Didn't take it away.

By the way, it's a common Old Testament idiom to describe your opponents as thorns in your flesh or thorns in your side.

Numbers 33, verse 55.

Numbers 33:55

Moses describes all the nations as thorns in his side.

Joshua 23, verse 13 describes the opponents that are going against the Israelites at the end of Joshua's lifetime as thorns in their flesh.

Joshua 23:13

Judges 2, Ezra, Ezra 28, 24 uses the same expression.

For all the people harassing the Israelites while they're building up the temple, they're thorns and then they're there.

And it doesn't mean like a big lance.

It means like an actual thorn in the flesh.

It's annoying, it's provocative, and a thorn humbles you, doesn't it?

You're acting all big and bold walking outside.

This is a bigger deal in New Mexico than it is here.

You're acting all big and bold walking outside in the summer and bare feet, and you get a goat head.

And a goat head is a tiny thing, but it goes in your foot and it just I mean, it humbles you real fast.

Real fast.

That's what Paul has.

It's a demonic attack from the devil on his church.

It's like a thorn in his flesh, and he cannot get rid of it.

No tweezers will take this out.

And the Lord is not helping.

Why isn't the Lord helping?

Because the Lord's at work through it, which leads to our third lesson.

Third lesson.

The lesson of paradise, don't boast in your credentials.

Lesson of pain, do boast in your weaknesses.

Paul says, I'll boast in my weaknesses.

And the third lesson, the lesson of perseverance.

Contentment glorifies the Lord.

This is what God is doing through this kind of suffering.

He's glorifying himself.

God is glorified by using weak vessels.

This is the point.

God is glorified by using weak vessels.

God is not glorified by using strong vessels.

God would be more glorified by using a teenage David with a stone to kill Goliath than a full-grown Saul in all the armor to kill Goliath.

I mean, who would have glorified the Lord if Saul would have fought Goliath and won?

Some people for ten minutes, probably.

But David, it just crystallizes it in everyone's mind.

This is the Lord.

If God would have chosen Egypt to send the Savior to, who would have glorified him because of that?

No, he chooses a nation that's not a nation, a person that doesn't have a people, and makes a new nation out of it.

This is why the Savior is not born in Jerusalem.

It's a more of a powerful city.

No, he's born in Nazareth.

There's only barely even a place called Nazareth in the time of Christ.

It's a collection of 70 huts.

Of course the Savior would come from there.

Jesus chooses 12 apostles, 11 of them from Galilee.

That's nowhere.

The only one who was from a powerful place was Judas, by the way.

I mean, this is the point.

The strong and the powerful end up betraying.

The weak and the helpless end up clinging because they need the mercy of God.

This is the very point of the gospel.

We looked at this last week that Jesus was, though rich in heaven, had to become poor and humble and robed in human flesh with a human nature and take on our sins as low as you can get for us to have forgiveness of sins.

How many times is the devil going to learn this lesson, by the way?

The devil attacks Jesus by driving him to the cross, making him weak, weak, weak, weak.

But through the weakness of the cross, the glory and the strength of eternal life is displayed in the open grave.

Had Jesus just slain the devil, put an end to his life in the wilderness, he wouldn't have had the cross or the empty grave.

The devil's temptation.

He waits until Jesus is weak, weak, weak in the wilderness to tempt him.

I mean, again, doesn't he learn the weaker Jesus is, the more he resists temptation, the more the holiness of God is glorified in the life of Christ.

Over and over and over again, the Bible teaches us that lesson.

Weak people glorify God.

I mean, Gideon's army was too big to fight.

What general has ever said that?

I had too many soldiers.

It's not gonna work.

People won't think enough of the United States if we invade Iraq with a massive army.

We need to invade with just a small amount of armies so that everybody realizes how great our army is.

People don't think that way.

Shock and awe, you know, that's our approach.

That's not the way the Lord works.

Humility, humility and loneliness, and loneless.

The assault on Eve led the Savior to be born to a woman.

God goes after Eve in her weakness, and she sins, and now the Savior is born who will crush the serpent's head.

Every time this lesson appears in the Bible, it is reiterated.

So what is gonna be better of the church in Corinth?

A strong pastor with a nice resume?

A sharp-looking fella with a sweet family and a nice resume and a cool house and everything.

Is that gonna work good in Corinth?

No.

They need some widow or pastor with shabby looks and grotesque appearance.

I mean, they call him ugly.

No family and just humble, and he can't speak very well.

They make fun of him because he's not articulate.

That's what Corinth needs.

They need a humble, broken guy as our pastor.

And so God humbles Paul right to the ground with a thorn in his flesh.

Discouragement drives us to the Holy Spirit more than.

Encouragement.

Sickness provokes us to prayer more than health.

Our appreciation for the majesty of God's glory is seen in trials and valleys, not in mountaintops and in peace.

Because if there's no trial, there's no grace.

Anchors are appreciated in storms, not in calm waters.

You don't need an anchor in a calm sea.

You need an anchor when the tide is pulling and the wind is battering.

That's the idea here.

Paul wants to glorify God as his anchor, Christ as his anchor, so he needs the storms to be in Paul's life.

So should you pray that God would take trials away from your life?

Sure.

Yes, pray that God would take trials away from your life.

Of course.

Does that mean that God's going to answer yes to your prayers?

No.

Let me say it three times.

No, no, no.

Because Paul prayed three times for God to remove this sworn, and God said no, no, no.

Just yesterday, my family was listening to Christian Radio, which is always an interesting adventure.

And there's a song where the chorus, you know the song, where I told the devil, no, not today, was the chorus of no devil, no, not today.

I won't sing it for you.

And I was getting ready to preach this passage saying, I'm like, if only Paul would have known Hillsong United.

The devil, not today, devil.

Back in your cage, devil.

What if God sent the devil?

You can't tell the devil, no, not today.

Paul told the devil, no, not today, three times.

And God said, I have different plans for you.

Different plans for you.

Once was watching a guy preach.

I won't say his name.

He's still in ministry.

And he stopped in the middle of his sermon and he jumped like this and said, Devil, how many times did I tell you not to mess with the dude that I'm preaching?

And then goes back on to preaching his sermon.

And you're forced to wrestle like, is that true?

Is the devil, who's not omnipresent, he can only in one place at one time.

So if he's attacking that pastor, that's good news for other people.

He's not attacking other people.

Although he does have demons, he can attack lots of people, I guess, through his demons.

Who knows?

But is the devil actually attacking that guy right then?

If yes, it's probably for his good to humble him.

And if no, is he actually lying from the pulpit like that?

The lesson from this is that when you go through suffering, don't rebuke the devil, don't bind the devil, pray for the suffering to be taken from you, of course.

But recognize that if God doesn't answer that prayer, he's actually working for your good.

How is he working for your good?

He's humbling you.

So think coronavirus style.

How is this working for your good?

You have more time to read, you have less distractions from your life, you're getting more work done perhaps, or you're watching more TV, perhaps.

Your mileage may vary on this.

But let me tell you one basic way it's working for your good.

Whether you're in isolation and you're lonely and alone, or whether you have your whole family with you, or whether you're honoring all the restrictions, or you're not, no matter what you're going through, let me tell you one way the Lord is working in your life.

He's humbling you.

He's humbling you.

That a tiny virus that you need a microscope to see will bring this world to its knees.

And by the way, you miss that lesson if you say, oh, this is political.

This is something done to humiliate our president, or this is a lie of our president to motivate his base.

I've heard all those stories.

You're being naive.

This is global.

The whole world is going through this.

You know, China didn't go on lockdown, Australia didn't go on lockdown, New Zealand didn't go on lockdown for the American political election, okay?

Grow up a little bit.

You miss the lesson.

If you excuse it that way, the lesson is you need to be humbled.

Get down on your knees and pray and be broken by how frail life is.

Because it is so frail.

But it's good that you're frail.

It's good.

Because look at what Paul says.

Therefore, he learns, my grace is sufficient.

This is God speaking to Paul, verse 9.

My grace is sufficient for you.

My power is made perfect in weakness.

The weaker you are, the more you realize the Lord's power.

Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so the power of Christ may rest upon me.

What joy.

What joy.

Paul is so excited to boast about his weaknesses.

Remember how this chapter started?

You want to compare apostolic experiences?

You want to compare miracles and raising the dead?

You want to compare who can speak in the most languages?

You want to compare strength?

Look where the chapter ends.

This narrative ends.

I'm going to boast in my weaknesses.

I have more weaknesses than you.

I have more weaknesses than you.

He gives you a list in verse 10.

You say, what does it look like to boast in your weaknesses?

Paul examples it in verse 10 here.

He exemplifies it.

For the sake of Christ, then, I'm content with weaknesses.

He lists them: insults, hardships, persecutions, calamities.

You ask a Christian, what's your greatest strength?

Nothing, it's such a hard question to answer.

Not because it's like, oh, I got a lot of strengths.

It's because it's so, it's an anti-Christian question.

Ha.

Better question.

What's your weaknesses?

And a Christian can wax eloquently about that.

Let me tell you my weaknesses.

Paul's weaknesses, he's insulted everywhere.

He's hardship after hardship, persecution after persecution, calamity after calamity.

He listed them back in chapter 11.

For when I am weak, he says, then I am strong.

So listen, brothers and sisters, don't boast in your strength.

Don't boast in your experiences.

Don't boast in you think what makes you strong.

Boast in your humility.

Boast in how low you are.

Boast in how much you need a Savior.

That's what it looks like.

You boast by saying, I need the Lord in these areas.

I need the Lord because I'm so low.

I need the Lord because I'm so desperate.

I need the Lord because I'm so frail and fickle.

Be reminded that God is sovereign and we are weak.

But the weaker we are, the more glorified our Savior is through us.

Lord, we're grateful that our weakness is sin, a human body that wears out and dies.

We are all salmon swimming upstream here.

We are decaying, we are decomposing even while we live.

Our tent is wearing away.

And yet you are so great.

You are eternal.

There's no shadows with you.

Death never casts its shadow over your doorstep.

You're glorious and holy, and we are lowly.

But we're thankful for Christ, who died on the cross to forgive us of our sins, who rose from the grave to forgive us of our sins.

Who defeated the devil.

In his weakness, he defeated the devil.

In his hunger, he defeated the devil.

In his isolation, he defeated the devil.

Let us learn from that lesson.

Lord, I pray that this would be a church that is known by our integrity, that is known by our lives, known by how we live.

Make that true in our own lives.

I pray for anyone who's watching today that doesn't know you as their Savior.

I pray today they would see their sin, they would see their weakness, they would see their frailty, and they would confess it to you.

They would receive forgiveness from their sins because of the death of Jesus on the cross and his victory over the grave.

We know that you're eager to forgive those who trust the cross for salvation and not in themselves.

We pray that you would do that today in Jesus' name.

Amen.

And now for a parting word from Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thank you for watching Emmanuel Bible Church today.

You know, today's sermon was filmed in front of an empty worship center because of the coronavirus lockdown.

But it's my prayer that if you live in the DC area, I'll be able to meet you when the church doors open again.

In the meantime, if you want more information about Emmanuel Bible Church, you can find us at iBC.church.

Or if you want more information about the Master Seminary in their Washington, D.C.

location, go to tms.edu.

In the meantime, I hope today's ministry enables you to seek God through Jesus Christ, to serve Him with gladness, and to share Him with boldness.

May the Lord bless you.