The Lord Jesus said, for this reason I say to you, do not be worried about your life as to what you will eat, what you will drink, nor from your body as for what you will put on is not the life. more than food in the body, more than clothing. Look at the birds of the air. They don't sow nor reap nor gather into barns. And yet your heavenly father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they? Two of you, by being worried, can add a single hour to his life. And why are you worried about clothing? Observe how the lilies of the field grow. They do not toil nor do they spin. Yet I say to you that not even Solomon in all his glory clothed himself like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today, and tomorrow is thrown into the furnace, will he not much more clothe you? You of little faith. Do not worry then, saying, What will we eat, or what will we drink, or what will we wear for clothing? For the Gentiles eagerly seek all these things. For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first his kingdom, and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. So do not worry about tomorrow for tomorrow will care about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. If you've come here tonight, welcome to Preston City Bible Church, which is a group of people. Welcome to our fellowship of believers. This is also what I like to call the building at Fort Preston. This building has been standing here for almost going on. We're in the season of the 200th anniversary. of Preston City Bible Church. This is a long season and the building will actually be 200 in 2015. So we'll just party till then. Welcome tonight. This is the most important and valuable thing you could do with your time as a human being and I apply that universally. Every human being has been designed for what we find here in this scripture. It is a book written by Jews, about Jews. From Genesis 12 until the end of Revelation, this book is about Israel or Jacob and his children, beginning with Abraham. Abraham. To whom was promised wonderful things, a land, a seed and a blessing. To him and his seed, and we find the Apostle Paul clarifies for us, if we didn't understand it when we read it, that the seed in Genesis 12, 7 is the Lord Jesus Christ. This book, by the way, this Bible, is the only book of antiquity that tells you where everyone's from. Civilization is generally not concerned with where the other civilizations came from, but you see the Word of God is universally applicable because every human being has the same trouble. Everyone thinks he's good and everyone's wrong. Well, believers in Jesus Christ, you have been declared righteous. You've been declared righteous by the grace of God, because of the work of the Lord Jesus Christ on the cross. And what you did was nothing. You merely trusted in him. You trusted in Jesus Christ. You did what Paul said to the Philippian jailer. Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. And that was the moment of newness of life for you as a believer in Jesus Christ. Not because of anything you had done, but because of what Jesus had done in your place, literally as your substitute on the cross. You have been clean, Jesus told Peter. You are clean all over, but you still have dirty feet. You need your feet washed. And this is the Lord Jesus teaching us that there is eternal life and forever forgiveness in a relational sense for anyone who believes in Jesus Christ. And that enters you into a relationship, a living relationship with your God, the creator of all things, a forever relationship. The quality of that relationship that is personal, that is interpersonal between you and a tripersonal God, that relationship sometimes is better than others. The way the Apostle John, the beloved apostle, describes that is fellowship. Either you're in fellowship with God, which is all light with no darkness, or you're in darkness, which is all darkness and no light, the way the Apostle John describes it. He doesn't say there's a dimmer switch on fellowship with God. You're either meeting his standard in your experience or you're falling short of it. The solution when I fall short of the glory of God and my words, thoughts or deeds is the blood of Christ that cleanses me from all sin. To read the context of First John, chapter one, verse nine. That's John. First, John, one, five. You want to remember the most important interpretive key for anything in the word of God is context. The Apostle John is writing to believers in Jesus Christ. He's not writing to people that need to become believers. He's writing to children of God as in born-again children of God. He's not writing to people that need to become born-again children. The Apostle John, who writes the Gospel of Believe and Live, the Gospel of John, says, if we confess our sins as believers, he, God, is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. That's right. As a believer, you sin. As a believer, you fall short of God's glory. As a believer, you step out of bounds. And you step into discipline. As a believer, the solution, as Jesus taught Peter, his disciple, is, if I don't wash your feet, then you have no part in me. No fellowship, no benefit to the relationship. If we confess he's faithful and righteous, we forgive. And remember, confess doesn't mean feel sorry. Confess means I did it. It means to state the case. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, our Savior has been sacrificed once and for all. We give you glory and praise for all that you've done in bringing this about. Father, you reconciled us to yourself through the blood of your Son, and we do not deserve it. Father, every time we come to you with our sins, every time we, like Isaiah's believers, say we have sinned, we are unclean, we once again demonstrate how little worthy we are to receive the wonderful blessings that you pour out on us, most importantly, a relationship with you through your Son. Father, we thank you most of all for this wonderful demonstration of your righteousness and your love. For you did not simply forgive the sin, but you had to judge it. Your righteousness was satisfied. But you didn't leave us to go to the lake of fire, for you loved us. And your love motivated even the death of the cross. Father, we thank you for Jesus, not only as our substitute, most of all as our substitute, but also as our example, as tonight we turn to the Word on suffering, as we turn to what your Word says to us, the objective, clear, inerrant revelation that you've given us in your Word regarding suffering. We ask that you give us some objectivity, give us some perspective, give us some ability to handle. the troubles that you'd intend to bring our way so that your power can be perfected in us. We ask it in Jesus' name. Amen. We continue our work through the categorical doctrine, the categorical doctrine of testing, when a believer receives testing. And we've been working through this as a break. It's a little mini-series. My mini-series so far go as far as 12 lessons. This is 12 visits on the doctrine of testing or suffering when believers suffer. And it is suffering not to bring about your change so that you are back on track with God's plan. It's the believer who's in fellowship with God who finds himself in great suffering. The first example we selected was the first example in the Bible, Job, the oldest book of the Bible. We looked at what happened with Job, who, by the way, is the greatest believer on planet Earth at the time. That's what the word says. There's no one on Earth like him. We then decided to go one up on Job. and moved to the Lord Jesus Christ. He's not the greatest believer on planet Earth. He is the only human being who was ever truly good. The only human being who never sinned, the only human being who could bear other people's sins for them, because he's the God-man, because he's the perfect Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. The Lord Jesus tested by Satan in the wilderness in Matthew chapter 4. And we've seen some wonderful principles that come out of this. We see what you cannot see with your eyes. We see from God's revelation, clear and objective and absolutely true revelation in the Word of God, we see what's going on with God bringing about His plan in your life through your suffering. Where I will argue you don't have the kind of glasses that are required to see to see when you're being Tested by Satan or his enemy or his minions the enemies of God While you don't have and God has not equipped you with some sixth sense to see it Many people want to go ahead and take that leap of assumption. It's not really faith. It's just assumption and Maybe it's faith in themselves, faith in their own piety, that they know what's happening in the invisible realm. But that's not what we're led to see in the word of God. We haven't been given goggles as God's self-revelation. He didn't give us, I mean, literally, he didn't give us a special tool that we strap onto our glasses or onto our heads to see better. He gave us objective, propositional truth. That is absolutely true in all that it says. That is everything you need and if it's not in here, the corollary principle is you don't need it. You see, and it isn't what I naturally default to thinking. It's what God thinks and what He said in here that transforms my thinking in Romans chapter 12 verse 2. I need my thinking transformed so that I'm more conformed to His righteousness. Well, we moved from the Lord Jesus Christ to the Apostle Paul, so we've gone chronologically through human history. And we are like Paul the most of all the examples we've seen. We are the most like Paul because why? Because he is a believer in Jesus Christ. On this side of his resurrection, ascension and session, on this side of the pouring out of the Holy Spirit, he is a church-age believer and so are you. Every believer in Jesus Christ has received the giving, the indwelling ministry of the Holy Spirit. Every believer in Jesus Christ has received a spiritual gift. Every believer in Jesus Christ is therefore in what we might call full-time Christian service. Every believer in Jesus Christ has so much in common with Paul. Now there are things we've talked about that we don't have in common with the Apostle Paul. No one this side of 96 AD, that's almost 2,000 years ago, no one this side of 96 AD is an apostle. I will argue based on the strict and dire warnings in the book of Revelation, don't add to this book that no one since that time has been a prophet, a New Testament prophet. We have New Testament prophets that wrote scripture. Luke wrote scripture. He's not an apostle. What is Luke? He's got the gift of prophecy. But my argument is that the Bible is enough because that's what he's given us. And it is God's thinking. In written form so that you can think his thoughts, it's a wonderful blessing he's given you. Well, you have the most in common with Paul because you're a church age believer and so is Paul. But there are things about Paul that you don't really have. You don't have the gift of prophecy Paul had. You don't have the gift of apostleship Paul had. You don't have the spiritual, supernatural insight that Paul had so that what you write down needs to be recorded. for the church. And to think that we do is the height of arrogance. Anytime somebody adds a book, it's an easy thing to spot. Hmm. I'll test the spirits and check out Revelation chapter 22 and ask, what should I do with this extra book? Probably not give it much consideration since there's a curse for adding to this book. In any case, the Bible was closed in 96 AD by God's apostle John. The third example, as we said, is the Apostle Paul. Paul's great testing, and we're in 2 Corinthians chapter 12. 2 Corinthians chapter 12, and we did all the contextual workup last week to talking about what is exactly going on in the passage I've selected to observe with Paul. The context is the book of 2 Corinthians in the greater context of the Word of God. This is an actual letter in history that A human being wrote to an actual church and they are the initial recipients. And we said the reason why Paul is discussing what he's discussing in this portion is that they have asked him for his credentials. They've said, who are you really? Since you've only seen us, you only come to see us twice. We want to see you again. This is before Paul's third trip to see these people. They have been bewitched by false teachers. They believed false teachers. And now they've doubted what Paul said. So they're asking for Paul's credentials. We have somebody with a diploma from Harvard here who's saying, you really don't know what you're talking about, because all you know is what Gamaliel taught you. And we've got a better pedigree. And that's impossible, actually, as a Pharisee, that someone have a better pedigree than Paul, according to Paul. But in any case, look at what it says. We wouldn't know this. We wouldn't know this if he hadn't told us this. He says, I know a man in Christ who 14 years ago, this is verse 2 of chapter 12, 2 Corinthians, I know a man in Christ who 14 years ago, whether in the body, I do not know, or out of the body, I do not know, God knows, such a man was caught up to the third heaven. In other words, it doesn't matter whether this is physical or spiritual. And I know how such a man, whether in the body or apart from the body, I don't know, God knows how he was caught up in a paradise and heard inexpressible words, which a man is not permitted to speak. Now, we've talked about boasting in the New Testament at a brief summary last week. The reason Paul is speaking in the third person saying, I know a man, it's him. Paul is talking about himself. It's autobiographical. The reason he is talking autobiographically in the third person is because the whole point is not to boast in yourself. So it would be bragging to say God selected me out of the human race to give him give this special revelation that he gave me. But that's the point. Verse five, on behalf of such a man, I will boast, but on my own behalf, I will not boast except in regard to my weaknesses. So he makes up a test case, if you will, and an example, an X Y case, so and so did so and so to say this would be a great cause for boasting, but it is autobiographical. And the reason he does it, he explains in verse six, it's very clear. For if I do wish to boast, I will not be foolish, for I will be speaking the truth. If I brag about being caught up in an Isaiah like event where I am given special revelation from the throne room of God. That's a lot different from talking into a hat in the woods in North America. I heard that laugh back there. So I will refrain from this so that no one will credit me with more than he sees in me or hears from me. See, Paul isn't supposed to be giving his credentials with the Lord. And this is a great principle, just as we're working up the context. Paul is not supposed to walk around talking about all the great things that have been his personal experiences with the Lord. He's supposed to show up and do miracles to authenticate the message. By the way, the message is the point of the miracles always because Jesus didn't say it didn't heal everyone. He saved everyone. And the healing is to authenticate that this is the one who heals your broken relationship with God. And that's what healing does. And so Paul shows up and does miracles, does healing, casts out demons, does these wonderful wonders of wonderful works that you can see so that you will understand to trust him for that which you can't see. And that's Paul's calling card. He shows up with miracles. Well, I'll tell you with no witnesses, no one could witness this, by the way, the wonderful things I saw from the Lord. What is that? But I hear it all the time. I hear all kinds of Christian testimonies about what God and I have done together, what my walk with the Lord has been like. And it may be a wonderful, uplifting and edifying experience in the Word, for example. But Paul says that's not what you're supposed to be boasting about. I've been taught, Paul shares with you his personal devotional study he's had with the Lord called the thorn in the flesh. It says, boast in your weaknesses. That's it. Boast when it hurts. Boast that the Lord can use you. Boast the Lord can work and be completely unhindered by your flesh. when he is letting you receive this testing. Let's look at verse 7 in detail. Verse 7 in detail, this is, I take notes in PowerPoint, so sometimes you see stuff that isn't English, but we move on. And because of the far surpassing greatness of the revelations, you have to deal with the date of case here. The dative case here, because of the hyperbole, that's the word hyperbole, hyperbole, h-u-p-e-r-b-a-l-e, that's the long e, the eta, because in the sphere of, I'm sorry, not in the sphere of, by means of, is the Greek idiom to explain what we will say because of. by means of the super abundance the hyperbole of Apocalypse of revelation Apocalypse, it's a major theological term and this is something that we give a capital R to revelation where God has spoken and Unraveled or not unraveled but uncovered something about himself Revelation means that something's covered up and you can't see it. There are many people many preachers many many many Bible thumpers who will claim the ability to see through the veil. They will be able to see through that which God has left covered and may claim additional special revelation. This is a very special and important principle for me. I want you to be very clear. I make no such claim and I think it wrong to make this claim because I have the special revelation from God, the Apostle Paul, that the apostle Peter, that James and John, that the gospel writers saw and were given inspiration to have this revelation. And I do not believe any human being ever gets to the bottom of the infinite, inscrutable word of God. It is a lifetime pursuit that changes you. But you never master this. This is the mind of Christ. But Paul was given special revelation and he tells us that here. My understanding is that to make such a claim is to put yourself on par with the Apostle Paul. It's so little understood. It's really the doctrine of revelation. People say revelation and everyone starts looking for Antichrist and red dragons because they've read parts of the book of Revelation, the Apocalypse of Jesus Christ. The Apocalypse is a transliteration from Greek and it just means uncovered. Let's demystify revelation. And it's a good word, R-E-V-E-L-A-T-I-O-N. It comes from the Greek, Apocalypse. Apocalypse. That's not supposed to be capitalized, but hey, that's the name of a book, and that's a smooth reading. Apocalypse, or the apocalypse. It means revelation and really means to uncover something. You see, God is pleased to hide things and he is pleased to let you find them. Proverbs 25 too, but it's on his terms, it's his will and he's sovereign with what he reveals. So let's see what he's revealed to Paul. of the far surpassing, the hyperbole. Do you know what a hyperbole is? It's an English word that we've just stolen from Greek. You know what it means? Hyperbole is when you take something and you make a mountain out of a molehill. When you over exaggerate something for either a comic effect or because you're just divorced from reality. I must be bleeding to death would be a hyperbolic statement, a hyperbole, if you cut your finger. I'm starting to get weak and dizzy because I've cut my finger open a little bit. That's hyperbole. And this is comes from the Greek, which means super abundant, far surpassing would be one way to translate this. So I translate far surpassing greatness of the revelations. Now, this could be what's called an attributed genitive far surpassing greatness. It could be the greatly I'm sorry, greatness of revelation, the revelations and genitive. It could be the far surpassing Great revelations, but Doesn't matter newness of life or new life in any in any case the reason for what Paul's about to say is Because he was caught up to the third heaven and given special insight from God You see when God gives you gives Paul a blessing like this I won't I don't argue he gives you this kind of blessing, but when he blesses you you With something like this, something incredible, something hyperbolic, you should be ready for what Paul's about to experience. Now, every one of you in this room, if you're a believer in Jesus Christ, and if you're not still, I can make the case you have received something hyperbolic, you've received something far surpassing anything you can really appreciate. If you're born again, that means you have new life in Christ, eternal life. that something you don't feel is something that you have and that you're told this and you're supposed to believe it. How do you like that? Your reception to the word of God is not how you feel, by the way. It's what you think, because it's propositional. It's not a syringe. It's not a hypodermic needle with a shot of feel-good. That's not what this is. This is propositions that you can respond emotionally to, sure, if you think them. But let's have our minds renovated here, let's think the thoughts of Christ, let's have our righteousness and experience conform to God's righteousness. You have received eternal life, you better expect some thorn in the flesh testing. You've received life itself. See, man gets so arrogant, saved or unsaved, man gets so arrogant about what he's received, we get passé about living in the mansion. The far surpassing greatness of the revelations. Let me stop applying and continue to interpret. In order that I not surpassingly exalt myself. Did you notice that these two words lined up almost perfectly on my PowerPoint slide? Wow. Anyway, surpassing and surpassing. Why did I just keep it? Why did I say it the same way? Let me show you why. Because you have Hooper plus Bole, hyperbole, super surpassing. And then you have Hooper-Iromai, the division happens right there. And you can't read it, I know, but you can see that those four little squiggles look the same as those four little squiggles, because it's the same particle. And he uses it again here. And there's superness all over this verse. It's all about excessiveness, far exceedingness, in order that I not surpassingly exalt myself. It's almost a play on words and you don't see it in English. But here's the deal. In order that I not surpassingly exalt myself, looking forward to what he's about to say, God gave me a thorn in the flesh. The main sentence in verse 7 is, He gave me a thorn in the flesh. Everything else is modifying that main sentence. All that grammatical work to get to the point. Because He blessed me beyond my wildest imagination, so that I not surpassing His own myself from receiving that blessing, He gave me a thorn in the flesh. Kind of balances things out, if you will. Kind of a balancing factor there. See, we don't we're not thankful for what we receive. So when we hurt, we say, oh, this is terrible. Paul's going to learn at first, he says, oh, this is terrible. He's going to learn to say thank you for the chance to suffer. He's going to have a complete reversal of his attitude about suffering. God, he God gave me a thorn in the flesh. It's an heiress from did to me. He gave the I.D.O.M.I. He gave me a thorn, a thorn. What's that? Yeah, scallops. That's an important word here in New England, especially this part of New England. I recently discovered that we live here in eastern Connecticut in the, I believe it's the national capital for scallops, for sea scallops. It's the place. If you want sea scallops, and wow, isn't that wonderful anyway? Scallops. S-K-O-L-U-P-S. Scallops. Which is S-K-O-L-U-P-S. Scallops. That word means thorn. Isn't that edifying? And you do a lot of work on this word, and you know what you find out? It's that part that protects the pretty flower. It's a thorn. It's a thorn that you get that hurts. Now, the effects of a thorn could vary. If you get a deep enough thorn in muscle tissue, you could be paralyzed. If you get a mesquite thorn, that's a Texas thing, you get a mesquite thorn in your skin, you'll get not only paralyzed, but poisoned. Not only does it do the physical, like, cutting in and neutralizing the muscle, but it injects a toxin, and you'll get sick. You'll get really sick until you pull that out, and then you'll stay sick for a while, and you might get a fever from it. Thorn. A thorn in the flesh. The sarcos, the sarx. Sarx is Paul's word for the body, the meat. It really means meat. The word he uses for flesh, the scallops in sarci, the thorn in the flesh. And it refers, possibly, there's two ways to take this. It could mean the whole thing is a metaphor. that you get stuck in the flesh in something meaty with with a thorn and it hurts and it's this persistent hurt until you pull it out and that's the that's the point of the illustration is that it hurts until you remove it and there's you know there's this constant have you ever gotten a thorn embedded I keep doing this I have right there fell down caught myself thought I was good felt wow that really hurt look down there's a little circle a little black dot Why is my hand so numb? A few hours later, I finally got a pair of tweezers and started digging at that dot. You know what? It ended up being that long, stuck in my muscle. Wow, that's why it hurt. Well, that long. It was this long, anyway. And you know, the reason the illustration, the instant relief from removing this, it was just... Have you ever known, we've all known, but have you ever heard the tales of people that have had kidney stones? Very common experiences. The same types of pains because the same nerves are involved, the same point during the travel of the kidney stone of hurt. I've enjoyed this wonderful privilege as well. All I can say is drink water, always drink water, never run out, never get dehydrated. Even though all the great pain that goes into passing a kidney stone, it's generally considered, if it's one you can pass, it doesn't need surgical intervention, At the point when that's out, when it's over, it's the greatest relief. You don't care anymore. You're not throwing up on yourself anymore. You're not doubled over in pain, agony, crying like a little child or a kicked dog. You are just on cloud nine. Now, you might have gone through a lot of suffering. You might have actual damage from it. So much better off your body has ways of relieving that pain and sort of rejoicing with you And so Paul is experiencing the other side of this he's got this thorn in the flesh and it's there and it's it's it's hurting it's constantly hurting and And as I said, there's two ways to take this and it doesn't matter how you take it like that It doesn't matter how you take it. The point is the illustration is it hurts and it's continuous and Now, people will argue, well, no, it's a thorn. It's not a literal thorn. That's a metaphor for an antagonist, something that's hurting him. And it's in his body. Other people say, no, no, the whole thing's a metaphor. I lean towards the other thing. I don't think it has to be a physical torment. It could be anything. It could be hurt in his life that is persistent. And we're about to see the the further clarification of this the thorn of the flesh which was an angel from Satan I Translate the word angel. I Translate the word angel you could say I transliterate the word angel because the word is on the loss and you it's funny to see interpreters chase their tail they use this word on the loss here and and in Revelation chapters 1 through 3 to mean something other than an angel. And they justify it using these passages. If the guy's talking about Revelation, say, well, what about, you know, 2 Corinthians 12, 7, messenger. And if you're talking about Revelation, We're talking about this passage, we go to Revelation. And I think in both passages it's talking about angelic higher creation, something he made before men. We're talking about God's enemies, the third of the hosts of heaven that fell from Satan's revolt and recorded in Revelation chapter 12. He gave me a thorn in the flesh, an angel, an ongolos, and that word ongolos doesn't mean messenger, but it's the word we've used to describe this category of creatures that are personal, that are that are not human, but they're persons that really exist that you can't see. And if you can, you don't know you're seeing them, apparently. They're there, and you generally can't see them. Now, people say, well, I saw an angel. Well, you know, we're told that some people have entertained angels and didn't know it. So, maybe you did see one, maybe you didn't. This is one of these personal experience things that we like to make authoritative when the Scriptures really are where the authority lies. He gave me a thorn in the flesh, which was an angel from Satan. Paul knows all this in retrospect. He's telling the whole story. It doesn't say when he knew these things, and that's really critical. The place where we find what the guy knew when, when he's suffering, that's the book of Job. And Job didn't know anything. All he knew was that God is good. All he knew was that God is good and he deserves being trusted, whether we're feeling good about it or not. And so the point here is Paul is giving you the diagram, the cross section, the anatomy of this kind of suffering. In order that it would beat me. Kolaphizo, I even spelled that one out, K-O-L-A-P-H-I-Z-O, so that it would beat me. Now notice, all the things he's using to describe, because of these revelations, in order that I not exalt myself, in order that the thing would beat me. This angel from Satan. God gave me, it doesn't say he gave me Satan, by the way. Again, I think this has a lot more in common with us. I don't think that Satan is after you. I think Satan's demons are after you. Right. All I've heard of Peter, I've heard of Jesus and Peter, who are you? And Satan did ask Jesus for Peter. Ask to sift Peter. Satan is personal. When I say personal, I mean he's a person. Satan is a creature of God that has fallen and has rebelled against God. Satan is restricted to a place. Apparently, to one point, he's not omnipresent. He's got a lot of demons. A third of the hosts of heaven apparently is a lot. We don't know what that means. Angels are described as the stars of heaven. Described parallel metaphorically as the stars of heaven. So apparently there's a lot of them is the reason you talk about stars They're also shiny. They're bright. They're light angels are creatures of light. We don't know see we don't know a lot about angels we know this the third of them fell rebelled against God and one of them is used by Satan to attack Paul, but actually God gave him this, and this is all part of the theology here. God gave me. He, God, gave me a thorn in the flesh, which was an angel from Satan. It's exactly parallel to Matthew 4.1. The Holy Spirit led Jesus into the wilderness in order to be tested by the devil. It's the same kind of thing. It's the permissive will of God letting Satan or his enemy do what he wants within reason to a point. And yet God is not doing it. He's permitting it, but he's also sponsoring it. And this is not him tempting you to sin. The angel may be it's God showing you he's demonstrating your faith. So the proof of your faith, which works endurance and is more valuable than gold. No tested by fire. Another in order that Hina plus the subjunctive again in order the God gave him the son of the flesh the angel from Satan so that the angel would beat on him in fact so the angel has an assignment the angels been told do what you want do your worst and you where do I get it I get out of Job it's exactly have you consider my servant Job you can you can do anything don't touch him okay okay you got all his family all his wealth but he's still praising me okay you can take his health but you can't kill him And so that's that's the same. You consider my servant Job. He let Satan work what Satan already wants to do up to a point. And Satan is trying to destroy Job and to demonstrate that Job is not going to trust the Lord. And the Lord is testing Job, demonstrating exactly how strong the word of God is in him. So, in order that it would not beat, it would beat me, in order that I not surpassingly exalt myself. So, the sandwich here is the exalting of myself. This is chiastic. You see that I translated these words, these are exactly word for word the same, in order that I not surpassingly exalt myself, in order that I not surpassingly exalt myself. This is one of those ice cream cookie sandwiches, you know, you put the two cookies, then I not exalt myself with the ice cream in the middle, what God did. And that's exactly the literary device Paul has used. And did you notice that when you're reading this or did you just kind of blow through it? It's great. You got to read and there's the read and just blow through what you're reading, but there's also read a little bit reflectively, read slowly. Now, it's not as clear in the English, but it is there in English because he says it twice. Now, Paul tells you on the front end of this story, God had a purpose. God had a desire. He wanted that thorn to go into the flesh and hurt, and persistently hurt, to beat on me, caliphizo, to beat me, to buffet me, is how the old King James said. There was a joke one time, one of the better chapel speakers at Dow Seminary, when I was there, talked about how he was on a trip and he buffeted the body. because they stopped over at the Golden Corral or Ryan's Steakhouse or whatever. Do you know what the Golden Corral is up here? We'll have to discuss that at length some other time. It's actually kind of like what we have downstairs on Fellowship Sundays. This church puts on the Golden Corral pretty good, actually. Anyway, Buffet. Today that means self-defeat or self-destruction in a whole other context besides the angel from Satan beating on you, but that's what it means, that he beat me. So you could say the thorn if we could picture it like a thorn stuck in the end of a whip being scourged However, you want to describe? Continuous persistent pain that you simply just cry out to God this hurts make it stop this hurts. Please stop this hurts Please stop and that's what Paul does Now we know on the front end as Paul describes the story We know what God's doing and we know we can almost predict the answer if we were tracking what he said so far God sent it and he sent it for the purpose that it beat me And the reason is a sanctifying reason for Paul is that he did not exalt himself. God knows what Paul needs. Paul's a human, he's fallen, he's sinful. So he wants him to keep his eyes on the Lord, for example. So Paul's calling out to God, hey, you've got your eyes in the right place. Do you understand what kind of lifestyle and your inner person is required to be this way? What kind of person do you have to be? In other words, what kind of faith and focus on the Lord do you have to have so that when it does hurt, when you do stub your toe and you're like, oh, it really hurts, and it doesn't stop, and by the way, it's broken, that your first thought, and I don't mean literally stubbing your toe, I just mean when it hurts, that your first and enduring thought is, as Paul's going to say, I exalt, I brag about my weakness. I started this evening with this thought that we need our thoughts renovated. Our first response in arrogance is to gripe about hurting. And you read the Lamentation Psalms, the Lament Psalms, you say, hey, call out to the Lord, it hurts. But Paul gives you a little bit of additional revelation on when it hurts. See, the reason I picked this one to be the last is not just chronological, it's also the most clear, it's the best cutaway of what's actually happening. When God permits His righteous ones, who are righteous, who are advancing spiritually, who are on board with what God wants, who are submissive to the Spirit, who are yielding to what God will do with them, who are walking by the Spirit. When God lets these people hurt, this is something that He has actually programmed into your life. He has this wire and He wants you to enjoy it. And I'm not being sadistic or masochistic, and God isn't sadistic. There is something bigger here than we can see. There is something bigger going on than we could ever imagine. And we're told enough in this uncovering here, we're told enough to trust them. Concerning this. You can't get away from hupere, he does it here too, hupere, concerning this, hupere plus a genitive in this case means concerning this. Three times the Lord I called alongside to my aid. All that means, parakaleo means to alongside and call, to call alongside. And usually we use this word, Paul uses this word for what Titus and Timothy are supposed to do. They're supposed to exhort. That word exhort is parakaleo and it means to call someone alongside. When you're exhorting someone who needs a cheerful word, you call them alongside, but you're the help. Hey, come here and let's talk. How are you doing? Exhort them, encourage them. A ministry of encouragement here. Paul is the guy in the quicksand screaming, help, help, help, and calling God to his side. And see, this word works either way. He's the guy that needs help. I call God alongside, and in the sense of for his aid, that's why it's in italics, with the goal that it depart from me. Hina plus the subjunctive, he does it all. See, 2 Corinthians is great to pick up along the way. When we do subjunctive mood in the grammar course, we'll actually look at 2 Corinthians 12, 7 through 12 a lot because it hits the subjunctive mood a lot with the goal. In order that is with the goal that towards the goal, The reason I'm calling out is to get this thing to stop. Lord, send your heavenly tweezers and pull the thorn out is what he's screaming. Three times he asks. Ask nothing, ask nothing, ask nothing. What does Paul know is a great question to ask in this place because we don't really know what he knows because the way he's telling the story, he's giving you the omniscient view. He's saying God sent this and it's an angel from Satan and we don't know what Paul knew. What we know is that it hurts and that God is there and is the solution to his problems. That's what we know. And that's what Paul knows. Paul makes a request that directly conflicts with the will of God. Which leads me to think he doesn't know in the suffering what he's told us as he tells the story. I don't think he knew that it was an angel from Satan. I don't think he knew that God had sent it. I think he just knew it hurt. God's going to give him some additional revelation about it. This is the problem I get with people, people who have experiences and claim God told me or God said or, you know, that the heavens part and God actually tell you. Because I've got plenty of objective revelation for me to know what's going on, that it hurts and I trust him anyway, no matter what. I wonder if this is an angel or if this is someone just trust him job. See is your is your key. He doesn't know he doesn't get to know But don't trust him and nobody here is as good as job. So let's just trust the Lord God says no Because it's directly conflicting with God's will for Paul's life. I got a plan for you and you're asking me to call off Christmas. I I mean, telling a seven-year-old Christmas is off. I'm saying, we've got a birthday party planned for you, it's a great blessing, and you're asking me to cancel it. No! Get your party hat ready, because this is for your good, for your benefit. Here's the challenge for you. You and I don't have time to worry about transgressing unrevealed will of God. Don't worry about, well, I wonder if it's God's will this or that. You need to focus on the revealed will of God and His Word. And we've got it right here, part of it. Trust Him, even if it hurts. Focus on what He said in the Word. And once you've sorted the whole Word of God out, start worrying about your experiences. Start wondering if you're awake or asleep, if you're dreaming or if you're experiencing this. We need to get our focus on the Word because it's God's way. It's His protocol system of revealing Himself to us. I think this is a major point of difference between our experience and Paul's experience. See, when Paul suffers, he writes about it and it becomes the Word of God. When we suffer, it is our opportunity to apply the Word of God that Paul wrote down to our circumstance. Paul is a prophetic apostle. So what about our experiences? There are opportunities in every case to run back and trust him, to run back and trust him, to run back to the Word and say, yes, but what if it's like Paul? I'm going to trust him anyway. What if it's not like Paul? What if I'm suffering because I'm being disciplined? Hey, if you're being knocked on, confess your sins. If we confess, he's faithful and righteous to forgive and cleanse. And he may leave the discipline he set in place to work on you and to be for your blessing. It might be converted, as it were, converted discipline into suffering for blessing. Verse nine. He has declared to me perfect tense, God has told me, and this is part of why I think Paul is given additional revelation later, he has told me. and the perfect. It doesn't come out in English translations. Past tense action, past completed action with present results. It is adequate or it is sufficient. Those words mean the same thing. My grace. It is adequate for you, and the emphasis is to the end, my grace is sufficient for you. And you've got to wonder, what does this word, my grace, mean? What does it mean, my grace is sufficient for you? Apparently his grace, which is the free, grace always means free gift, you don't deserve it, no strings attached. Does this mean the suffering is itself the grace of God? Does it mean that you can have grace from God that isn't the removal of suffering? That's exactly what it means. Whatever grace is referring to, it's goodness from God that's undeserved, and it does not involve God removing the suffering from Paul. My grace is sufficient for you. Now, I think my grace looks forward to the reason why the suffering, it involves the package of suffering, because the suffering is as a model like Christ. Did Jesus Christ suffer? like no one else in human history on the planet has ever suffered. You're being called to be a model like Christ. Jesus did not misspeak when he said, take up your cross daily and follow me. It's going to hurt. Again, we're not masochistic. We're not looking for suffering. We're like Paul. Oh, this hurts. Tell him it hurts. Tell him thank you for the opportunity to suffer for your sake. It hurts. And it's irrelevant how I feel to whether it's for his glory or not. Now he explains, the explanatory conjunction gar, which is translated for, let me explain why my grace is sufficient for you, for my power by weakness is perfected. I take this to mean, and I'm just telling you what the Greek says, I'll tell you now my interpretation of it. You have to have this weak spot for me to get done in you what I'm doing. My power that I'm working through you needs you to be offline as far as your abilities and you're that level of maturity You're that level of believer in Jesus Christ who has been through the life of trusting him no matter what and Paul gives us before you get before you know read through chapter 11 and I've been on frequency. I'm not gonna read it. It's a really long section 11 23 through 29 gives you all the All the laundry lists of Paul's sufferings to date, and this is something else. All the sufferings Paul's gone through and trusted the Lord anyway. Glorified God, singing hymns to God all through his suffering, giving thanks, All the time in all things in the name of the father in the name of the son to the father that's Ephesians chapter 5 verse 19 Here it is for my power by weakness is perfected. I take it as an instrumental n plus the dative of asthenia asthenia Asthenia weakness. It just means weakness. It means inability. It's the opposite of dunamis or ability power See we're not supposed to be weak as believers We're supposed to be strong enough in our faith that when we're completely incapable, we still trust him. That's strength. It's kind of counterintuitive, like this study on testing. The expectation that people have is that if you're suffering and there's a God who's good, then you must be bad. That's Job's friends. You're suffering. God is good. He's there. So you must be bad. You must have done something wrong. And that's the opposite of what Paul is teaching. He's saying, if you receive incredible blessing from the Lord and the opportunity to serve him, which is this special revelation Paul got. When you receive special blessing, expect to be humbled just to keep you able to serve. Because we are still mired to this flesh. We're still mired to this dying, decaying flesh until it is resurrected. For my power by weakness is perfected. I say Paul gets the answer we need. Point one. Two principles we find in the Lord's reply. Point one. The first is the focus on God's grace. Focus on my grace. Think about grace. And second, there's a sanctifying purpose in the suffering. Sanctifying means setting apart. He's setting you apart more to himself. And so the picture is, we were once far off, now we've been brought near, and more and more and more we're being brought closer to a better, tighter, more dynamic relationship with our Creator. How? He doesn't change. He's immutable. He doesn't become more righteous. You are changing. He's making your character more conformed to His. Sanctifying purpose in the suffering secondly God is I'm sorry The Bible is not always silent about God's reason for doing as well. It doesn't always Just say suck it up Job I'm getting this right and you need to trust me and I'm not going to tell you why it's for my glory That's enough for you to know see we're in a personal relationship and it's all based on trust He's faithful and you trust him you have faith in him and that's the relationship. I The Bible isn't always silent, we find here in Paul. Point three, we don't discover in Job the reason for his suffering, but only the source of the suffering, God, allowing Satan to do what Satan wants. But Satan was given a hint, given a tip, go after Job by God. And also we see the criteria in Job. It isn't that you understand what you're going through, it's that you understand God is there and he's a rewarder of those who diligently seek him. If I'm suffering and I'm diligently seeking, apparently this is for my reward. Go after it. We see the source of the testing for Job and the criteria for success. Fourth, we find in God's answer to Paul the reason for Christian suffering. The reason for Christian suffering. God is working maturity in you through the test. See, Paul is a disciple, I mean an apostle of Jesus Christ. He's once sent out by Christ. through the world. He sets the Roman world and therefore the whole Gentile world on fire. Starts a wildfire called the church throughout the world. And just as Jesus said, the slave is no better than his master. The Apostle Paul is teaching exactly by his experience and writing it down and going through and what you're going to go through, what you are going through. He's teaching what you can expect from the cross daily principle. Take up your cross daily and follow me. Leap up and shout for joy, Jesus says, Matthew 512, when you're persecuted for righteousness. Your reward in heaven is great. Point five, apparently there's no other way to perfect God's power in you and your experience or for your benefit than through your weakness. So take it when God says to Satan, have you considered my servant Job? Take it as one of the greatest, kindest, most loving things God ever did for Job. It's not selling him out. He's defeating his enemy with his lower creature. I think the principle here is absolute, is both absolute and fundamental. God is going to get what he wants out of you that glorifies himself and maximizes your blessing for all eternity. There's going to be this patch, this thorn suffering. And notice Paul is like, OK, we've got the angelic description in chapter 12. In chapter 11, there's all kinds of shipwrecks. There's three nights or day and the night in the deep. being skin alive by the Roman scourge of the Roman whip. I mean no food out cold exposed. physically suffering. It's hard to imagine what that must be like living in the United States today. Even the most poor among us, the poorest I think is not most poor, let's be superlative, the poorest among us live better in terms of climate control and nutrition than kings of antiquity. And that's the way it is. People that don't want to benefit from that within the incredible safety net, they call it, that we've got for people that don't or can't provide for themselves. When you see the guy out there with the sign, it isn't because the shelter isn't there. There's a place for him. It's that he has made a choice. But in any case, not to get off on a rant about that, but think about the suffering Paul is describing, and you start looking down the horizon of where this country is headed in terms of being able to speak your mind, for example. We, we may find ourselves, you know, in FEMA camps as our new residents. And I've used this illustration before. It's a great illustration. We can suffer for the Lord there just fine. And we'll go back to, you know, Roman style Christian living, which isn't the greatest. It's a it's a great opportunity to suffer for Jesus sake, though. In verse 9, the second section, Paul makes an application from what God said to him. God said, my powers may complete in your weakness. So therefore, Paul immediately responds. It's awesome. Paul, OK, I was thinking this way. Take it away. God gives him the answer. So Paul does what we always do when we get a no. We say, oh, God just won't do what I want him to do. No, that's not what Paul does. He immediately about faces. OK, right, let's go the way you're going. Therefore, most gladly, I will boast my weaknesses, so that it may dwell upon me, the power of Christ. Now, the New American Standard translated that it may dwell upon me, translated that the power of Christ may dwell in me, as though the preposition was in. My weaknesses I will boast in my weaknesses. Yeah, that's an in in my weaknesses, but this one is an Epi upon me that it may Epi skano say it's to dwell upon and then in case you missed the Epi here He says it again upon me and I take it this believers is something bigger. This is more than Apparently what God does with you when you're not suffering? Apparently there's, you know, the turbo boost kicks in and your abilities as a vessel to be used of the Holy Spirit are higher and bigger when you're suffering this way. And that's what the Greek makes me think. That's what submitting to the text makes me think. Therefore, I will gladly boast, most gladly, it's a superlative form. Hey, Dista, I got to point this one out. H-E-D-I-S-T-A. That's not a good Christian word. A hedist. Actually, hedonist is the English word that this comes from. You know what a hedonist is? A hedonist is somebody that likes to play pinball and nothing else. It's somebody that does only what feels good, only what they like, only what they enjoy. And there's a pastor out there that's popular, written a lot of books, and some of the things he says I really like. He's coined this phrase called Christian hedonism, and it is this principle that when you enjoy the Lord more than anything else, then he is most glorified when he gets to bless you because you're most satisfied with him. That's a horrible paraphrase of John Piper's Christian hedonism, but the principle is universal through the scriptures. See, what you're going to have to do as you're going to grow in grace is to want what God wants. It's, I want, I desire what God wants. If you don't feel like I want what God wants, that's a good point to start with in your prayers. Lord, I want to want what you want. I want to have that transformation in my character. I want to be that way. Make me more conformed to what you want. That's a prayer that I argue He will answer as He works His Word through you. But here it is, so the power may dwell upon me, the power of Christ may dwell upon me. So Paul is going to boast, not in all his great record of serving the Lord, or all the sufferings really, he's going to boast in his weaknesses, that I'm incapable. He boasts that he's incapable. And that's the opposite of what you would expect. If you get nothing else out of 2 Corinthians, you have to get that Christians have no place to brag, have no place to glorify themselves. There's no glorifying myself as a believer in Jesus Christ. There's only him exalting me as I suffer for his sake. Point one, as we watch Paul learn, we should examine Paul's example and learn from his experience. See, the experiences that count, in my view, are the experiences of Christ that are written down and recorded in scripture, the experiences of Paul, the experiences of Peter and James and John, the experiences recorded in the scriptures, the experiences of Elijah and Moses and Abraham, and what we find in the scriptures. Because your experience, the problem with your experience is you and your interpretation of it. It could be flawed. You could mess it up. You could misinterpret your life. We should learn from Paul's experience. Secondly, why? Because it's recorded in the word of God and Paul's experience and his interpretation of the experience are authoritative. Ever see Christians arguing about their experiences? It's ridiculous, because who are you to say what's the right interpretation of your experience? There's no there's no objective revelation on it. We've got the objective revelation of the word for Paul. And this is exactly the error of Job's buddies. They're misinterpreting his experience. Point three, Paul's petition. expressed his preference. Obviously, it's just an observation. We're watching Paul learn. Express his preference, but God's answer expressed God's preference in direct contradiction of Paul's preference. So who wins that one? God. So then do we change sides or do we keep fighting? No, we're vanquished and we run with the other team. Point five, Paul snaps to conform his attitude and appetites to God's preference. Somebody snapped on the brakes out there. Paul snaps to conform his attitude and appetite to God's preference for him. We have one last visit on suffering. We'll make it neither lucky nor unlucky 13 because God is in control and Jesus Christ controls history. But we'll do 13 lessons on suffering as we close up. And I take it this is not taught, this isn't understood. What is taught is if you're good, you'll get blessed. If you're bad, you'll get cursed. And what we find is that you'll be blessed with suffering that glorifies God in your faith. Remember, believers, in every case, the answer is trust. God gives the word to Paul and he believes it and moves out with that assumption. Okay, well, I'll boast of my suffering then. The word of God is enough for Jesus Christ. Man will not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. The word to Job, finally, After all his rants, at the end of Job, he says, you know who am I to ask? Who am I to even question? I repent in dust and ashes. Heavenly Father, we thank you that you have revealed enough of yourself for us to trust you. Father, that's your game plan, that's your program, that's your intent. You do not tell us everything about yourself. You don't tell us all the whys here and now. We don't even get to see the half of what's going on around us. Father, we've observed that you've left us here and it has a lot to do with what's going on in the angelic conflict. We've observed from scripture that your enemies are warring against you and that we figure into that war as we trust you. Father, we desire to be victorious. We know that he who is in us is greater than he who is in the world. Jesus Christ has overcome the world. We recognize that at the cross, the final victory was one that secured salvation and finally defeated the enemy, and yet he continues to rage and we continue in this phase of your grand strategy. Father, we know that this glorifies you. And that's all we need to know when we hurt. I ask that you would strengthen us. You would remind us of these things we studied. You would encourage us with them that your Holy Spirit would bring them to our memories when it's time for us to encounter that wonderful opportunity to step up to the plate. We ask it in Jesus name. Amen.