|
|
|
WHERE IS GOD WHEN IT HURTS? GOD MAKES US WEAK TO MAKE US STRONG 2 Corinthians 12: 1-10 INTRODUCTION I want to begin this morning by defining or describing faith. I presume
one of the reasons you are here this morning is because you have some
sort of faith in God. I am also presuming that you want to have a stronger
faith. That is the point of this morning’s text. Paul says in v. 10,
“This is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults,
in hardships, in persecutions. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”
Either this guy is crazy or he has great faith. What possible reason
could motivate a person to delight in being insulted and having difficulty?
Faith is what enables Paul to say such a thing. Most people would describe
faith as simply believing that something is true that you cannot necessarily
see or experience with your senses. Like believing George Washington
was the first president of the This is how Jesus describes faith over and over in the gospels. In John 4:14 he says to a Samaritan woman, “…whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst.” In John 6: 35 he says, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty.” Faith does not merely believe that Jesus is living water or that he is the bread of life. Faith is coming to him and drinking and eating and being satisfied with him and all that he gives. As I have said on many occasions, quoting John Piper, “Faith is not simply believing that Jesus will do what he says. But it is believing that what Jesus promises is better than possessing the whole world. Faith is not merely an agreement with facts in the head; it is also an appetite for God in the heart.” What is the greatest obstacle to faith? What keeps you and I from having a stronger faith? The Bible from beginning to end says that pride is one of, if not the chief, human vice that keeps us from having true faith. Jesus says to the religious leaders, “How can you believe if you accept praise from one another, yet make no effort to obtain the praise that comes from God?” The human desire to be noticed and applauded by other humans prevents faith. In Hosea 13:6 God says about his people, “When I fed them, they were satisfied; when they were satisfied, they became proud; then they forgot me.” Notice that first God provides people with food and shelter and security and then we become satisfied with these things. In other words, we live as though the comforts of earth are all that we need to be happy. We trust in and hope in what we have here. We believe it is our right to have these things. This is pride. We become self-sufficient people. We do not need God for our happiness because we have all we need without him or so we think. This is why, in Jeremiah God commands us, “This is what the Lord says, ‘Let not the rich man boast of his riches, let not the strong man boast of his strength, let not the wise man boast of his wisdom. But let him who boasts, boast about this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on the earth, for in these I delight,’ declares the Lord.” Humans cannot take delight in, depend upon their own wealth, strength and wisdom and at the same time delight in, and depend upon God’s kindness, justice and righteousness. This is why the Bible says everywhere that “God is opposed to the proud but he gives grace to the humble.” God hates proud people because by delighting in and trusting in themselves and what they can give to themselves they are despising God and his sufficiency. To be proud is to depend upon your judgments, your abilities, your resources to provide for yourself what you determine is in your own best interest. To be proud is to demand that you be treated, as you deserve. To be proud is to be depressed when you are not treated, as you deserve and to be fearful when confronted with the possibility of having what you deserve taken from you. All of us, by nature, are proud people. So God, in order to give us infinite happiness has to make us humble. We are going to see today, in 2 Corinthians 12: 1-10 one of the ways that God makes us humble so that we will be strong in faith. MAIN POINT God aims to humble us so that we can be strong in faith by…I. Revealing the greatness of Christ to us (vv. 1-6) If we are going to get the force of what Paul is saying in vv. 1-6 we will need to understand something of the situation that he found himself in. Look with me at 11: 1-6, 10-15. Paul is the one who planted the church in Corinth. He spent a year and a half preaching the gospel in Corinth and established this church. Men have come in behind him and are preaching a different Jesus than the one that Paul preached. Paul is convinced that if these dear friends stop trusting in the Jesus he presented, they will end up in hell. He loves them and doesn’t want that to happen and so in this letter he is seeking to “cut the ground from under” these false teachers. These men have attempted to get the people to listen to them by comparing themselves to Paul. They are gifted preachers and have drawn attention to Paul’s poor speaking style. They are healthy and good-looking and are paid well for their preaching. They have drawn attention to Paul’s battered appearance, poor clothing and his preaching without demanding payment. There line of argument is very familiar to us, “If it’s free, it must not be very good or important. Quality always costs.” They have talked much of the supernatural ways that God has revealed himself to them and questioned Paul’s sources of knowledge about Christ. They have talked about their friendships with Peter and the other apostles and have drawn attention to how relatively unknown Paul is in the powerful circle of apostles in Jerusalem. So Paul is in the position of trying to keep these people from abandoning Christ by proving that he is a true apostle and these men are false apostles. If you look with me at 11: 16-33 you can see that Paul reluctantly seeks to show that he is superior to these false, “super-apostles” that are preaching a false gospel. Paul is very uncomfortable in talking like this because this is how fools talk. If you’ll remember from 2 Cor. 4:3, Paul believes the best way to “prove” that he is representing God is by setting forth the truth, the gospel plainly to men. Yet, he feels that he must engage in this foolish talk of comparing his credentials with the credentials of these false teachers for the sake of the Corinthians. But notice that whereas these men talk about their strengths as chief reasons for why they should be listened to, Paul talks about the things that reveal his weaknesses. Look at 11:30. “If I must boast, I will boast of the things that show my weakness.” Paul talks about his sufferings for the sake of the gospel in order to show that his authority does not come from any human abilities or connections. The Corinthians shouldn’t listen to him because he is applauded everywhere he goes. Paul does not have the connections, the money, or the professional training in oration that these men have. All he has are the scars of suffering on his body, the clothing of poverty, the weariness of hard work and the anxiety of love. He has no friends in high places, in fact, from the very beginning of his life as a Christian, those in authority have been opposed to him. However, Paul does have something else to commend him to the Corinthians, but he is not quite sure how to tell the Corinthians about it without appearing to be arguing like a fool, as he says these false teachers are doing. Fourteen years ago, God revealed himself to Paul in a remarkable way. Paul was transported into heaven (Explain “third heaven” is synonymous with paradise which is simply the place where God lives and where he will bring all the redeemed at the end of the ages.) by God and received knowledge that he was not even permitted to explain to other humans, it was so sacred. He had a vision of God and of Christ that confirmed to him, as an apostle, the certainty of the things for which he was suffering. Paul knows that he needs to tell the Corinthians about this experience in order to counteract the claims of “special revelation” that the false apostles are making. But notice how reticent he is to even talk about it. He speaks of his experience as if it happened to another person. He doesn’t know if he actually was transported to heaven or if he went there only “in spirit”. He simply wants them to know, so that they can have an answer when the false apostles claim supernatural revelation, that God has revealed himself to Paul in very clear ways. However, as v. 6 makes so plain, he wants them to listen to him, not because of some spectacular revelation he had but because they see the suffering love of Jesus in his suffering love for them. He wants them to embrace Christ, not because his visions are greater than someone else’s vision but because the sovereign, suffering Savior he preaches and he represents is attractive to them. The thing that is so striking to me in Paul’s whole argument to persuade these people that they should listen to him and not these “super-apostles” is that he continually puts Christ forward and himself in the background. He wants people to be impressed with Jesus, not with him. The reason is because he is impressed with Jesus, not with himself. Paul wants people to trust in Christ because Christ is appealing to them, not because he, Paul, is so fascinating. Paul rejects appealing to people to embrace Christ because they are impressed with those who are spokespeople for Christ. He wants people to be attracted to Christ because they find Christ attractive. The kind of people who are best suited for pointing to the attractiveness of Christ are those who are weak, not the strong. The metaphor that he uses at the beginning of chapter 11 makes this so plain. He wants us to be drawn to Christ the same way that newlyweds are attracted to each other. Brides and grooms are consumed with each other on their wedding day. They aren’t thinking about past loves. They aren’t thinking about how their investments are doing. They aren’t concerned with anything except being with the one they love for the sheer delight of being with the one they love. Paul wants us to see the gospel of Christ as good news, not because through it we escape hell and gain heaven but because we can’t imagine being married to anyone other Christ. He is the center of our attention and affection because there is no one in the whole universe as delightful as him to us. We don’t embrace Jesus because we like the marriages we see Christians having. We don’t embrace Jesus because we like how friendly Jesus’ followers are. We don’t embrace Jesus because the best athletes are Christians or our favorite politicians talk about being his followers. God humbles us first by showing us Christ as sufficient for our happiness. The only people who are humble are those whom God has awakened and given a new heart that simply says, “I need Jesus and that’s all, to be happy.” Paul is so careful to not get people to like him so that they will like Jesus because they like him. He is seeking to show by his life and his words that Jesus is more pleasing than a whole life of pleasure on planet earth. This is humility, to acknowledge that I am not able to obtain happiness but I am completely dependent upon Jesus himself to satisfy me. This is the first work of God in the heart of proud sinners like us, to convince us that only in the presence of Jesus is their eternal pleasures forevermore. God aims to humble us so that we can be strong in faith by…· Revealing the greatness of Christ to us · And by… II. Revealing our weakness (vv. 7-9) Verses 7-9 are three of the most puzzling (shocking?) verses in the Bible. What these verses say is so contrary to how most of us think about ourselves, about God, about prayer and about pain. First, notice how Paul views himself. He received these amazing revelations from God for the purpose of helping him to love God and people. Yet he knew that rather than helping him love God these visions had just as much potential to make him an enemy of God. The revelations could cause him to become conceited, rather than motivate him to love Christ and people. Paul understands his own depravity quite well. Let’s just think about how these visions could become occasions for pride in Paul’s life. It would be easy for Paul to “pull rank” when someone began to dispute with him or question him. It would be very easy for him to look at others with disdain, especially when someone was trying to disagree with him about theological issues. “Don’t you know who you’re talking to? I’ve actually been to heaven and back again. How dare you question my authority, my interpretation.” Paul could become very unteachable, even towards God. “I’ve been to heaven, what more is there to learn?” He could become very impatient with the spiritual immaturity of others. “Why can’t you be like me, perfect in every way.” It would not be hard to imagine Paul viewing himself as among the spiritually elite, not made of quite the same stuff as ordinary humans and therefore deserving of extraordinary respect and admiration from others. Our capacity as humans to turn the gifts of God into occasions for sin is almost without limit. It is simply an amazing thing that when God is gracious to us and enables us to live a comfortable life or when he enables us to understand and love him we quickly turn it into an opportunity to flaunt our superiority over others. I often hear the kind of pride Paul is talking about here expressed by us when we talk about people who have not yet trusted Christ. We regularly are amazed at how sinful people are and act as though we are so superior because we don’t do those things anymore. It is easy for those of us who have come to know Christ to act towards those who do not yet know him as if the reason we don’t live that way anymore is because we’re somehow better or more spiritual. When the simple fact is that if there is any goodness in me, any love for God, it is there not because of me, but because of God’s gracious work in me. God, because he loved Paul and wanted to keep him from becoming a proud person whom he would then have to oppose, sent to Paul a thorn in the flesh. I hope my saying that God gave him the thorn in the flesh does not surprise you. It is the clear teaching of this text. The text also says that Satan sent the thorn in the flesh. It is called a messenger that comes from Satan. Satan sent the thorn to torment Paul. He sent it to get Paul to renounce Christ and to abandon a life of loving God and people for the sake of Christ. But over Satan’s purpose stands God’s purpose in sending the thorn. In the original Paul makes this quite clear. He states the purpose of the suffering at both the beginning and the end of v. 7. Literally he says, “To keep me from becoming conceited… there was given to me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger from Satan to torment me so that I would not become conceited.” Satan would not have the goal of keeping Paul humble and yet that is the express, overarching purpose for which the thorn was given. So who gave the thorn to Paul to torment him to keep him humble? God did. So we see here as we see all over the Bible, in the same action Satan has an evil will and God has a good will. Satan designs the thorn to torment Paul into renouncing Christ. God ordains the thorn to keep Paul from being proud and so becoming his enemy. It isn’t that Satan acted first and then God made the best of a bad situation. This is God’s will for Paul for his good and for God’s glory. Satan becomes God’s messenger boy. Nobody knows what this “thorn in the flesh” actually was. We do know that it was not temptation or a sin with which Paul was struggling because of v. 10. We do know that it is something very painful to Paul. Aside from the metaphor of a thorn stuck in flesh Paul says it torments him. This is the word used to describe the torture that was done to Jesus by the Roman soldiers. Whatever it was, it was very painful. In addition, this is a chronic condition. He has been living with this thorn in the flesh for the past 14 years and God has told him that it is not ever going to be removed. Paul knows that it will be with him until the day he dies. It is very important for us to see that Paul responded to this pain by asking God to take it away. He was not wrong to ask for this. However, he was told, after the third request that it was God’s will that the thorn not be taken away but rather that Paul live with it for the rest of his life. Did God not remove this chronic pain because Paul did not have enough faith? No. This tells us that faith is not simply believing that God is going to do whatever you ask him to do. This last week I heard Joyce Meyers, a religious teacher who has a regular TV show say, “God has a will for your life and Satan has a will for your life and whichever will you believe is the one that will come to pass in your life.” Do you see how this text shatters that simplistic and man-centered view of faith? Paul can’t change his situation simply by not allowing any negative thoughts to come into his head. The pain he is living with is not going away just because he keeps repeating, like some mantra, “I believe it is God’s will for me to be healthy and prosperous.” Faith is not believing that whatever I want God to do, he will do. It is believing that whatever God does is what is best for me. It is doing what Paul does here, rejoicing in his suffering because it shows his weakness and so enables the power of Christ to rest on him in greater ways. There is a huge question that God’s refusal to remove the thorn from Paul’s flesh forces upon us. It is this, “Is God a sadist?” God wants Paul to be tormented by this messenger from Satan. How could a loving, heavenly Father tell his faithful child that he was not going to remove chronic, intense pain? Which of you fathers, if your child came to you with a massive thorn stuck in her leg and she was crying from the pain and she asked you to take it out, would say no? Does God love Paul? Look at v. 9. Here God tells Paul why he is not going to remove the pain. Remember, what he says in v. 9 is the opposite of pride. In v. 7 Paul tells us the purpose of the thorn was to keep him from being proud. Here in verse 9 he is telling us the positive purpose or the thorn. What God says is this; “I’m not going to take away this pain because I want to give you something better than a pain free life. I want to give you my grace. I want you to experience my power perfectly and that cannot happen to you unless you are weak and dependent. You cannot possess or experience the best thing I can give to you without this pain.” What could be better than a pain free life on planet earth? What is this grace and this power in our weakness that makes chronic suffering worth it? What is it that Paul and we cannot experience unless we suffer? That’s the next point. God aims to humble us so that we can be strong in faith by…· Revealing the greatness of Christ to us · Revealing our weakness · And by… III. Revealing his sufficiency in our weakness (vv. 9-10) First of all we need to be clear about what Paul means by weaknesses in this text. The suffering itself, the pain from the thorn stuck in his flesh, isn’t the weakness. Rather the suffering, whether of being insulted by other people or persecuted or being sick or whatever difficulties God may send into my life, puts me in a position where there is no earthly benefit to going on. When loving God makes no sense because all I’m getting is suffering and when loving people is only bringing me more pain, then I am weak. When every earthly benefit from loving God and people is removed, then I am weak. Also, the suffering emphasizes our powerlessness to give ourselves a happy life on planet earth. Chronic pain shatters any illusions I may have of being in control of my life. It shatters all my hopes of finding joy in this life and so makes me dependent upon God for my joy. When I am weak, Paul says, that is when I am strong in the Lord. I keep loving him and loving people because he is what I am after, not a happy life on planet earth. I discover, through the loss of earthly security and comfort that being loved by God really is a sufficient source of joy in my life. That’s what God means when he tells Paul, “My grace is sufficient for you.” When God talks of his grace he is talking about 2 Cor. 8:9, “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor so that you, through his poverty might become rich.” Paul is talking about this grace in 9:15, “Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift.” What is the wealth that Christ has given us through his poverty? What is God’s indescribable gift? It is the personal knowledge of him in the face of Christ, as we saw in 2 Cor 4:6. This grace that is sufficient for us is the knowledge of God in Christ given to us as a gift by the work of the Spirit, through faith. We are so delighted with being loved by God and knowing God that anything that helps us discover more of his sufficiency, the happier we are. God’s power that is made perfect in our weakness is his ability to be our happiness when there is nothing else to be happy about. He shows his power by enabling us to be satisfied with him even when all earthly support, comfort and security is taken away. I love how John Piper defines God’s love for us from this passage, “God's love is his doing whatever needs to be done, at whatever cost, so that we will see and be satisfied with the glory of God in Jesus Christ. Let me say it again. The love of God is his doing whatever needs to be done, at whatever cost to himself or to us, so that we will see and be satisfied by the love of God in Christ forever and ever.” Paul wants, above all else, the power of Christ to rest upon him so anything that causes him to stop trusting in his own power, that strips away his confidence in this world and forces him to depend upon Christ more is good. So he gladly boasts in poverty and persecution and insults and hardships because all these things strip away all hopes that are not centered in Christ. Notice that in verse 9 the power of Christ rests upon him in proportion to his glad boasting in the things that reveal his weakness. If you fight against and complain about the suffering that has come upon you rather than boast in your weakness that the suffering exposes, then the power of Christ will not rest upon you. The simple reason for this is that you don’t want it to rest upon you. When we complain about our suffering rather than rejoice in God’s good purposes in it we are acting as proud people. We are declaring that we do not deserve to be treated this way. We are insisting that happiness on planet earth is what we must have and that knowing God and being loved by Christ is not what we must have. Let me try to make this practical for you. One morning you read Psalm 63:5, “Because your love is better than life, my lips will praise you.” So you determine that today you want to rest in and be glad in the love of God for you in Jesus. You ask God to help you to be delighted with his love for you above all other things. Later that day, in the midst of a marital adjustment discussion, your wife insults you. What she says to you hurts, a lot. You feel rejected, alone, and unloved. She is really angry and you feel afraid that she might leave you and so bring shame to you and harm to your children and leave you really alone. However, you remember that in the morning you had seen the amazing love of God in Christ for you. In the midst of the pain, sorrow and rejection you turn your heart to God’s love for you in Christ and find there joy and hope and security. You ask God to restore your relationship with your wife but you also tell him that you will be glad in him, regardless of whether or not your wife ever apologizes to you. So you rejoice in your wife’s insult because the pain has caused you to discover in greater ways the sufficiency of God’s love for you. God has answered your prayer to rejoice in his love. Then you apologize to her for fighting with her and tell her you will watch the kids so she can go shopping. And you do it with a smile and with a desire for her happiness. Can you see the freedom that Paul has in his life? If the thing that makes you most happy is discovering in greater ways the joy of being loved by God, and if when bad things happen to you, you get to discover more of the sufficiency of God’s love to make you happy, then you are truly free. The only way you and I will discover that God’s grace is really all we need is when we have nothing but his grace in which to hope. So we can rejoice when we are mistreated, when we get the bad report from the doctor, when the stock market crashes, because when our weakness is exposed, God’s strength to satisfy us is magnified. God aims to humble us so that we can be strong in faith by…· Revealing the greatness of Christ to us · Revealing our weakness · Revealing his sufficiency in our weakness May our God count you worthy of his calling and by his power may he fulfill every good purpose of yours and every act prompted by your faith. May he do this so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you and you in him according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ. 2 Thess. 1:11 ©
Copyright 2002 John Swanson.
|