Sufficient Grace

So welcome to Church of the Grove.

We are really we're coming to the end today of our series Grace Upon Grace, where we've just really been looking at the doctrine and the and the theology of grace that we see uh in the New Testament.

And so we've we've looked at uh some specific passages, and so today we kind of wrap everything up looking at the Apostle Paul, who is referred to as the Apostle of Grace, the Apostle of Grace, and looking at Paul's unique, his unique biography, his unique life, his unique story.

And um and we're gonna address uh a topic that is that that is real, but not always the most fun, exciting, woo-hoo, kind of topic, but it's the topic of suffering.

And suffering is not a pleasant subject to explore uh necessarily, but and especially in our modern Western culture, and and and many of you have heard this message uh uh often taught in in Christian circles that uh for those of us that are followers of Jesus, we we need to address this and sometimes acknowledge that some of this is faulty theology, and it's this idea that pain and suffering come from the devil and from the devil alone.

And since God wants his servants well and free from pain, healing and happiness are of the Lord.

And so, and that's that's not necessarily untrue, but but it's certainly not true in the way that it's stated here.

Um, all pain and suffering doesn't just come from the devil.

God is in the midst of our pain and suffering.

And so that that statement sounds great, but the problem is it's not a biblical statement.

It's not a true statement from the perspective of the Bible when it comes to the doctrine of suffering.

Uh the devil or the enemy is real.

I say that all the time.

I try to say that almost every week.

You need to know that there's a world that runs parallel to our world, and it is not a world where we can see and touch and feel tangibly, you know, physically, but it it means it doesn't mean that world is not real.

It's even more real than the world we live in.

Um and the enemy wants to get us to a point, lull us into believing that that pain and suffering is all bad and has no redemptive value.

God is often in the midst, in his sovereign plan, using our pain and suffering to help us grow deeper in our faith, to help us grow in our character, to help us learn how to grow and that what we would call the sanctification.

So salvation is the doctrine of justification.

It's just as if I'd never sinned.

When we put our faith in Jesus, we're justified.

And that is a one-time stamp, you know, God is the judge, drops the gavel kind of thing, and he declares that we are no longer going to be held accountable for our sin.

And so that is the doctrine of salvation, the doctrine of of um uh of of justification, where the doctrine of sanctification is becoming like Jesus in our character.

And so uh you may be surprised to know that there are times when pain and suffering comes as part of God's sovereign plan to prepare us to be useful servants in the kingdom and what he's doing, what he wants to do to advance the gospel and to see the kingdom of God move forward.

And so our theology gets fuzzy here in American Christianity because we probably have an addiction to creature comforts.

And so here's the big idea for today God's grace is sufficient for all that we need.

God's grace is sufficient for all that we need.

Say the word sufficient.

Say it with me.

Sufficient.

That is a key word.

Romans 8, 22 and 23, the Apostle Paul writes, he says, For we know that all creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.

And we believers also groan, even though we had the Holy Spirit within us as a foretaste of future glory.

For we long for our bodies to be released from sin and suffering.

We too wait with eager hope for the day when God will give us our full rights as his adopted children, including the new bodies he has promised us.

And so Paul talks about this idea of groaning, and we are in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time, and and and so we have the Holy Spirit.

We've tasted a future glory, and so we want to be released completely from suffering, but but God has a purpose in this life, in this moment, for suffering to accomplish its will, God's perfect will.

Uh, theologian pastor um the late John Stott writes, he said, he says this, and this is, I don't believe this is on the screen, but let me just read through this quickly.

He says, It is not only our fragile body which makes me groan, it is our fallen nature which hinders us from behaving as we should, and would altogether prevent us from it, were it not for the indwelling spirit.

And and and he says, we long therefore for our sarks, which is our human flesh, our sinful nature, for our sarks to be destroyed and our and our and our uh new nature to be transformed.

Our groans express both present pain and future longing.

Some Christians, however, grin too much.

They seem to have no place in their theology for pain, and they groan too little.

We grin too much and we groan too little, is what he says.

And so we must move past a shallow perspective of suffering and pain.

Embrace a biblical view that takes us out of the center and puts God at the center of the story.

See, our life and our story that we live in, we are we are part of this story that God is writing, but he's to be at the center.

It's all about Jesus, nothing but Jesus, everything Jesus.

That's what we say around here.

And it sounds great to say it, but we've got to get it down into our life to live it.

Move past this shallow perspective when we we often walk through pain and suffering as a result of God preparing us for growing into the character of Jesus.

And so Paul writes about this.

In his journey, we see it lived out.

He writes about this journey and process in his second letter to the church at Corinth.

So, 2 Corinthians, chapter um uh chapter 1, and verses 3 and 4, and I'm reading out of the New Living Translation, he says this all praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

God is our merciful Father and the source of all comfort.

There's that word comfort.

He comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort others.

So, so we see, you see that?

He's saying, you are going to encounter trouble, but your encounter with trouble, difficulty, pain, suffering, it is not purposeless.

It is not in vain, it is not empty, it is not an empty journey.

It is chock full of God with you.

God is using your circumstances to accomplish his perfect will.

And so he comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort others.

And there you see, part of that purpose.

So we can't, having experienced difficulty, we can in turn comfort others going through similar difficulties.

And then he says, when they are troubled, we will be able to give them the same comfort God has given us.

And so, simply put, our journey with pain allows us to comfort others in pain.

Our journey with pain allows us to comfort others in pain.

We have a tremendous ministry called Wendy's Wish that has been birthed in our church in the last year or so.

And it is a ministry specifically with the purpose of encouraging and supporting people that are going through the journey of cancer.

I don't know about you, but I hate cancer.

I hate it.

I hate it.

It is not part of God's ultimate plan, but it is part of this world that we live in where people suffer and deal with difficulty and hurt and pain and health issues.

And so, God, even though it's not God's will that we would suffer indefinitely, God has chosen in his will, according to his will, to use this season where we are exposed to pain and suffering to accomplish his will.

And sometimes that is to use the hurt and the pain and the suffering to encourage others.

And so Wendy's Wish is named after Wendy Olligood, who who passed away in the past what year, year and a half.

Um Wendy's been a part of our church for many years.

She and her husband and family, their two kids.

And so what we've done is put together this ministry that is a cancer support ministry that encourages people to get in and spend time with other people walking the same path of suffering through cancer.

And so I keep hearing these amazing stories of how this incredible ministry is encouraging people and supporting people and giving them the emotional, relational, spiritual support and strength to walk through this journey in a way that is redemptive.

It forms in them the character of Christ, and in turn we will see God honored and glorified even in the midst of difficulty and suffering.

So, Paul, he says in verse 8 of chapter 1 in 2 Corinthians, he says, We think you ought to know, dear brothers and sisters, about the trouble that we went through in the province of Asia.

We were crushed and overwhelmed beyond our ability to endure, and we thought we would never live through it.

Now, I'm reading out of the New Living Translation right there.

Let me read that same verse in the English Standard Version, and it gives us a little bit of insight in another translation.

He says, For we do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of the affliction we experienced in Asia.

For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself.

You see, this is Paul sharing with you how difficult his journey has been.

He has gotten to a point where he despairs of life itself.

I mean, let me say it in another way.

I don't want to go on living.

Paul is pretty much what he's saying.

I've been crushed and overwhelmed.

And in one, the new living, he says, I I and we thought we would never live through it, but in the English standard, he says, I despaired of life itself.

I don't know if you've ever felt that way.

I felt that way.

And I I I don't know that I can go on.

I feel like I'm I'm just gonna try to barely crawl through this season.

I don't know if you felt that way, but people that go through these difficulties, it's it's real, it's difficult.

I'm not making light of pain and suffering as we teach on it.

And so here, I want you to see this.

The purpose of pain moves us to trust completely in God.

The purpose of pain moves us to trust completely in God.

We just sing about that.

Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 4, 8 through 11.

He says, We are pressed on every side by troubles, but we are not crushed.

We are perplexed, but not driven to despair.

We are hunted down but never abandoned by God.

We get knocked down, but we are not destroyed through suffering.

Our bodies continue to share in the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be seen in our bodies.

Yes, we live under constant danger of death because we serve Jesus, so that the life of Jesus will be evident in our dying bodies.

He goes on to 2 Corinthians 6, and I know I'm moving rapidly.

We're going to camp out in 2 Corinthians 12 and finish, but I'm hitting a few verses where Paul, in his letter to the second letter to the church at Corinth, he's explaining these hardships, the difficulties he's been through.

He says, in everything we do, chapter 6, verses 4 and 5, we show that we are true ministers of God.

We patiently endure troubles and hardships and calamities of every kind.

We've been beaten, put in prison, faced angry mobs, worked to exhaustion, endured sleepless nights, and gone without food.

You ever been there?

I mean, maybe not exactly, but we've all been through troubles.

We can identify with Paul.

He goes on to chapter 11, verses 23 through 27.

He says, Are they servants of Christ?

I know I sound like a madman, but I have served him far more.

He's talking about serving Jesus.

I've worked harder, been put in prison more often, been whipped times without number, and faced death again and again.

Five different times the Jewish leaders gave me 39 lashes.

Three times I was beaten with rods.

Once I was stoned, three times I was shipwrecked.

Once I spent a whole night with rod, uh a whole night and a day adrift at sea.

I have traveled on many long journeys.

I have faced danger from rivers and from robbers.

I have faced danger from my own people, the Jews, as well as from the Gentiles.

I have faced danger in the cities, in the desert, and on the seas.

And I have faced danger from men who claim to be believers but are not.

I have worked hard and long and during many sleepless nights.

I have been hungry and thirsty and have often gone without food.

I have shivered in the cold without enough clothing to keep me warm.

Now, you might, on one side of it, you're like, man, is this guy ever going to stop complaining?

But if we're if we're on another side, if we're, I mean, many of us, we are familiar with Paul, we're familiar with his story, and we know that he's he's not one to belly ache all the time, but he's giving us a theology of his suffering, leading us to down this path to have a healthy, sound theology of grace.

Man, we all face difficulty in our lives.

And Paul is saying, I among you all certainly understand, and he's giving us his resume of suffering and difficulty.

Can you hear the groaning?

Can you hear the pain?

I mean, he's he is he's going into detail about how many times he's been shipwrecked, how many times he's been his life has been threatened, and how he's been shipwrecked, and how he's been stoned, and how he's had to uh you know cross rivers and face dangers and and uh in the in cities and deserts and on the seas, all these sleepless nights and hungry and thirsty.

Pain and suffering.

And and and and so uh what uh what I'm trying to get at is we all can identify with Paul.

We all can.

We could give our list of things that we have the price we've paid.

But but Paul's taking us down.

He's saying, listen, is your number one, are you suffering and are you experiencing pain?

And are you doing so in a way that honors God?

And so he's he's leading us.

He knows pain.

Paul knows pain, Paul knows suffering, he knows loss, grief and hurt, and so pain and suffering are to be embraced because we trust that God has redemptive purpose in our difficulties.

2 Corinthians 11 30.

He says this if I must boast, I would rather boast about the things that show how weak I am.

Then he goes on of chapter 12, verse 1, and he says, This boasting will do no good, but I must go on.

I will reluctantly tell about visions and revelations from the Lord.

I was caught up to the third heaven 14 years ago.

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

Only God knows.

Yes, only God knows whether I was in my body or outside my body, but I do know that I was caught up to paradise and heard things so astounding that they cannot be expressed in words.

Things no human is allowed to tell.

Paul says in verse 2, he says, 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 do not know.

God knows.

Now, what is Paul writing about right here?

He's writing about himself, he's writing about his own personal experience.

He says, I know a guy that was caught up.

Well, he's the guy.

This is uh an autobiography, so to speak, account.

Paul acknowledges that he is uncertain about this experience and understanding the details and the meaning of it.

He's saying, only God knows.

Whether in the body or out of the body, I do not know.

God knows.

So he's saying, I don't know everything about this experience.

But he states clearly that this experience that he has is initiated by God.

I have been caught up.

And he declares that this experience to be beyond words in describing, all from God, not something that he himself produced.

And this is important when we talk about our salvation, our sanctification, our growth into becoming more like Christ in his character.

Sometimes it involves us going through difficult experiences so we can experience God's grace in a personal, up close way.

Now, Paul, I believe, has a purpose for explaining to you that I don't know where this experience came from.

I just know it's from God.

And the reason he's expressing this is he's saying that often when we have a spiritual encounter, rather than it moving us to humility, often it produces pride.

Religious pride.

Verse 7, Paul says, even though I've received such wonderful revelations from God, so to keep me from becoming proud, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger from Satan, to torment me and keep me from becoming proud.

Now, do you have a thorn in the flesh?

What is a thorn in the flesh?

What is it?

It's some ailment or unpleasant experience or situation, circumstances in Paul's life that keeps coming back and reminding him that he has to depend on something outside of himself for strength and comfort.

And ultimately it's God's grace that provides all that.

Paul believes that this thorn in the flesh, which is some type of ailment or some type of experience that that keeps him grounded in some difficult set of circumstances.

And he says that this thorn in the flesh is given to me by God's grace.

Which sounds like a conflict in understanding, but it's not.

Paul accepted that he was sent this heavenly affliction.

Heaven sent this affliction.

And he accepts it with a spirit of humility.

And it is a, he recognizes that it is a gift of God's grace.

And that this gift of God's grace is meant to keep him humble and dependent on God's leadership through the Holy Spirit.

That word thorn, it literally means sharply pointed stake.

It's a stake that is put in the ground, so to speak, to label, to mark someone.

Now, what was the thorn?

What was the specific thorn?

We don't know.

Paul speculated about what it could be.

Some theologians and scholars attempt to give it some, they attempt to flesh it out on what it is.

It could have been a spiritual temptation or a carnal temptation.

Others suggest that it was relentless opposition and persecution.

Now, do we experience relentless opposition and persecution?

We do, but maybe we don't to the degree I want to share something.

This is, you know, sometimes I give I give us a hard time.

Us Christians in the Western world and American culture.

We think we're being persecuted where sometimes it's just our creature comforts are being taken away.

Persecution is being in another country where you are under the threat of death or imprisonment.

That's probably the kind of persecution most of us think about.

Here's what John Piper says.

He said there is a great gulf between the Christianity that wrestles with whether to worship at the cost of imprisonment and death, and the Christianity that wrestles with whether the kids should play soccer on Sunday morning.

That's what we think persecution is having somebody in office that we don't like or having some of our creature comforts infringed upon, where true persecution is really under the threat of death or having our lives turned upside down.

And so what was it?

Paul talks about this thorn in the flesh.

Some believe that it's physical deformity.

Some believe it was epilepsy, some believe it was migraines, chronic eye trouble.

They believe Paul might have been hunched back, recurring bouts with malaria, and some of the lasting effects of a disease like that or a sickness.

The truth is we don't know what Paul's thorn in the flesh was.

But we might be able to identify what our thorn in the flesh is.

What is it in your life that you could step back and acknowledge that God might be allowing this in your life so it would push you closer and closer to Jesus, to depend on him for his grace to get you through.

You see it?

Paul believed the enemy had hoped to use the thorn to cause the apostle to defect or to retreat from his calling.

And God used it to keep the gifted servant on his knees.

On his knees.

Chuck Swindah says this.

He said, Pain plants the flag of reality in the fortress of a rebel heart.

The fortress of a rebel heart.

And so Paul has asked for this thorn to be removed, but God gives him an answer that most of us don't completely understand.

God's answer to Paul's request, no.

No.

It's not that I won't ever remove it, but for right now, for this season, for this time, no.

You have to endure the difficulties that come from this thorn in the flesh.

But it has purpose.

And the purpose is for you to experience the grace of God in the midst of that difficulty.

Verses 8, 9, and 10 in 2 Corinthians 12, he says, three different times I beg the Lord to take it away.

Each time he said, My grace is all you need.

My power works best in weakness.

So now I am glad to boast about my weakness so that the power of Christ can work through me.

That's why I take pleasure in my weaknesses and in the insults, hardships, persecutions, and troubles that I suffer for Christ.

For when I am weak, then I am strong.

So what is sufficient grace?

What is sufficient grace?

And before I answer that, let me give you some faulty thinking.

It's not, here's some faulty thinking that we have in American Christianity.

We often think that it's always God's will that we're healed from our thorn.

But the faulty thinking is that we always, it's not always God's will that you are to be healed.

Secondly, God's grace supplies more than we need to endure whatever it is that threatens to undo us.

And then finally, his grace is more sufficient than your own strength.

Now, some of this we can understand it in real tangible terms, but some of this is also understood when we think about our spiritual strength.

God's grace is more sufficient than our own strength, which is sometimes found in how well we we follow the rules, how well we we practice religion.

And here's the truth.

God, listen to me, listen very closely.

So when the preacher says listen, you kind of lean in, lean in, just physically.

Just God is with you in your difficult circumstances.

He's with you.

Nothing new about suffering and pain.

It's not going anywhere, it's not new.

It's not something we kind of get over.

It might be something and we we need to read about.

We might need to go back and look at Job.

Look at some of the characters that we see in Scripture.

Job, Joseph.

We could go down the list.

Job was told by his wife and his friends, curse God and die.

Just curse God and die.

Man, can you not tell that things are not going to go your way?

Difficulties and suffering have redemptive purposes.

2 Corinthians 12, 10, verse 10, last verse.

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.

Here's where I want us to go.

Here's where I hope we'll land.

And it's in this that we need to move beyond the idea that contentment requires comfort.

Contentment is when we are able to find God in the midst, and we are to rest in Him in the midst of our difficulty, not necessarily to get over or through the difficulty.

God is right there in the midst.

And we should seek contentment over comfort.

Contentment is this God-given state of peace and peace of mind, knowing you can trust in the goodness and the sovereignty of God without necessarily having the creature comforts that we all want.

Does that make sense?

So what do we do?

We pray.

We pray.

We pray.

Part of it's just leaning into prayer, leaning into prayer, trusting that God is with you.

It's depending on God.

So Thursday night, we get together as a church family in social circle and we have a night where we pray together.

We pray.

We pray for our country.

We pray for our community.

We pray for our church family.

We pray for us to have strength in our difficulties.

What's the second thing is ask for help.

Ask for help.

If you are in a situation, ask for help.

We have a prayer wall.

We've got these framed posters out here in the bathroom and in the lobby where you can go on to this prayer wall and list your prayer concerns and invite others to pray over your specific situation.

And then the rest of us, maybe, maybe we're in a great season.

Then God wants us to be involved to pray and to support and encourage our brothers and sisters in Christ that need it in a difficult season.

And then finally, what do you do?

You ask for help, but then you look to help others.

That's part of the purpose of pain and suffering.

And so we in turn can be comforted by God, not just for our own benefit, but for the benefit of helping others.

Say the word others.

Others.

You want to see the kingdom of God become real to the world around us?

You want to see the kingdom of God tangibly in an active way?

You want to see the kingdom of God in action?

And it's when the people of God engage with the world and those that God deeply cares about, and we become Jesus and we become the light of the world.

We become the city on a hill.

And through our compassion and our ministry, we are able to tangibly, tangibly display the grace of God that is available to everyone.

Do you see it?

So what are we going to do this morning?

This morning, I'm going to create just a moment for us to experience a little bit of ministry.

Now I didn't I didn't ask these gentlemen ahead of time, so, but I'm going to put a few guys on the spot.

Brandon, can I put you on the spot?

So you're comfortable pray with people.

I'm going to invite you to come.

Maybe you're going through a difficult season and you need to tap into the grace of God.

The grace of God is a reservoir of resources where God meets you in your difficulty and pain.

And his grace is measured out to you to give you comfort and strength and a measure of hope in that difficulty as you lean in and trust that God has redemptive purposes.

And so Brandon will be up here.

And if you you say, I just need somebody to pray over me, pray with me.

Jonah, are you comfortable?

Man, just making yourself available to pray with people.

Monty, would you be willing to be right up here?

And I'll be right over here.

And if you during this time, as our team leads us in this closing new song, where we talk and sing about the grace of God and how we access it and what it means to us and how it flows down, you come and you access God's grace through prayer.

Through prayer.

And sometimes it's us praying over one another.

And that means that you might, you may not want to come forward, but you might walk across the room and pray for somebody that you know is going through a difficult time.

And so this is not just for us to stand here, it's for us to possibly interact with one another and interact with the presence of God, interact with the grace of God.

So would you pray with me?

Let's pray together.

Father, we thank you for your goodness and grace, and we ask that in these closing moments that you would use this time of worship and singing to just pour out your grace upon us.

God, use this time of ministry, possibly to one another, for us to encourage one another, and God, to extend grace to one another.

God, use this time and may it be a time that we lean in and rest in your sovereign grace.

Rest in your goodness, rest in your plans and your purposes.

Father, we love.