2 Corinthians 12:7-10 ... a thorn in the flesh, but My grace is sufficient for you

by John Macarthur

"And because of the surpassing greatness of the revelation, for this reason to keep me from exalting myself there was given me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to buffet me to keep me from exalting myself. Concerning this I entreated the Lord three times that it might depart from me. He has said to me, My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness. Most gladly therefore I will rather boast about my weaknesses that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties for Christ's sake, for when I am weak then I'm strong." 2 Corinthians 12:7-10

We find Paul in his deepest disappointment. Here we find Paul with a broken heart, in pain and sorrow and depression, rejected, betrayed, maligned, suffering from supernatural attacks on what was most precious to him, the church, particularly the church at Corinth. You remember the false teachers had come in. He defines all of that in verse 7 as a thorn in the flesh, literally the word "thorn" is a stake, he was impaled by this thing, it was just rammed through him, impaling him. And what was it? He defines this thorn in his flesh, a messenger of Satan, that's another word for a demon, an angelos of Satan, Satan's angel, a demon. A demon had moved in to some false teachers, brought the false teachers into the Corinthian church and they had created this terrible betrayal and this mutiny in Corinth. They were tearing up Paul's church. They were trying to destroy his reputation. They were maligning his character. They were assaulting his people. They were starting to destroy the effectiveness of that church, potentially its witness. And Paul saw this as a thorn in his flesh. It was something that was just ripping into him because of his great love for the church and the people in it.

What made him the man he was was suffering and pain. The Lord came to Paul to shape and mold that man into the man He wanted him to be through his suffering and his pain. God does not want you free from suffering. He does not want you free from sorrow and pain. James says count it all joy when you fall into various trials cause trials have a perfecting work. Peter says after you've suffered a while the Lord will make you perfect. God has called us to suffering.
It was even Jesus Christ Himself who became obedient through His sufferings, who was perfected though His sufferings.

He faced many trials. He knew where to go. He went to God. It's the right place to go. That's the only place to go because therein could he find the strength and wisdom necessary.

Life is full of trouble and it's your perspective on trouble that is the bottom-line issue here. Running all over the place to have your trouble fixed isn't the answer. Being obedient to the Word of God and letting God do His perfecting work in your life, that's the answer. You embrace your suffering like Paul did. You be content with it. You be thrilled with it. You sing hymns of joy to God for it. You count it all joy because it's having a perfecting work.

And the greatest testimony a Christian's ever had in history is when they're persecuted. And the persecution of the saints, the blood of the martyrs becomes the seed of the church.

To read the entire article essay on How God Uses Suffering, Pt. 2 - 2 Corinthians 2:9-10 by John Macarthur, click HERE or go to http://www.gty.org/resources.php?section=transcripts&aid=231070

I remind you in verse 7, "There was given me," and I told you it was given to him by God. And I remind you that most people want to wander through life thinking that God brings all the good times and the devil brings all the bad times and don't understand that the bad times come at the will of God just like the good times. And the bad times are by God's design and far more productive than the good times. There was given me by God this...this demon-inspired conspiracy that just ripped and tore me like a stake driven through my flesh to buffet me. The word "buffet" meaning to punch. This thing was hammering on me. God had brought this.

You know, people, you need to understand this. There is this idea in Christianity today that if you have a problem it needs an immediate solution and you've got to run somewhere and get it fixed. Counselors' offices are full of people who want quick fixes on the issues of their dilemmas...people who are suffering from being hated or rejected or abused or misrepresented or maligned or betrayed or unappreciated or whatever it might be. And all these human problems of unfulfillment and dissatisfaction that create all these problems with people are brought before the counselor in this passion to get them all solved.

But the right perspective is to understand that in the midst of life this is part of it and don't look for a quick solution. But try to discern what God is doing in the midst of it. And don't assume that the devil brought it independent of the allowances of God cause God has purposes in our suffering. And sometimes God's purposes are really amazing. It's hard to imagine in one way that God wanting to achieve something in the life of such a special man as Paul would allow one of His own beloved churches to be torn up to achieve that. It doesn't seem rational to us that God would allow this discontent and this chaos and confusion in the church at Corinth so that He could accomplish something in Paul's life. But in fact that's exactly what happened.

Now it isn't that God didn't love Paul. He loved him greatly as He loves all His own. It isn't that God was indifferent to Paul, not at all. In fact, our dear Lord Jesus Himself after He had already gone to heaven and taken a seat at the right-hand of God came back to earth to visit Paul three times, and one time took Paul to heaven to see him there. So He came down to visit him three times and took Paul to heaven once to confirm His love and to strengthen Paul for the immense amount of suffering he had to endure. He appeared to him on the Damascus road face-to-face, made him blind. And then He took him to heaven. And then He appeared to him in Acts 18, just in the moment of Paul's suffering when he was starting the church at Corinth, Acts 18. And then He appeared to him again in jail. And the Lord came to him in powerful, unique unequalled encounters.

And the Lord was personally involved in Paul's life to shape him into the man he ought to be. But it was...it was not that that did the work of shaping Paul. It wasn't the Damascus road vision and it wasn't the vision that he had when he went to heaven as noted earlier in the same chapter. It wasn't the vision in Corinth. It wasn't the vision in jail later on. What really made Paul the man he was were not those high and elevated, holy and glorious experiences of the risen Christ. What made him the man he was was suffering and pain. The Lord came to Paul to shape and mold that man into the man He wanted him to be through his suffering and his pain. God does not want you free from suffering. He does not want you free from sorrow and pain. James says count it all joy when you fall into various trials cause trials have a perfecting work. Peter says after you've suffered a while the Lord will make you perfect. God has called us to suffering. It was even Jesus Christ Himself who became obedient through His sufferings, who was perfected though His sufferings.

And that's what we learned in verses 5 to 10 here. Through the suffering and the terrible depression and sorrow of unfulfillment and broken heartedness in which Paul was literally being shaped, he learned five great lessons and that's what we're looking at. Remember lesson number one, God uses suffering to reveal our spiritual condition.

God uses suffering to reveal our spiritual condition. We saw that in verses 5 and 6. I won't go over it again, simply the fact is if somebody wants to see what you're really like and the truth must be known, then let them see you in your deepest sorrow, in your greatest pain and suffering. And therein will come out the character that is really there. So it was time for Paul to demonstrate his credentials. The Lord wanted the world to see what this man was made of, every reason then to cause him to suffer because it was in suffering that the truth would be manifest. What you are comes out in suffering. And Paul says you can look at me, in verse 6 at the end of the verse, and you can judge me and credit me with what you see in me and hear from me. That's the proof of the pudding. In the midst of the sufferings, what kind of man do you see.

Secondly, God taught him that He uses suffering to humble us, verse 7. Twice he says to keep me from exalting myself there was given me this thorn in the flesh. Paul, as he says in Colossians 2, would not take his stand on visions like so many do. He said...I did go to heaven, I did have a vision. I went to heaven, I came back from heaven but that's not helpful because all that does is puff up my pride. And so the Lord has to bring along these terrible thing in my life to humble my otherwise proud heart. God wants us meek and God wants us humble and He will even use Satan and his demons if necessary. And He will even use trouble in the beloved church if necessary to humble His servant. So when you're going through suffering, remember it is here that your spiritual condition is manifest. It is here that you can come to grips to what you really are in Christ and deal with it. And it is here that others can see the true character of your faith. Remember also that in your suffering you are humbled, you are broken. You become contrite. And when you become broken and contrite, of course you become useful to God. He gives grace, He says, to the humble.

Thirdly, Paul learned that God uses suffering to draw us to Himself. Verse 8, what did he do? He went to the Lord three times to pray. He drew into the Lord's presence, to call on the Lord to deliver him from this. And this is the right place to go. What lesser sources do men find when they can go to the living God? He faced many trials. He knew where to go. He went to God. It's the right place to go. That's the only place to go because therein could he find the strength and wisdom necessary.

That leads to the last two points which we'll make this morning. Point number four, God uses suffering to display His grace...God uses suffering to display His grace. Now we're in to verse 9. "And He has said to me, My grace is sufficient for you." "He has said," by the way, is in the perfect tense which means it was a set answer. He went three times and three times he got the same answer. "Paul, I hear you, I know you're asking for the thorn to be removed. I know you're asking for the messenger of Satan to be removed. I understand all of that. I'm sorry, however, I'm not going to do that, I'm just going to turn up the grace." Standing answer. God answers not by removing the pain, because the pain was productive...not by removing the trouble because the trouble was productive. It really showed the true man and it humbled him and it drew him to God. And so God says I'm not going to remove that, the process isn't over, but what I am going to do is increase the grace so that you can endure it.

He gave relief. God gave relief not by removal but by sufficient strength to persevere through the necessary humbling process. In those times is when God pours out the greater grace. In those times sometimes you find yourself with an exhilarating joy. I can't...I can't say it any better than to say it in the way that it's in Acts 16 where Paul is in stocks and his arms are stretched and his legs are stretched and the muscles are taut and locked in these stocks, and he's kept there in excruciating agony. And Paul and Silas are in that condition and you go into the jail and you hear them doing what? Singing...singing. Why are they singing? Because they have been given sufficient grace to endure it...sufficient grace. And you're never going to know that grace if you don't have the exigencies that call for it. You're never going to know that grace and you're never going to know the joy of that grace and the exhilaration of that grace until you have to have that grace.

Sure, from a human standpoint Paul says...Get that stake out of my flesh, get that agony out of my heart. It's depressing me and it's crushing me and it's breaking me. And God says...I'm not going to get it out of there, I'm going to leave it there, I'm just going to crank up the grace and in the midst of the grace you're going to give Me glory and you're going to endure and people are going to see the greatness of your God and the strength of your faith.

First Corinthians 10:13 remind you of this. "There is no trial that will ever come upon you but such is as common to man. God is faithful who will never let you be tempted above that you are able and will with the temptation make a way of escape." But the Lord will bring trials into your life that you can endure. He will give you the grace to endure them so that in the enduring you experience the great grace. What an exhilarating, what a joyous, joyous experience that is.

Deuteronomy 33:26 puts it this way. "There is none like the God of Jeshurun, or the God of Israel, who rides the heavens to help." Joshua 1:9, "Be strong and courageous, don't tremble or be dismayed for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go." God will always be there, He'll always be riding to your help, ready to just unload gushing grace so that you can endure whatever it is that you're suffering.

I read earlier Isaiah 42, I want to read a couple of verses out of a subsequent chapter, Isaiah 43. Listen to this. Verse 1, "I have called you by My name, you are Mine, God says. When you pass through the waters I will be with you and through the rivers they will not overflow you. When you walk through the fire you will not be scorched, nor will the flames burn you for I am the Lord your God, the holy one of Israel, your Savior." God doesn't promise no waters and no rivers and no fires, He just promises to be there when we're going through. And the grace is there poured out on us in abundance. In 1 Timothy 1:14 Paul says, "The grace of our Lord was more than abundant." Wow, more than abundant.

Now, folks, get this would you, please? Here is the cornerstone of Christian living. It is simply this, listen carefully. You will have trouble. In this life it is inevitable and it is useful because it produces the evidence of your true spiritual condition, humility and intimacy with God and allows God to put Himself on display in His grace. This is the cornerstone of Christian living, folks. You will have trouble. God does not promise to remove it but He does promise to pour out enough grace to endure it.

The word "sufficient" there in verse 9 is arke, it is enough. You'll have enough grace. You will have trouble, you will have difficulty, you will have temptation, you will have pain and disappointment, but God promises not to take away all that. See, that is the current temporary lie that God wants your life to be happy, and peaceful and comfortable and successful and satisfactory and prosperous and it's the devil who wants all the bad stuff. You want to know the truth? It's the devil who would like to make your life prosperous and successful and happy and tranquil because then you wouldn't need God and you wouldn't have to thank Him for anything. The prosperity message is the devil's message. God's message is a message of suffering and grace. God wants us humble and He uses suffering to humble us. God wants us intimate with Him and He uses suffering to make us intimate with Him. God wants our testimony made manifest. He wants our character on display and He uses suffering to reveal it. And the greatest testimony a Christian's ever had in history is when they're persecuted. And the persecution of the saints, the blood of the martyrs becomes the seed of the church. God will crank up the grace in your life and He'll crank up enough grace for you to be able to endure.

The song writer put it this way, "He giveth more grace when the burdens grow greater. He sendeth more strength when the labors increased." In other words, you get as much as you need and more. "To add affliction He addeth His mercy, to multiply trials is multiplied peace. When we have exhausted our store of endurance, when our strength has failed as the day is half done, when we reach the end of our hoarded resources, our Father's full giving has only begun. His love has no limit, His grace has no measure. His power, no boundary known unto men for out of His infinite riches in Jesus He giveth and giveth and giveth again." God just wants to flood you with grace and there's always plenty.

In His inimitable way, Charles Spurgeon was riding home one evening after a heavy day at the church, a day full of work and hardship and some disappointment. He was filling depressed. And his biographer says he thought about the verse, "My grace is sufficient for you." And in his inimitable way he immediately compared himself to a little fish in the Thames River apparently lest drinking so many pints of water in the river each day it might drink the Thames dry. And feeling insecure in that event only to have Father Thames say, "Drink away little fish, my stream is sufficient for you." The biographer says, and then he thought of a little mouse in the granaries of Joseph in Egypt, afraid it lest might also die by daily consumption of the corn it needed it feared it might exhaust the supply of all the corn in all of the silos and starve to death. And when Joseph came along and sensing the mouse said, "Cheer up, little mouse, the granaries are sufficient for you."

There again he thought of himself as a man trying to climb to the tops of the Alps. Reaching the lofty summit and dreading to take a breath lest he might exhaust all of the oxygen in the atmosphere only to hear the creator say, "Breathe away. old man, my air is enough for you. There's enough and more than enough and plenty.

And you're never going to know it, and you're never going to know the exhilaration of it and you're never going to know the thrill of it unless you can just rest in the suffering and let God pour out the grace. And you find yourself singing at the strangest places and times and you'll find a peace in your heart that knows no explanation and you find a joy that's disconnected from your circumstances because this grace is an energy that transforms. It's not in itself a static gift. Grace is an energy that chooses you. It's an energy of being flooded with blessing from God that alters your thinking...changes you, transforms you.

Yes, Paul was in his deepest suffering, but God was using it to put His grace on display. And that turns you into a worshiper, doesn't it? And God wants you to worship Him. And you couldn't fully worship Him, you wouldn't know the abandonment of joy and the abandonment of heart that Paul and Silas knew in the jail unless you had sufficient grace in the midst of dire suffering. The people who worship God most deeply are those who have been through the deepest water and have been flooded by His grace.

One last point. God uses suffering to perfect His power...God uses suffering to perfect His power. God wanted Paul not just to be a humble man, not just to be a man of prayer and intimacy with God. Paul was not only to be a man of suffering so that God could display His grace but God wanted this man to be powerful. God wanted this man to be used to change the world. God wanted him to impact individuals and families and cities and nations. And so we come back to verse 9. "Power is perfected in weakness," God said to him. When He answered that prayer He said, "My grace is sufficient," and then the second part of it was, "Power is perfected in weakness." I not only want you to go through this so I can put My grace on display, but I want you to go through this so there's nothing of you left. I want you whittled down to nothing. I want you down...I want you down to the point where you have no self-confidence, you have no trust in yourself, you have no self-esteem in the sense you believe you're capable of anything eternal. I want you broken down and I mean really broken down.

You go back, and we'll do this next Sunday, but you go back to Romans chapter 8 and remember Paul talking about tribulation and distress, persecution and famine, nakedness, peril, sword. And then he says, you know, they'd come after me, the angels, the principalities, the things present, the things to come and the powers, the height, the depth, and nothing can separate me from the love of God...he says in Romans chapter 8. But it had all come at him and he was basically broken down. I mean, you remember part of the accusation against him in the Corinthian church was that he was weak and he was contemptible and he lacked charm and charisma and oratorical skill and all of that. And he had been pretty well hammered down to nothing. It was the suffering that crushed out his pride and crushed out his self-confidence that made him powerful.

You see, when the Christian gets to the place where he's lost all human ability to deal with his difficulty, he's got nowhere to go...nowhere to go. When you realize you're weak, when you realize you can't fix it...Paul couldn't fix it, he couldn't fix it, he had been there, he visited, he sent people, he wrote letters, he couldn't fix it. And the rumors were getting further and further spread around about him, lies about his life that he was a wicked man and he couldn't do anything about it. And there he was with nothing but God and that was enough. He had to trust God's power.

I mean he had been persecuted mercilessly. He had been battered and hammered. He had not only found sufficient grace but he had found that when he was finally crushed down to nothing, he became powerful. You see, when your human wisdom's out, when your human confidence is out, when your ingenuity is out, when your solutions to the problems are out, when you have nowhere to go and nowhere to turn but God, you are now in a position to be most effective. I'll put it this way. No one in the Kingdom of God is too weak to be powerful but many are too strong...many are too strong. First Corinthians 1:27, "God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise. God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things that are strong, the base things of the world and the despised God has chosen the things that are not." God loves to work through nothings and nobodies and then He gets all the glory as He rightly deserves.

Paul says, "When I came to you...I was in weakness, fear and trembling." He didn't come in thinking himself some great man with some great message and some great power in his life and parading himself around as if he were. He came in fear. He came in trembling. He came in weakness. He had had visions of Christ, he had had a trip to heaven and back, he never talked about it. He just spoke of his weaknesses. But when he was no longer able to do anything, then God was able to do everything.

You see, physical suffering, mental anguish, disappointment, unfulfillment, failure creates a pressure that produces power, it really does because it just squeezes everything out of us so that we become nothing but a clear channel through which the power of God can flow. Paul learned, he really did. He learned all his lessons. In the middle of verse 9 he says, "Most gladly," he's happy now, circumstance hasn't changed, nothing's changed circumstantially, but "Most gladly...he says...I'm happy now and I'd rather boast about my weaknesses that the power of Christ may dwell in me." I'd rather be powerful than anything else and in order to be powerful I have to be weak. I just want to talk about my suffering. I don't love the abuse, I know it's satanic, I don't honor that, but I do know that God is using all of this to make me the man He wants me to be and I love His grace and I love His power and I love the humbling process and I love the intimacy with Him because I understand what it produces.

So, let me boast...he says. We're going to compare notes and see who is the real apostle, let me boast...I'll boast about my weaknesses. He goes back to that again as he has every time. He's done it several times, as we've noted, always wanting to boast about his weaknesses because it was in his weakness that the power of God was seen. Look at me...he's saying...you can't explain my life, you can't explain my effectiveness, you can't explain my ministry except for the fact that I am weak and He is strong because you know I'm not strong. He says I just want the power of Christ.

His weakness was not self-induced, it was God-given. It wasn't artificial, it wasn't a psychological game he was playing with himself. It was God-given weakness. He had been literally crushed by God so that he could be powerful. So when we have the deepest trials in life and we go through these things, you go through those times of unfulfilled relationships and broken heartedness and unsatisfied desires and we suffer from those who should love us the most, remember God is at work. The world can't fix it and probably shouldn't because God is using it to reveal your spiritual character, to humble you, to draw you to Himself, to put His grace on display and to make you powerful.

So Paul says the dominant theme of my life is suffering. Verse 10 sums it up, "Therefore...therefore...here's the summation...I'm well content with weaknesses." Well content means I'm satisfied, folks, I am satisfied. I am at peace, I'm at rest, I'm content. It's a great word...I am content. Perfect contentedness with weaknesses, insults, distresses, persecution and difficulties for Christ's sake. He's not talking about the things that come as a result of our sin and iniquity and disobedience. No. He's talking about those things that come for Christ's sake, they're undeserved sufferings and persecutions that aren't connected to our sin. He wouldn't be happy about his chastenings. He wouldn't be happy about sins. He's not saying that. He's saying I'm content with all those sufferings that come when I'm faithful to the Lord, "Because when I'm weak, then I'm strong." He wisely embraced his pain. He wisely embraced his suffering as hard as it was because it was in that weakness that Paul died and it was when Paul died that Christ really lived.

That's the way to look at life. And again I go back to the fact that this is the cornerstone of Christian living. Life is full of trouble and it's your perspective on trouble that is the bottom-line issue here. Running all over the place to have your trouble fixed isn't the answer. Being obedient to the Word of God and letting God do His perfecting work in your life, that's the answer. You embrace your suffering like Paul did. You be content with it. You be thrilled with it. You sing hymns of joy to God for it. You count it all joy because it's having a perfecting work.

A few years ago a song was written that really says it. I'll close with this. It's called "The Refiner's Fire." Listen carefully to the words.

There burns a fire with sacred heat, white hot with holy flame. And all who dare pass through its blaze will not emerge the same. Some is bronze and some is silver, some is gold and with great skill all are hammered by their sufferings on the anvil of His will. I'm learning now to trust His touch, to crave the fire's embrace. For though my past with sin was etched, His mercies did erase. Each time His purging cleanses deeper, I'm not sure that I'll survive. Yet the strength and growing weaker keeps my hungry spirit alive.

And then this great chorus...The Refiner's fire has now become my sole desire. Purged and cleansed and purified that the Lord be glorified, He is consuming my soul, refining me, making me whole. No matter what I lose I choose the Refiner's fire.

And when you can come to the point where you say that, you've reached a level of maturity and a grasp of the Christian life. No matter what I may lose, I choose the Refiner's fire. The Refiner's fire has become my sole desire because I want to become weaker so that He may become stronger.

Revealing your spiritual character, humbling you, drawing you to Himself, displaying His grace, demonstrating His power, that happens through your suffering. Embrace it and let God do His refining work. Join me in prayer.

Father, give us songs in the night, give us joy in jail and give us peace and contentment in our pain knowing that You're at work teaching us these profound lessons, revealing our spiritual condition and humbling us, drawing us to You and putting Your grace on display so that we can rejoice in its exhilarating reality and bringing us to the end of ourselves so that our total trust is in You and we therefore become powerful in our weakness. O Lord, bring us to the place where we can say with the writer of that song...no matter what I may lose, I choose the Refiner's fire, not just because of what it produces, but even the joy of going through it bathed in Your overflowing grace. And, Lord, accomplish Your good purpose in every life so that indeed as we sung earlier we might be used to bring people to the knowledge of Christ, the reason we're here to accomplish that ministry. Thank You for this morning together and we commit it to You and to the lives of all of us we ask that You would work Your work for Your glory in Christ's name. Amen.