Reading the Word of God from 2 Corinthians
chapter 12, verses 1 through 10.
Because of the accusations of his enemies, Paul
is forced to glory, give glory to God
in some of the experiences of his life.
It is not expedient for me, doubtless, to
glory.
I will come to visions and revelations of
the Lord.
I knew a man in Christ above fourteen
years ago, whether in the body I cannot
tell or whether out of the body I
cannot tell, God knoweth, such an 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 knoweth, how he was caught
up into paradise and heard unspeakable words which
it is not lawful for a man to
utter.
Of such an one will I 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 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 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 will I rather glory in
my infirmities, that the power of Christ may
rest upon me.
Therefore, I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches,
in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ's
sake.
For when I am weak, then am I
strong.
My grace is sufficient for thee.
The apostle Paul had a secret.
He had carried this secret in his heart
for fourteen years.
And he would never have revealed this secret
except his enemies forced him to, and he
did it only to the glory of God.
The secret was that Paul had gone to
heaven and come back again.
While he was in heaven, he had heard
words that no man had ever heard before.
Now the reason that Paul brings this up
is not to magnify his privileges, but rather
to magnify the grace of God.
Because of all of these revelations that Paul
had had, God had to balance his blessing
with burden.
And to keep Paul from getting proud and
arrogant, God permitted Satan to buffet Paul with
a thorn in the flesh.
The word thorn can also mean a stake,
the kind of a stake that enemies would
be impaled on by their conquerors.
And so Paul was suffering physically.
Not only was he suffering physically, verse 10
of 2 Corinthians 12 informs us he was
suffering also emotionally and spiritually with infirmities, reproaches,
necessities, persecutions, distresses.
And so Paul was a man who suffered.
We don't know what his thorn was, and
it's a good thing we don't, because no
matter what may be the cause of your
suffering, Paul's experience can speak to you.
I feel sometimes that emotional suffering is far
worse than physical suffering.
Sometimes one leads to the other.
And there are people listening to me just
now who are going through intense spiritual suffering.
Satan is just besieging the citadel of your
soul, perhaps with fears or doubts.
And therefore, Paul's experience in 2 Corinthians 12
can speak to us today and help to
answer the question, how shall we deal with
suffering?
How shall we deal with suffering?
You say, well, pastor, today I'm not suffering,
good.
But tomorrow you may be or you may
meet someone who is.
How shall we deal with suffering?
Now, Paul's experience teaches us that there are
three possible responses to suffering, whether it be
the suffering of the body or of the
mind or of the soul.
There are three possible responses.
We can seek to escape it, or we
can seek to endure it, or we can
seek to enlist it.
If we escape it, we look upon suffering
as an enemy.
If we endure it, we look upon suffering
as a master.
But if we learn to enlist it, we
look upon suffering as a servant.
And that, of course, is the highest response
of all.
Let's take this first response, and Paul responded
this way, we can seek to escape suffering.
For this thing, for this reason, I besought
the Lord three times that this thing might
depart from me.
Now, this is a normal response.
I've heard people criticize King Hezekiah because he
prayed when God said to him, you're not
going to live.
That's a normal response.
When a person is sick, his normal response
is, dear Lord, would you take this sickness
away?
When there's some kind of accident or affliction
or burden or crisis, your normal first response
is, as a natural human being, oh God,
remove this thing from me.
Paul prayed that way three times.
I wonder if he wasn't imitating our Lord
Jesus who prayed three times, if it be
possible, let this cup pass from me.
Some of these super spiritual people who say,
no, don't pray about that, had better remember
Jesus prayed about it.
If it be possible, let this cup pass
from me.
You see, when suffering comes, we should not
ignore the means that God provides to help
us.
If I were to fall down and break
my arm, I would pray about it, but
I would also find myself a doctor who
would set the arm, put a cast on
it, and give me some medicine.
Every good gift and every perfect gift is
from above.
All of the good things that we have
today to ease pain and to heal bodies
and to help the suffering are gifts of
God.
When I walk into the coronary care units
of the various hospitals in Chicago, I think
I'm in Star Trek or something.
All of this equipment, and here are these
trained people watching dials and gauges, computers are
working, and I say to myself, thank you,
Lord, that somebody devised all of this in
your wisdom to help your people.
The normal response is to seek to escape
suffering.
Now, this would be especially true of the
Apostle Paul because he was a Jew.
And you must remember that under the Old
Covenant, God promised the Jews, if you obey
me, you won't suffer.
If you disobey me, you will suffer.
If you obey my statutes, I will send
rain from heaven.
I'll bless your flocks and your herds and
your crops.
I'll defeat your enemies, and none of the
diseases that you saw in Egypt will come
upon you.
That was an Old Covenant promise to God's
Old Covenant people.
He promised to make them rich if he
would obey them.
He promised to keep them healthy if they
would obey him.
God never promised that under the New Covenant.
The first thing Jesus said in the Sermon
on the Mount was not, blessed are you
rich for being obedient.
He said, blessed are the poor.
Our Lord Jesus was the poorest of the
poor.
Paul tells us in previous chapters of 2
Corinthians, all the suffering he went through, and
Paul was obedient.
If anyone comes up to you and says,
oh, I know why you're going through what
you're going through, you've sinned against God.
Now, God has promised that if you obey
Him, none of these things will happen to
you.
To whom did He give that promise?
He never gave it to His disciples.
He said, I send you out like lambs
among wolves.
He never gave it to the Apostle Paul.
He said, I want you to know, Paul,
that stripes and afflictions abide you every place
you go.
You be very careful when you sing that
song.
Every promise in the book is mine.
Every promise in the book is not yours.
Now, God can take any promise and apply
it to your life.
God has taken Old Testament promises and applied
them to my life, and I've believed them
and He's worked.
But God is under no obligation to remove
my suffering simply because I'm an obedient Christian
or you're an obedient Christian.
But this would be the attitude that a
Jew would have.
You see, the reason God pampered Israel was
because they were in the childhood of their
development.
Paul tells us in the book of Galatians
chapter 4 that the law was a schoolmaster
to prepare the Jews for maturity.
Now, children understand only two things, pain and
pleasure.
They don't understand philosophy.
They don't understand theology.
They do not understand anatomy.
All they understand is pain and pleasure.
So how do you raise children?
If you obey, I'll reward you.
If you disobey, I'll spank you.
And so the child gets to a point
in life where he thinks that all of
life is this way.
If you're always obedient, you're always having pleasure.
If you're disobedient, you'll always have sorrow.
And yet, you and I know people in
this world who disobey God, who don't even
believe in God.
They're not going through any pain.
And yet, we know saints of God who
serve God, who pray, who love the Lord,
and they're going through intense suffering.
Why?
Because when God finished that revelation to the
children and brought in the maturity of the
new covenant, He said, now things have changed,
folks.
Sometimes I'm going to bless you more by
your suffering than by your reward.
So the first response is to seek to
escape suffering.
Let's suppose you can't escape.
Let's suppose the doctor says there is no
way to cure this.
You have to live with it.
Let's suppose the lawyer says there is no
way to untangle this knot.
You just have to live with it.
Let's suppose your wife or your husband, your
son or your daughter says, look, this is
the way it's going to be.
Then what do you do?
I know what some people do.
They get bitter against God.
They say, oh God, I prayed and I
sacrificed and I fasted.
Oh God, I wore sackcloth.
I sat in the ashes and this is
what You do to me.
It's sort of a childish response, I suppose,
that if we can't escape suffering, we have
to get mad at somebody.
And a lot of folks get angry at
God.
They get bitter against God.
Some people get bitter against other people.
They get envious of those who aren't going
through what they're going through.
And they lash out against those who may
love them the most.
Sometimes people give up on life.
Suffering comes, difficulty comes, they can't escape it,
so they say, I'm going to give up.
Let somebody else take care of me.
If I'm not really sick, I'll pretend like
I'm sick.
But somebody else is going to have to
fight these battles for me.
I give up.
As a consequence, if you get bitter or
hostile or you give up, you never grow.
You exchange the battleground for a playground.
You become a child and somebody has to
watch over you.
That's no way to live.
Paul said, here's response number one, you can
seek to escape it.
I tried that, didn't work.
Wasn't God's will.
Sometimes it is God's will.
Sometimes it is the will of God to
heal.
Sometimes it is the will of God to
untangle knots that are so tangled.
Sometimes it is the will of God to
change people.
But sometimes it isn't.
So what is your next response?
Well, the second response a person can have,
if you can't escape suffering, is to endure
suffering.
And that's what Paul did.
Paul did what you and I would have
done.
He clenched his fist and he gritted his
teeth and said, well, I'll put up with
it.
Now, this too is a normal response.
It's a very noble response.
This is not the Jew in Paul, this
is the Roman in Paul.
Because the Roman people lived on discipline, endurance.
The great Stoic philosophers who said, learn to
cooperate with the inevitable.
If you cannot change it, endure it.
Prove the nobility of your character by just
enduring it.
Now, that is a good philosophy to a
point.
I've seen this even in unsaved people.
I have seen some unsaved people show more
strength, and more courage, and more discipline than
some Christians.
There are those people who by strength of
character, by some discipline of character, are able
to say, I am the master of my
faith.
I am the captain of my soul.
But what if you can't?
Let's suppose someone today says, well, pastor, I'm
facing a situation that's driving me up the
wall.
It's not necessarily physical suffering, but there is
mental pain, there is emotional anguish, there's loneliness,
there's heartbreak, there's ingratitude, there's treachery.
Oh, what am I going to do?
I'll just endure it.
But what if you can't?
And some people just aren't made that way.
I heard about a young preacher who went
to preach on a rescue mission.
Now, when you go to preach on a
rescue mission, there's only one thing you preach.
Christ died for our sins, according to the
Scriptures.
He was buried and he rose again the
third day, according to the Scriptures.
Don't get into anything else.
But he decided to challenge these men to
a better way of life, and he used
Kipling's marvelous poem, If.
You've read that poem.
We had to read this in high school.
If you can keep your head when those
about you are losing theirs, etc., etc.
And, of course, it ends up by saying,
If you can this, if you do this,
then you're a man, my son.
And the preacher got to that dramatic place
in his sermon.
And if you do, you are a man,
my son.
And some half-drunk fellow in the back
of the mission hollered out, Yeah, but what
if you can't?
Now, he had more sense than the preacher.
What if you can't?
Each one of us is different.
There are people listening to me right now
who can stand pain.
I mean, God has given to you, either
through your inheritance or your training, a discipline
to stand pain.
And if someone says to you, How are
you?
You say, Fine.
There are others of you who can't stand
to have the dandruff fall on your shoulders.
It unnerves you.
You're different.
So suppose you can't endure.
Suppose you can't clench your fists tightly enough
and grit your teeth hard enough.
Suppose you can't.
Then what?
How do you endure?
But even if you do endure, you're spending
all of your time and all of your
energy and all of your mental power focused
on yourself, just keeping yourself going, and you
have nothing left to live with.
That's one of the sad things about the
wrong use of suffering.
Suffering can make a person very, very self
-centered if we aren't careful.
And let's suppose I'm able somehow to muster
together enough courage and discipline and strength not
to complain, but to endure.
I discover something.
I discover that I'm using all of my
energy on the inside, on myself, and I
have no energy left on the outside for
anybody else.
So I can't be the right kind of
a husband to my wife, and the right
kind of a father to my children, the
right kind of a friend to my friends,
and the right kind of a worker to
my employer.
And so I would say that even though
enduring suffering is a higher level than escaping
suffering, if God so wills, there must be
something higher.
And there is.
That's what Paul discovered.
Paul discovered that suffering doesn't have to be
an enemy.
That suffering doesn't even have to be a
master.
That suffering can be a servant.
He did not escape.
He did not endure.
He enlisted.
He said, alright, if I have to live
with this thing, it's going to work for
me.
I'm not going to work for it.
And it's going to work for me and
not against me.
Paul was praying one day, and he said,
Lord, I'm having a hard time enduring.
I've got letters to write.
I've got churches to preach in.
I've got people to help.
And God said, Paul, there's a higher way
to deal with this thing.
Why don't you do it my way?
What is your way, Lord?
Let's put suffering to work in your life.
Alright, you have a circumstance you can't change.
You fight against it, it breaks you.
Let's not take that approach.
You've got a person you have to live
with, and that person is slowly driving you
out of your mind.
What are you going to do?
There's something we can do, says God.
Let's enlist suffering and make it work for
us and not against us.
Now, how do we do this?
I want to suggest to you five simple
steps.
Now, five seems like a large number.
There's no special merit in the number five,
but it just happens to work out this
way.
Paul took five simple steps to turn suffering
into a servant and to enlist it to
build him.
Friends, do you know why Paul was what
he was?
Not because he went to heaven.
Paul was what he was because he knew
how to take heaven down to earth.
You say, oh, I could do what Paul
did if I'd gone to heaven.
Don't kid yourself.
If you and I had gone to heaven,
we couldn't have kept it quiet 14 seconds,
let alone 14 years.
We would have written a novel or a
book about it and sold it to Reader's
Digest.
Paul was what he was not because he
went to heaven, but because when he faced
hell on earth, he knew how to take
heaven with him.
That's what we're talking about.
Step one, accept suffering from the hand of
God.
You say, wait a minute, Satan was doing
it, but God was permitting it.
Go over Satan's head and accept suffering from
the hand of God.
Paul finally came to the place where he
said, all right, Lord, I'm not going to
quit.
I'm not going to give up.
I'm not going to argue.
I'm not going to fight.
Here is this thorn in the flesh.
I'm going to accept it as a gift.
You gave it to me.
There was given unto me.
Now, when God gives you a gift, you
better take it.
We have no problem accepting the gift of
salvation, the gift of His Word, the gift
of His Spirit.
Oh, but when it comes to the gift
of character, God wants to build character, so
He gives us suffering.
We can't accept that gift.
A chaplain was going through a field hospital
after a battle.
He saw a young lad there who had
lost a leg, and he knelt down and
said, son, I'm sorry that you lost your
leg.
And the boy said, chaplain, I didn't lose
my leg.
I gave it.
That's the philosophy.
And so Paul came to the place where
he accepted this from God's hand.
He wasn't even praying about it anymore.
He wasn't even praying about it.
He just accepted it.
He said, all right, Lord, this is your
gift.
You have a purpose to fulfill.
I will accept it.
That's step one.
Step two, he gave it back to God.
He gave it back to God.
He said, all right, now, Lord, you gave
it to me.
Now, I'm going to give it to you,
and together we're going to work this thing
out.
There are those who want God to do
everything.
There are times when I read certain books
about victorious Christian living that make me very
unvictorious because they give the impression that all
you do is become a puppet.
All you do is become a muppet.
You just yield yourself in some bland way
to God, and he does everything.
Don't you kid yourself.
Paul didn't say, Christ does everything instead of
me.
He said, I do all things through Christ.
So Paul accepted it, step one.
Paul gave it back to God, step two,
and said, Lord, let's work together on this
thing.
That's what the psalmist meant when he said,
roll thy burden on the Lord, and he
shall sustain thee.
The word burden means what he's given you.
Roll what he's given you back on him.
Not to get rid of it, but to
be able to use it.
You see, Satan wanted to use this thing
as a weapon to destroy Paul, but God
wanted to use it as a tool to
build Paul.
But the only way God could use it
was if Paul would accept it and then
give it back to him.
Step three, rest on God's word.
He has said unto me, my grace is
sufficient for thee.
Where did Paul get what he needed from
the word of God?
Now, he said it once.
He didn't say it to him 50 times.
How many times must God speak to us
before we'll listen to him and believe it?
The child psychologists tell us that we should
tell a child something only twice.
If you say, now, don't do that, and
he keeps on, you assume he didn't hear
you.
You say, now, don't do that, if he
keeps on, you assume he heard you, and
you take action.
I've had people say, oh, preacher, I've been
looking for promises.
The whole book is full of promises.
How far do you have to look?
How many promises does God have to give
you?
God said to Paul one statement, my grace
is sufficient for thee, for my strength is
made perfect in weakness, period.
He didn't hand him an encyclopedia.
He didn't give him a correspondence course.
He gave him one simple statement, and Paul
said, I've got it.
You rest on the word of God.
That's step three.
Now, Paul didn't rest on his feelings.
Feelings change.
Paul didn't rest on his circumstances.
Circumstances change.
Paul didn't run around talking to the saints.
The saints can lead you astray.
Paul just went right to the word, and
God spoke to him from the word, and
he said, thank you, Lord.
You've given me a promise.
Accept it from God's hand.
Give it back to God and work with
him.
Rest on his word for it.
Draw upon his grace.
My grace is sufficient.
Annie Johnson Flint wrote that marvelous text, which
our choir sang today.
He giveth more grace.
That beautiful quotation from James chapter 4.
Now, grace means you don't deserve it.
Don't bargain with God.
Now, Lord, if I do this and this
and this, then will you do something?
That's not grace.
Grace is a child bankrupt coming to a
rich father saying, I'm going to depend upon
your grace.
Now, there are many kinds of grace in
the Bible.
What Paul needed was strengthening grace.
Thou therefore, my son, be strong in the
grace that is in Christ Jesus.
They go from grace to grace.
And of His fullness have all we received
and grace upon grace.
My God shall supply all your need according
to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus.
And those needs not only include material needs
but physical needs.
Depend on the grace of God.
Now, here's a little secret that Paul learned
that some of us have never learned.
Strength that considers itself strength is weakness.
But weakness that knows itself to be weakness
is strength.
Now, I'm going to repeat that because it
went right by some of you.
Strength that considers itself strength is weakness.
Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed
lest he fall.
But weakness that knows itself to be weakness
is strength.
A child knows itself to be weak and
the whole city turns out to help that
child.
Paul depended upon the grace of God.
My grace is sufficient.
My grace is efficient.
There's plenty of it, Paul.
I don't have anything, Lord.
Fine, I do.
There's plenty of it.
My strength is made perfect in weakness.
Most gladly, therefore, will I rather glory in
my infirmities, my weaknesses.
You see, his enemies were boasting about their
strengths.
Paul said, fine, I'm going to boast about
my weaknesses.
I am so weak that I can't do
a thing apart from God's grace.
Accept it from God.
Give it back to God.
Rest on His word.
Draw upon His grace.
But there's a fifth step now and it's
very important.
Right at the end of verse 10, he
says, for Christ's sake, here's step five, use
it for God's glory.
Now, you can use suffering to pamper yourself.
We can use suffering to get attention.
We can use suffering to be important.
My mother used to talk about a relative
of ours who enjoyed poor health and she
took advantage of it and outlived all of
her relatives.
Paul said, here's step five, use it for
God's glory.
Therefore, I take pleasure in infirmities.
Now, nobody in his right mind takes pleasure
in infirmities.
But for Christ's sake, you do.
In reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses.
Of themselves, these things are not good.
But for Jesus' sake, they become gold refined
in the fire.
The rumor is going around that I am
in very poor health and living on medication.
This is why I have resigned.
The strongest medication I take is an Alka
-Seltzer.
Plop, plop, fizz, fizz.
But in my day, I have had to
take medicine prepared by a pharmacist.
You know, you go into the pharmacy and
here is the well-trained man in his
white coat.
And you hand him the prescription written by
a well-trained doctor.
And he looks at the prescription and he
says, oh yeah, I understand this.
You didn't, but he can.
You know, my friend, the individual ingredients in
that prescription, if you took them individually, could
kill you.
But when they're mixed together in their proper
proportions, they heal you.
Now, our Lord is the pharmacist.
He said, I know what you're going through.
That thing by itself would break you.
But let me get in there and mix
things the way they ought to be.
And it won't break you, it will make
you.
That's the meaning of Romans 8, 28.
And we know that all things are working
together for good.
Our heavenly pharmacist, our great physician, knows that
individually these things would kill us.
But he's able to blend them together and
then add to it his own ingredient of
grace.
And instead of breaking us, it makes us.
Instead of making us bitter, we have love.
Instead of getting selfish, we seek to glorify
His name.
Instead of magnifying our infirmities for our pampering,
we magnify our infirmities for His power.
That's what happens when you enlist suffering.
Accept it.
It's God's gift.
Give it back to Him.
And say, Lord, let's work this out together.
Rest upon His word, not your feelings.
Draw upon His grace, which is sufficient.
And then live for His glory.
You say, well, all that sounds rather magical
and mystical.
Does it work?
Yes, it works.
It worked for Paul.
And you and I would not be reading
2 Corinthians chapter 12 if Paul had not
known that it worked.
But you know what makes it work?
This is the best part of the message.
Satan said, God, I want to get Paul.
He's been to heaven.
I want to get him.
See, Satan has access to heaven.
God says, all right, Satan, you can give
him a thorn in the flesh, but you
can't take his life.
Satan gets his best thorn.
I don't know what it was.
He goes after Paul, buffeting him.
Black and blue, buffeting Paul.
Not just one hour a week.
Day after day and week after week, Paul
is going through buffeting.
A thorn, a thorn.
God had a roll call one day and
Satan showed up and God said, have you
considered my servant, Paul?
You've been beating on him now for quite
some time.
How's it going, Satan?
Can I take the thorn away?
Why do you want to do that?
I didn't think it would end up like
this.
He's a better Christian today than he was
when I started.
Let me take the thorn away.
No, keep the thorn.
Keep the thorn.
Now what made it that way?
I'll tell you what made it that way.
How is it that God is able to
take thorns?
Thorns on which we are impaled.
Thorns that the messenger of Satan takes like
some hellish brass knuckles and beats upon us.
How can God do that?
Ah, because one day his son took some
thorns and he made a crown out of
them.
He made a crown out of them.
And he accepted that crown on his brow.
And he took that crown to a cross.
And on that cross, he died for Paul,
and he died for you, and he died
for me.
And from that day on, God has said,
don't ever be afraid of thorns.
My son takes thorns and builds crowns out
of them.
And he takes crosses and turns them into
glory.
That's why it's great to be a Christian.
Even if there is nothing on the other
side, and there is, but even if there
is not, I would rather be a Christian
and be able to walk with the Lord
and go through the trials and difficulties of
life and make crowns out of them than
to be a victim.
What shall we do with our suffering?
Escape it?
If it's God's will, give Him thanks.
But it may not be.
Endure it?
It may wear you out.
Enlist it.
Don't let suffering be an enemy or a
master.
Let suffering be a servant.
And listen to God as He says to
you from Calvary, My grace, My grace, not
your grit, My grace, is sufficient for you.
A moment at a time, an hour at
a time, a day at a time, My
grace is sufficient for you.
If you've experienced His saving grace, then you
can draw upon His suffering grace, His sustaining
grace, His sanctifying grace for His glory.
Thank you, Father.
Thank you so very much that your grace
is available to us from Calvary.
Thank you that thorns can be made into
crowns, that we can conquer.
Yea, we can be more than conquerors through
Him that loved us.
Now, we have our sufferings, Lord.
Some of them are minor.
Some of them are very, very difficult.
We're going to come to you, Father.
And we're going to ask you to help
us to enlist our suffering to work for
us and not against us.
I pray for the one here today who
just needs this word of encouragement.
Speak to that heart.
Bring to bear upon that heart your words
to Paul, My grace is sufficient.
Help that lost sinner to come and find
saving grace.
And grant, oh God, that we shall not
be whimpering victims, but rather we shall be
victories bringing glory to your name even by
the way we suffer.
For I pray in Jesus' name, Amen.