Last week we looked at the first of God's strange ministers, the ministry of failure. And there were four major points by way of review. God allows us to fail or He orchestrates failure for us in order to humble us. Pride is the great enemy of God and the kingdom of God. And out of love, God says, if you don't manage to screw up your own life and fail, I will orchestrate your life so that you will fail. I'd rather have you fail Then be proud. Thank you, sir. Not only that, but God uses failure to empty us of pride. It's not that, well, I had pride once and then I got a jolt and got over it. But pride continues to be a recurring problem in the lives of God's people because the Bible teaches that while sin is a defeated foe, it's a present foe and a present reality for the remainder of your Christian life. And the person who says, well, I used to have a problem with pride, but I prayed about it and it went away, I would think would be seriously deluded. Sin has them. And so to continue to empty us of pride, God allows other failures to come into our lives. God uses failure to expose the sin that remains in our hearts. Do you know what your heart is really like? God says, I will show you. I will let you fail and you will see something of the dark recesses of your heart. And finally, God uses failure to show us what the right values of life should be that we should aim for. I'm not going to go into all the details. You can listen to the CD from last week. Today, we're going to look at the ministry of weakness. Why in the world would God ever let you have some kind of thorn in the flesh that would devastate your life? Something so painful, so real, so not going away. And you think, this is just paralyzing me. I can't get over this. I can't get beyond this. First of all, we'll look at what this strange minister of weakness is. And then we're going to use, again, I said this series was given to me, the idea for the series was given to me by Pastor Ron Dunn. And so, he used alliteration to make some points here. And I'm going to say, well, I don't usually like alliteration, but this seems to work so, if it's helpful to you. Number two is God's principle of sanctification revealed in this passage. God's principle of sanctification revealed in this passage. Then third, God's process of sanctification that he shows in this passage. There's a principle of sanctification, the process and how he works it. Number four, the possibilities for sanctification that this passage has. And finally, the provision for sanctification. So there's four Ps, principle, process, possibilities and provision. If you don't like those, you're free to use your own words. But let's look at this ministry of weakness. We just read from 2 Corinthians, and the Apostle Paul says, this devastating thing came into my life. Three times I spent extended times praying about it, and God said, no, I'm not going to take it out of your life. There's a principle in the Bible that if we never get right, our Christian life will never make sense. God is infinitely higher than his creatures. Not just a little bit higher, but infinitely higher than his creatures. And so are his wisdom and so are his ways. If you turn to Isaiah chapter 55, there's a famous verse there, or you can listen. The principles made plain. God says, for my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, as example, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. I said last week, if you're a person who thinks, I've got God in a box, and I know what He's going to be doing, and I've got my life planned out, then you don't know God, and you don't know yourself. Because God is infinite. How in the world could you possibly have God down pat, how could you have him down cold and say, I know everything that's going to happen. How could a, just if you were a mathematician, how could a finite ever think that it could encompass the infinite? How could a finite mind, a finite human being, ever think that it has the infinite God pegged and I know what he's going to do all the time? If you're a realistic person, If you're a Bible person, your attitude should rather be, man, I'm always being surprised by what God's doing. I wouldn't have anticipated this. Never would have planned this. That should be the normal Christian life. But sin has us become cocky and we think we have God in a box. Our Lord demonstrated in his own teaching ministry that the wisdom of God is not what fallen men would think upon their own. Jesus frequently says things that are counterintuitive to the way we live. They're very much counter the wisdom of the culture. Case in point, how are you going to gain your life? Jesus says, if you want to gain your life, then you're going to have to lose it for my sake. How can I be the greatest of all? He says, easy. by becoming the least of all and the servant of all. Hey, wait a minute. That's not how I normally think. That's not like anybody in the world thinks. I've been watching these Donald Trump videos on how to be number one and he never talks that way. He never talks about being the servant of all. No, the world doesn't talk that way. The world in wisdom did not know God. The world in its wisdom did not know Christ. And the world in its wisdom, most of the time, is about 180 degrees different than the way God does things. So we shouldn't be surprised if God does things in our lives that we would have never imagined, wouldn't have planned, and are frequently 180 degrees different than we anticipated. God's wisdom in sovereignly appointing his strange ministers must be learned from the Scriptures. If you're to learn the ways of God, it's not by sitting down and trying to rationally deduce, okay, maybe God will do this. It's by looking in the Scriptures and see what the Scriptures say about how God does things. This is a strange passage. Ron Dunn points out, you have heaven and a thorn in the same passage. In the same few verses, you have a man in heaven, and a man with a thorn that he can't get rid of. That's strange to put them in the same chapter just a few verses apart. Has God ever given you great blessings and great heartaches at the same time? It's frequently God's ways that when great blessings, when heavenly experiences come to the saints, at the same time He will give them great heartaches. He will give them thorns. And when he doesn't answer your fervent prayers to remove the thorn, your first question is, what in the world are you doing? This doesn't make sense. Well, it makes sense if your mind is thoroughly biblical and you're immersed in Scripture. But if you've kind of gone off into la la land of your own thinking, what God's doing doesn't seem to make sense. So great and so different is God and his wisdom from fallen men that this thorn in the flesh that Paul has, will prove to be as determinative for Paul's life as having seen heaven. Let me repeat that. God's ways and his wisdom are so much higher and different than ours that what will impact Paul's life and make him God's man will prove to be more of the thorn, actually, than having seen heaven. Having seen heaven definitely impacted his life. I know where I'm going. I know what the eternal state is like. I've seen it. I've been there, so to speak. But I don't live there every day. I live on this fallen planet, awaiting going to glory. And God gave me this thorn, and He didn't take it away. And it's devastating to me. I've pleaded with Him. I mean, Paul didn't plead that he wouldn't have to have, you know, think of all the things that Paul went to. You don't hear him whining about those things. I don't want to have any more shipwrecks. I don't want to have any more of this. I don't want to have any more of that. I mean, one shipwreck would have done me in. I don't want to take any more trips and shifts. I don't like to tread water." He said he spent a night and a day clinging to a piece of wood in the Mediterranean. You know, an hour would have been enough for me, let alone, you know, 24 hours of bobbing in the Mediterranean. But Paul says, I didn't ask you to take those things away, but you did something to me I never would have believed, and it's the most devastating thing in my life, and I don't think I can live with it. But God's attitude is, you can't live without it. If you're to be my man, if you're to be holy, if you're to be useful, you need this thorn in the flesh. In fact, think of the Lord Jesus Christ. He has His baptism. A dove descends upon Him. A voice from heaven says, this is my beloved Son. With Him I am well pleased. You kind of go, wow, is this when He takes the kingdom? Is this when He conquers the world? No, actually this is just before He's led into the wilderness for 40 days of deprivation, and then to be tempted by the devil. A heavenly experience, God drawing close, God doing really sweet things, and one of the hardest times of your life, back to back. If you look at the lives of Moses or Elijah closely, you see the same thing. Heavenly experiences, and then some giant thorn that came into their lives. God did this to keep Paul usable, not to harm him. Paul survived the thorn, but in God's way of thinking, he wouldn't have survived if I hadn't given him the thorn. Heavenly experiences put us in danger of becoming proud and presumptuous. After a wonderful experience, imagine having seen the third heaven. And the Bible talks about third heaven. The Bible views the cosmos, the creation, the universe, as a three-storied kind of place where you have the immediate heaven around us where the birds fly, And then you have the heavens around that, which is stellar space where you have the stars and the galaxies. And then beyond that is the heaven where God dwells. Paul says, I was caught up so that I actually saw the eternal state. I saw God. I saw what it's going to be like for the saints who've already gone there. Now, you think, well, what if this happened to you or to me? Well, first of all, we'd go into autopilot. I can coast because I've seen heaven. I'm going to be on the Heresy Channel this week, every night, sharing my testimony of having been to heaven. And I'm going to write a book about 20 minutes in heaven. By the way, there's several books like that. There's one guy was in 30 minutes in hell, but somehow he got out and wrote about it. And there's somebody else who was like 30 minutes in heaven and wrote about it. Nothing would ruin your life quicker than the sin of pride and the presumption which would fall hard on it. Because if you become full of yourself, then you begin to presume. So God brings about meekness and humility by weakness. Meekness and weakness almost sound like the same word. And in our culture, we don't want to be meek and we don't want to be humble. And God says, if you're my man or my woman, my child, so to speak, then you're going to learn meekness and you're going to learn humility. And I will teach you that by weakness. Not weakness. Why not? I was thinking about that in the terms of how we misunderstand the ways of God and we misunderstand ourself. If you're a person between the ages of 14 and probably 34, your body is exploding with billions of new cells. And I pushed it beyond just simply the 20s into the 30s because the best power lifters, the best weight lifters in the world are men in their 30s. You have your maximum strength up to about age 35, 36. You can be a very strong person. You have billions of cells exploding and growing and adding to your ability to be strong. And so you wrongly deduce, I feel strong today, so God must be strong today, because somehow it's tied to how you feel. And it's your animal energy, so to speak, just being a creature. I can look back to my early days in my 20s and my first job out of college thinking, what did I really accomplish? What for the kingdom did I really accomplish? Well, as I get out of the sieve and sift it, I kind of, well, I found one or two little particles of things that may have been useful to the master, but a lot of it was just, I'm strong, and I feel full of myself, and I'm full of baloney, and I'm just strong, strong, and I like liken it to if you watch children with a sandbox. Eventually, one of them figures out, it's usually a boy, you know, a lot of the stuff in here I can do certain things with, but sand, you can get it in your hands, and you can throw it in the air. And then pretty soon you're just throwing sand around. And what is the end result of having a fight or throwing sand around in the sandbox? You get an itchy scalp. That's about the sum total. And I look back to my early years and I go, right, I remember an itchy scalp, but what did I really accomplish for the kingdom? I was full of my own animal energy, but was I really trusting in Christ despite how I felt? And the same error is made by elderly people. It's a temptation that young people have. It's a temptation that elderly people have. What's their temptation? I don't feel very peppy today. I don't feel like getting out of bed. You want to get out of bed? Okay, we'll just stay here. Well, somebody's got to fix breakfast. Well, you don't have the animal energy that you had. Ask the feathers. Ask the cooks. Ask people who are over 60, like me. Anyway, that's hard to imagine. You don't have the animal energy. So you wrongly conclude, God can't do things because I feel tired. Well, when you put it that way, it's hard to... Why do you think God can't do things because you feel tired? Because we are still subject to the temptation that how I feel and my animal energy is the basis of what God can do. And that's false. What God can do has nothing to do with how you feel or your abilities or your animal energy. But it's a natural thing to tie What God's going to do, what God can do, to how you feel. Weakness is written about 75 times in the Bible. Weak, weakness, etc. 39 of the times, Paul's the one who's talking about it. 26 times he writes to the Corinthians about this whole subject of weakness. In fact, 52%, if you like percentages, 52% of all the Bible's information and teaching on weakness comes from the Apostle Paul. In 1 Corinthians 4, he chides the Corinthians. He says, you're strong, you're mighty, you're like kings. I wish I was a king. He says, I am a very weak man. And he compares himself in a mental picture of the Roman general coming back from beating some country's army. And the general's coming and his great general and his assistants are behind him. And then the captured army being surrounded by the mighty men of valor and the great gladiators of the Roman army. And then the captured women and children come behind them. And then he says at the very back, at the very back of the procession, as men only fit for the arena, what does that phrase mean? Well, people who are crippled or too old or in some way defective, you can't use them for anything. You can't make them house slaves. You can't use them for toys. So, we'll use them in the arena and we'll set animals loose on them and we'll get to have some fun and see how long it takes a tiger or a rhinoceros or something to maul them and kill them. It'll be a sport. Paul says, we're called as men at the back of the procession as fit only for the arena. That's how weak and foolish we are in the world's eyes. And he says, we've had to embrace that, otherwise we'll be deceived. But he says, you Corinthians, you're so strong, you're so mighty. It's like you were kings, where I'm an apostle and I'm weak and I've learned to embrace my weakness. Weakness is the only way that you're going to learn or that I'm going to learn how to trust God for true Strength for true mighty power. That leaves us with my second point. God's principle of sanctification here is in verse 9. Look at verse 9. But He said to me, My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness. My power is made perfect in weakness. You can't be full of yourself and full of the Holy Spirit at the same time. Now, you know, people come up with all kinds of weird ideas. Well, does that mean we're supposed to kind of go around like this all day, and I'm just nothing, I'm just a hanging nail on the body of Christ, I'm nobody, and kind of a feigned humility, a feigned nothingness? I mean, there have been people, I've met people like that, it's like, ah, it's ugly. They're still full of themselves, but they just pretend what they put on, Humility. No, the condition for God to display his power and ability is our felt weakness and inability. God doesn't simply make do with less than perfect people. Ron Dunn brought up this point. We think, well, God just makes do with what he has, these weak people. And actually, the Bible says, no, God chooses you partially because you are a weak person. Turn to 1 Corinthians chapter 20, chapter 1, 1 Corinthians chapter 1, verse 26 through 29. And Paul talks about something of God's internal logic and how he makes his choices. The Bible doesn't go into a lot of detail about the doctrine of election. It says that God chooses to save people while he chooses to bypass others. God chooses, Ephesians 1 says, for his own pleasure. It pleases him to save these people. But another consideration is in chapter 1, verse 26. Paul says, consider your calling. By that, he's not talking about your occupation calling. He's talking about how God called you to become a Christian. For consider your calling, brothers. Not many of you were wise, according to worldly standards. We didn't have any PhDs from the University of Rome. Not many were powerful. We didn't have too many of the Caesars on our side. Not many were of noble birth. But God shows what is foolish in the world to shame the wise. God shows what is weak in the world to shame the strong. God shows what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, or things that are nothing, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. His point here is that he doesn't just pick people at random, but he picks people that will bring him glory. Here's somebody who doesn't think of himself as anybody special. God says, you aren't anybody special, but I choose to display my glory and I will save you. You aren't the strongest person. You aren't the wisest person. You're not the richest person. You're not the most powerful person. But you're the person in whom I choose to display my glory. It's not saying that He never saves rich people, although few by comparison. It doesn't mean that He doesn't choose smart people, but few by comparison. If you're full of yourself and your intelligence, You're in a very bad way because God says, well, I could just pass you up because you're so full of yourself. If you became a Christian, you'd think it was your wonderful intellect and your wonderful nature that caused me to save you. Just the contrary. I would have to overlook your pride. He says, I choose to save people who are not special in the world's eyes, that I might make them special and I might make the world shamed by the fact that you're so smart and you're so strong and you're so wonderful and you miss Christ. And look at these other people who aren't as strong, aren't as smart, aren't as wonderful. And they found Christ, but through no credit of their own. Three times in this passage, it says God deliberately has chosen weak people for display of his glory. It also clearly says that God passes by the rich and the powerful and the wise in order to show that the surpassing power and wisdom and wealth is from God. So God is not simply making do with us. He deliberately chose us for these reasons. In fact, Paul saw in this lesson that he could write to the Philippians in chapter 3. He says, I've been a Christian now 25 years. He says, and the things that I used to think were so special that I lived for. I now count them as nothing as done compared to gaining Christ. I used to live and die, and he'd list about half a dozen things that were big deals for him. He says, not anymore. I'd rather have Christ than all those things. God is constantly reminding us that we are weak, we are as dust, to show us our weakness and our inability so that he can keep us usable and he can keep us close to himself. What is that hymn we sing? Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it. Prone to leave the one I love. Well, why is it we're prone to wander? Why do we have to remind ourselves to make Christ the Lord of your life over and over again? Why do you have to repent of sins? Because remaining sin would drag you into sin. Because remaining pride would make you think that you're the center of the world, which you used to think before you were a Christian, and God disabused you of that idea, but it's still kind of creeping in the back of your mind. Should God not continue to show us our weakness? Our inability, our pride, and our presumption would take us down for the count. Turn to 2 Chronicles chapter 26, a passage we've visited before. 2 Chronicles is in the Old Testament. It's before the book of Psalms. It's before Job. 2 Chronicles chapter 26, well-known King Uzziah. Isaiah 6 begins in the year King Uzziah died. But in 2 Chronicles 26, we have the life history of King Uzziah. And apart from the grace of God, this would be your life history, and this would be mine. Let's pick it up in verse 4. Speaking of Uzziah, 2 Chronicles 26, verse 4. And he did what was right in the eyes of the Lord according to all that his father Amaziah had done. He set himself to seek God in the days of Zechariah, who instructed him in the fear of God. And as long as he sought the Lord, God made him prosper. So far, so good. And then in verses six and following, he went out and made war against the Philistines and broke through the Wall of Gath, the Wall of Jabna and the Wall of Ashdod, meaning he conquered those cities and he built cities in the territory of Ashdod and elsewhere among the Philistines. God helped him against the Philistines and against the Arabians who lived in Gerbale and against the Millionites. And the Ammonites paid tribute to Uzziah and his fame spread even to the border of Egypt where he became very strong. Well, that's even better. Moreover, Uzziah built towers in Jerusalem at the corner gate and at the valley gate and at the angle and fortified them. And he built towers in the wilderness and cut out many cisterns where he had large herds both in the Shephela and in the plain. And he had farmers and vine dressers in the hills and in the fertile lands, for he loved the soil. That's great. In other words, he was not only a military genius, but he was developing the nation's infrastructure. Moreover, Uzziah had an army of soldiers fit for war and divisions according to the numbers in the master, excuse me, in the muster made by Jael, the secretary, and Maaseah, the officer, under the direction of Hananiah, one of the king's commanders. A whole number of the heads of fathers' houses of mighty men of valor was 2,600. Under their command was an army of 307,500 who could make war with mighty power to help the king against the enemy. And Uzziah prepared for all the army shields, spears, helmets, coats of mail, bows, and stones for slinging. In Jerusalem, he made engines invented by skillful men to be on the towers and the corners to shoot arrows and great stones. Wow. And his fame spread far for he was marvelously helped till he was strong. But when he was strong, he grew proud to his destruction. Remaining sin is more powerful than any of us here. And while it's a defeated foe in our lives by the work of Christ, for your sins shall not be your master, Paul says, for you're no longer under law and the covenant of law, but under grace. But at the same time, you can't take remaining sin and have a la-di-da attitude. The best analogy I can think of is if you live in the South and you don't do anything for your yard for 10 years, what would your yard look like? At the corner of Sandy Creek and Lees Mill Road, there's a beautiful stand of pine. They're about 30 feet tall. And when I moved to my current house in 1986, that was a cleared field. And then a couple years later, they let that cleared field go. And then pretty soon, a few pine trees popped up. And then more pine trees filled in. And then now, you cannot see across that field. It's full of pine trees, very thick, some 30 feet high. You just let something go in the south, and they The natural consequences of living on this planet is that the jungle will take over. If you don't deal with your life and your remaining sin, the jungle of sin will soon become so thick. Somebody might be even tempted to wonder, is that person even a Christian? Here we have King Uzziah, who was marvelously helped till he was strong. When he was strong, he became proud, and he didn't have to concern himself about the things other people did, because he was him, and he could do stuff because he was great. Fools and lesser people, they needed to worry about their heart, and they needed to worry about putting sin to death, and they needed to worry about living close with Christ. But I'm me, and I don't need to do that anymore. Really? Well, maybe your life will show that you needed to, because God says, if you're really mine, I'm going to keep you, then I'm going to have to give you a mighty thorn to keep you from becoming this puffed up person. Uzziah's fall was set up by his success. And you know what subsequently happened. He became so proud that other people can't do this, but I can. Only priests can go into the temple. Only priests can go into this place. But I'm the king, and I'm a great king, and I can go in there. And the priest stood at the doorway and said, you can't do this. You'll bring judgment on yourself. It's not right for you to do this. He became violently angry and he and his courtiers pushed them out of the way and they stormed in and God struck him with leprosy. And while he was running his mouth in anger, they pointed out that he was covered with leprosy and he was grossed out and his courtiers hustled him out of the temple. But he was a leper the rest of his life, had to move out of the king's palace, had to move out of the city, had to live out away from people, had to be quarantined as the rest of his life as the leper king. The man who presumed on God. So in Isaiah chapter 6, Isaiah the priest says, In the year our leper king died from presumption, I saw the Lord high and lifted up. Your heart can become so lifted up with pride that you can become totally useless to God. He doesn't get glory through your life. You're not useful to Him in other ways. The principle again is God's strength is made perfect in weakness. You think, but I can't function if I'm weak. But if I was strong, then I could function. It seems counterintuitive to the way we naturally are. To be reliant upon someone else, to be reliant upon God and not upon ourselves seems so counterintuitive. But it's God's, my ways are higher than your ways, wisdom. We're creatures. We were made to be dependent on God. Sin broke that relationship. And men and women were driven out of the Garden of Eden. We could no longer have the same fellowship with God. It didn't change our status as creatures. But now we're creatures without a relationship. We're creatures without this relationship with Almighty God. And coming back into this relationship, we need to be reminded we're still creatures. We are still made to run on God. And whenever we become full of ourselves and go through a period of time where I don't need to run on God or I just check in with him periodically to rubber stamp my grandiose plans, we're headed for a great fall. So God says, I would rather stab you in the heart with this thorn. I would rather stab you in the heart with this thorn and make you totally wiped out and needing to seemingly crawl ahead with me. then be full of yourself and run off and destroy yourself. To put it another way, better to be maimed and go to heaven than be full of yourself and strong and go to hell. What did God do to Jacob? Jacob was the master schemer, the guy who always played the angles, who no matter what happened, he always landed on his feet. He was always the one who got by. And God says, I don't care if you've out-conned everybody else on the planet, you're not out-conning me. And God puts his hip out of joint. Now, the largest ball socket in your body, the largest joint, is your hip. You know, you see athletes get hurt. Well, he dislocated a thumb. I've had that happen once. It was painful, but not unbearable. Dislocating an elbow. Oh, I don't even want to think about that. Dislocating a knee. Whoa. Thankfully, I never had that happen. Dislocating a hip. Whoa, what kind of all these great tendons and muscles and pulling that ball joint out of that socket and, oh, how your body is... And then just slipping it back in. And then the rest of your life, you've got this messed up situation where Jacob walks with a limp the rest of his life. Yes, but he was never Jacob the same way after that. He was Jacob all the way after that. He was a saved man and still tried to be a Christian believing con artist. And God says, I'd rather do this to you and have you go to heaven and go to hell hole. So I'm going to put your hip out of joint and you will drag a leg the rest of your life and you'll be my man." And he does. He said, well, God's pretty serious. God can play pretty serious. Well, eternity is serious. This life is serious. We have only one life to live. Do you want to waste it? Do you want to throw it away? No. God's strength is made perfect in my weakness. The greatest evangelist of the 19th century was Dwight Moody. He was in 8th grade when he was converted. He was working as a stock boy in a shoe store in Boston. He came from a low-class background, never went to school beyond, I think, 7th grade, had a Boston accent, but was led to Christ by a Christian man who worked as a shoe salesman. As he grew older, he moved to Chicago because the city of the century in the United States was Chicago. That's where you go to make your money. So he moved to Chicago. And he was growing up there as a Christian and began to see that he had a heart to tell people about Christ. And he wanted to teach a Sunday school class in this church. And they said, well, we don't have a class for you. Why don't you go find some boys and lead them to Christ and then you can have a Sunday school class. So he went out and found street kids running around Chicago and offered to take them on pony rides by Lake Michigan if they would come to Sunday school. So someone loaned him a pony, he gave them pony rides down by Lake Michigan, and they came to church. And it was such a big to-do at the church, because they were all the ragamuffins off the streets, and they were creating a big to-do in this nice, established, conservative church. They said, why don't you have your classes out by Lake Michigan? And then, when you kind of get these wild mustangs broken, bring them back in the church, because they're really wild mustangs. Well, he did all that. And then during the Civil War, he was a great evangelist preaching to the soldiers during the Civil War. But in the last half of the century, he was a mighty evangelist. But Blight Moody had obvious limitations. They said he so mangled the king's English that he could make Mesopotamia a one-syllable word, or Jerusalem a one-syllable word. When he was preaching in England, the English were horrified. This guy doesn't even speak good American. One columnist attacked Moody with great sarcasm and contempt. This man is uneducated, uses bad English, has a high-pitched voice with a nasal tone. It's his Boston accent. He's overweight and generally rough around the edges. I can see nothing in this man to account for his success. Moody read the newspaper account out loud to his associates and he exclaimed, that's my secret. I don't see any reason why this guy should be anybody special. And he wasn't. He was the display of God's glory. I can take a Dwight Moody with a 7th grade education and make him a great man of God that the people who are Dwight Moody's associates were PhDs and professors who knew the Bible but didn't have God's hand upon them in the same way that Dwight Moody did. That's my secret. I'm nobody special. I'm a weak man, but I have the power of God upon me. Only when we are weak and willingly embrace our weakness, notice they say sometimes we're weak and we curse it. But if we're weak and we come to see the truth and we willingly embrace this weakness as God, you sent it into my life to keep me usable, to keep me from becoming proud for the display of your glory. So I willingly embrace this weakness and I praise you for it. It's not until then that it counts. God can make you weak and you kick and fight and moan and scream the whole time. No credit to you. But if you understand what God is doing and embrace it and praise him for it. then the power of God is made manifest. My next point, God's process of sanctification is revealed in this passage in verse 7 and 8. God uses a thorn in the flesh to keep his people trusting and usable. Now it's interesting, I'm not sure why they translated thorn, because it would be like, if you've ever been on a construction site or been around splitting up wood, sometimes you'll get a splinter off a piece of wood you're working with, and the splinter might be 8, 10, 12 inches long. In other words, it's something you could use as a dagger or a knife. It's that word. It's not a thorn. If we think, oh, a little rose thorn. Not even some of those thorns in Africa that they take these thorn bushes and use them as fences, as corrals around animals. This is a wooden stake that you'd impale something on. In fact, this is a noun. If you were using it as a verb, it would be translated as to crucify. Paul was given a stake that nailed him to the wall. or nailed his feet to the ground, that impaled him by weakness. I can't deal with this. I really can't. All the other stuff I've been through, hard as it is, I can deal with. I cannot deal with this. Now, three times he prayed for this thorn to be removed. It wasn't just three times, OK, God, take this thorn away. One. Three times. Number two. Three times. OK, I've prayed three times. But you can imagine Paul having three times, and three is a biblical number for completion. I spent three separate seasons of prayer at different times recently, asking you, begging you to take this out of my life. I can't live with this. And God said, no, you can't live without it. Have you ever told God that if He just would remove X from your life, then you could really serve God? You could really be counted for something? If He would just take X out of your life, then you could really move ahead. It's like we're saying to God, if you would just remove my difficult spouse, my difficult boss, my physical ailment, my difficult parents, my sickness, whatever it is, then I could really be your man. I could really be your woman. I could really be your teenager. Paul doesn't say what his thorn actually was and I think that's important because it's not really important. Scholars have speculated and some of them seem to have more plausibility than others but it's better that he didn't because there are so many different things that might be thorns to us. But it was something that he viewed as a handicap, a huge handicap, an impediment to really being what he wanted to be. If God would only remove this, then I could be such a good Christian. Lord, if you would change my husband, I could really live a much better Christian life. Lord, if you would just change my circumstances, I could really count for you. Lord, if you would just change my parents, my Christian life would be so much better. In the meantime, we mope and hope and tell God that if he would only change your conditions and your situation, then your life could finally be what you wanted it to be. But God's consistent answer to our request is, no, I will not change your circumstances, but I will change you. Remember, too, and this is an interesting thing, the thorn was an instrument of the devil and a gift of God at the same time. It says in our text that because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited. Now, it was a messenger of Satan. There's a knock at the door. You open the door. This is for you. And they stab you in the chest with it. You kind of reel back and the door slammed. There's a note attached. Dear child of God. This is for your good. Signed, God. Well, wait a minute. The messenger who delivered it was Satan. He stuck it in the middle of my chest. It was a harpoon. It wasn't a stake. It was a harpoon. I just kind of staggered back in the house. But what does Satan care if you become conceited? What does Satan care if you become this big, arrogant, proud, presumptuous person? He doesn't. Satan had evil, malevolent plans for Paul. But God used Satan's sinful plans for Paul for his own good, holy, loving, wise plans for Paul. God uses the devil to accomplish his holy and righteous purposes. And you can imagine how frustrating it is for the devil because as hard as he tries and the very worst, most evil, most wicked things that he plans only accomplish only how God accomplishes his holy and loving purposes for his people. We know from Acts 19 that Paul was known in hell, because there's a funny story. I remember the very first time I read it as a college student, I laughed out loud. These Jewish exorcists, the sons of Sceva, and they were going around doing these ritual exorcisms with, say, all this mumbo-jumbo and trying to cast demons out of people. And one of these sons of Sceva went up to this demon-possessed person and said, I adjure you in the name of Jesus, whom Paul preaches. In other words, I'm not doing it on my own authority, but I watched this other guy and it seemed to work for him. So, on the basis of what that guy said, come out of him. And the demon did come out of him and said, Jesus we know and Paul we know, but who are you? And it says the demon beat them up and beat up his brothers and they went running off. It's kind of like a cartoon. Paul was known in hell. Why? Because he was a dangerous man to the enemy's stranglehold on this planet. So we need to do something about this man. I've got it. I've got it. What a stroke of genius. We'll give this man this incredible thorn, this harpoon right in his chest. And this will keep him from being such a threat to our worldly kingdom. And the point is, is that Christ says, thank you, devil. This will be very useful in making Paul more usable and to keep him safe. You know, the only reason God even allows the devil to continue to exist is because the devil, against his own will, serves God's purposes. The devil serves God's purposes. I want to do something nasty to that person. God says, thank you, Satan. I can use that in this person's life. You meant it for evil, but I meant it for good. What is your thorn in the flesh? Is it your spouse? I wish I had his cute sense of humor, but he says, is it your mother-in-law? No, we can't go there, he says. So we have a little excursus on mothers-in-law. Is it your spouse? God, if I just didn't have this person, boy, I would be gangbusters for you. Is it your parents? Is it your boss at work? Is it your job? Do you have some kind of debilitating sickness or disease? There are a thousand different possibilities for what the thorn might be, but God is allowing Satan to buffet you with this thorn to spare you from pride and to make you Christlike and usable. Fourth, God's possibilities of sanctification revealed in this passage, the second part of verse nine. Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, plural, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me." There are two glorious possibilities of what God's doing in your life. In fact, He may be doing both, but He's surely doing one or the other. First, God can give you victory in the midst of your great difficulties and sufferings. God can be giving you a present victory while you're going through this terrible time of suffering and difficulty with your thorn. Paul says literally, I will boast Some verses translate it, I will glory. The Greek word means to shout, which means you're in a worship service and you're so overcome with the Spirit that you shout out your praise to God for what He's doing. I will glory, I will boast in my weaknesses. Paul recognizes that God is using this thorn in his life and that it's absolutely necessary. It's not a cheap add-on that your life could do without if you don't have it. He says, it's absolutely necessary because of the surpassing revelations I gave to Paul. If I don't do this, he will blow up like the Hindenburg and pop with pride. So I will give him this thorn in the flesh. It's absolutely necessary for him to make him the man I want him to be. And Paul turns around and glories in it. And it does work its effect, and God's power does rest upon him. How does Paul do it? Look at all the things he's got wrong. Look at what's wrong with his life now. How does Paul do it? It's Paul's God. Duh. This is what it means that the surpassing power of God is seen in a person's life who, from one vantage point, should be devastated by this thorn. How do they do what they do? Because the power of God rests on their life. There's no other explanation. Look how devastated they are. Look how weak they are. They feel their weakness. They have felt weakness. And earlier we talked about the fact that felt weakness is a temptation to feel like God can't work or isn't working. And yet Paul says, it's when I have this absolute felt weakness. I'm devastated and nailed to the ground by this thorn. And I feel hopeless and helpless in and of myself. But the fact that I keep on persevering, I keep on doing what I do, is a testimony that something greater than Paul isn't working Paul's life. It's the God of Paul, the Lord Jesus Christ, risen from the dead. Who's the hero of the Christian life? Jesus Christ. Do we serve a triumphant, kingly Lord who went up and down in Palestine in a chariot and throwing bouquets to people and throwing candy to the children and reigning and showing his power and people bowing down to him? People mocked Christians in the first century and they mock you today. You fools. You serve a suffering Savior. What a bunch of fools. There's weakness in this. Your king was crucified. Come on. Can't you come up with a better leader than this? Your leader was crucified. And hey, we know that. And hey, by the grace of God, we saw that we needed someone to be a suffering savior because we didn't want to pay the penalty of our own sins. But we continue to worship this one who came in weakness, trusting himself to his father, and his weakness ended up having tremendous power behind it. He was crucified in weakness, but he bore the sins of all of his people for all time. And so he says, in imitating me and following me, I want you to learn weakness and in the midst of your weakness find great power that's a credit to the one who is behind you. Charles Spurgeon was arguably the greatest preacher of the 19th century, at least in the English-speaking world. He had the first megachurch when there weren't megachurches. He was 19 years old when he went into London after preaching for two years out in the countryside and he took the city of London by storm. The largest city in the world was turned upside down from the boy preacher. And the boy preacher was incredible. He had grown up with a pastor father and a pastor grandfather. His grandfather, his dad was so poor that he spent summers living with his grandparents because his parents couldn't afford to feed their kids. And his grandfather had this great library of old Puritan books. And Spurgeon at age 10 and 12 was reading books that I didn't hear about until my 40s practically. And he was reading them and learning from these things. And he was given a great natural voice, a great strong constitution. And the guy could preach. And the guy was incredible. We still read his stuff today. Well, he came down with a disease which is misunderstood by some today. It's called nephritis. The common word is gout. It used to be called the rich man's disease because it thought, well, rich people have a certain diet and they get the gout. But gout is an inflammation of the nerve endings of your joints, such that your joints all feel like they're on fire. And at one point, and this is early on in his ministry, as a young man he's afflicted with gout. And his ankles, his knees, his hips, his hands, his shoulders, they felt like they were on fire. It can be excruciatingly painful. He tells one story when he was lying in bed, he had a two week bout of gout. The gout comes and it lasts for a period of time and then it goes away. And then it comes back again and it goes away. It goes on like that your whole life. He had one two-week bout where he was lying in his bed and he laid there almost unable to sleep and so in such pain that he laid there quietly crying to himself. And at one point he decided, this is so excruciating, I'm going to try to turn over to see if I can find some position that's less excruciating than this. And after rotating a full 360 degrees, the original unbearable position was better than any other unbearable position he found in rotating. He was just in agony. And he asked his wife and his assistant who were in his, he was trying to work and he was dictating to his assistant and his wife was there. And he asked them to leave and he just poured out his heart to the Lord and he said, Lord, I'm a, father and I love my sons and if they were in agony, if I could do anything to ameliorate their pain, I would. And I'm not asking you to take the pain away. I'm just saying make it bearable." And God answered his prayer. He never had a bout of gout like that the rest of his life. He lived to be 56. But he didn't have a pain-free day the rest of his life. The greatest preacher in the world was always in pain. The greatest preacher in the world was a great friend of sufferers. And how many of you have read things written by Spurgeon on suffering? Because the greatest preacher in the world had a life of suffering that kept him usable. What would your head be like if at the age of 19, you're the greatest preacher in the world? Hi, can you help me bring my head into church today? It's like this incredible comic person with huge pride. And God says, oh, Oh, Charles, I will make you usable and I will keep you usable. I will afflict you and you will have this thorn. And he didn't take it away. He made it bearable. But Spurgeon was kept from inflating pride. Gout was God's thorn to keep Charles Spurgeon. The power of Christ is made available to you in wonderful supply. Look at verse nine. It says, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. And the word may rest upon me is the idea that you're walking to a spot and suddenly this tent comes down around you. This tent is laid over the top of you. In the temple, before there was a temple, there was a tent of meeting, the tabernacle. It was a portable tent as they moved in the wilderness. And in there, in the tent of meeting, there was the Holy of Holies where there was a visible manifestation of God. The Holy Spirit made himself visible to Israel in this way. At nighttime when it was pitch dark, except for the stars, there's no lights out in the desert, there's this giant pillar of fire that God the Holy Spirit gave them light by his own presence at night. During the day as they walked in the cloudless desert, there was a pillar of cloud to let them know that God was with them and leading them. But in the tent of meeting, in the tabernacle, in the Holy of Holies, Above the Ark of the Covenant that had the broken tablets of the Ten Commandments, the cherubim facing inward, the golden cover called the Mercy Seat, there was a visible manifestation of God the Holy Spirit called the Shekinah Glory. And most Bible students believe at this place right here, Paul is saying, when you are at this place of absolute misery and weakness, Paul says, you should boast in this because then the power of God dwells, is spread over me. It's like I become the place where the tent of meeting is. God, the Holy Spirit's ministry rests upon me in an unusual way. You can see it in the tent of meeting. How does that woman make it? Look at what she's going through. God hasn't seen fit to take this from her. How does she do it? The glory of God is visible in her life. Look at this man. He's been struggling with this. How does he go on? How does he persevere? Why doesn't he just curse God and die? Oh, I see. The glory of God rests upon that man's life. God wants you to learn this lesson and to thank Him for your thorn and glory in it. Like I said before, if you whine, murmur, complain, gripe, and otherwise show that you don't believe God, then you shouldn't expect the power of God to rest upon you. God's not doing this for his health, and he's not doing it for your health. He's doing it for your spiritual health, and you're good. If you have this terrible thorn and carefully ask God three times for him to remove it, and he doesn't, then God wants you to praise him for it, by faith, not because I like the thorn, not because I like the feeling of pain or whatever psychological or physical or whatever it is. But because I believe you, what you say in your word is more true than my present experience of feelings. Most of us are run by our feelings. This doesn't feel very victorious. No, he didn't say it would feel victorious. He just said it is. Do you think the second coming is not true? You haven't experienced that. Do you think heaven's not true? You've not experienced that. If reality is based upon your experience and your feelings, then you've got to wipe out a whole part of the Bible. But if God says something is true, then by embracing that by faith, I thank Him if I believe Him. His thorn is the instrument that God's using to make you into a powerful Christian, a display of His glory in your life. Now, we want to make the caveat, we're not talking about sins here or moral problems. Well, I have this sin in my life and it bothers me. We're not talking about sins in your life. We're not talking about a moral failure in your life. We're talking about things that God put in your life that aren't sins, God always wants you to deal with your sins and puts them to death. But problems, afflictions, heartaches that won't go away are another story. God lets Satan give you afflictions, heartaches, and gut-wrenching difficulties to keep you from trusting in yourself and to make you trust in Christ. Final point, and I'll hurry and finish. God's final provision for sanctification is revealed in this passage in verse 10. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses. Paul said in Philippians 4, he learned contentment. Why did he have to learn contentment? Paul's a strong man, an intelligent man, a gifted man, an educated man, an energetic man. All the right things to make a great man of this world. And Paul would get the glory for that. Here's a strong, intelligent, gifted, educated, energetic man. who has this stake through his heart and he just doesn't see how he can get on with it. And he accomplishes great things. But rather than the glory going to Paul, the glory goes to Jesus Christ. When Paul cried out to take the thorn away, God's answer was no. My grace is sufficient for you. In this paradox of your felt weakness, my grace is sufficient for you. What does the word sufficient mean? Ron Dunn was from Texas and Oklahoma, and he knew of a Texas oil man who purchased a Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud. If you know the world of expensive cars, Rolls-Royce is up there. You can talk about Maseratis or Bugattis, but if you want to get a Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud, you're going to spend a quarter million dollars maybe. And Rolls-Royce makes aircraft engines, so if you have a Rolls-Royce you have a Rolls-Royce engine, and you have one powerful car. It's a very heavy car. It's like a really nicely designed tank on wheels. But it has this huge engine. But when you buy a Rolls-Royce, the specs don't tell you how many horsepower this engine has. Of course, this bragging Texas oil man, one of them, he goes, I've got a Rolls-Royce Silver Club. It's got 5,000, you know, horsepower. And he called the dealer, and he says, and my specs here doesn't say how many horsepower it has. No, sir, it's not our policy to publish that. And he jawed around with the dealer, and finally he went over the dealer's head to the district supervisor. And then he finally began to write to the guys in England, and finally he sent an email, he said not an email, he sent a telegram to the president of Rolls-Royce demanding to know how many horsepower were in his silver cloud. And the president decided, you know, this guy is bugging us at every level, we'll give him an answer. So they sent him back a telegraph, a telegram with one word, adequate. The mighty Rolls-Royce engine was plenty more than adequate for this Texas oil man. You don't want to put the pedal to the metal because you couldn't drive it. So, what is Paul saying here? My grace is sufficient for you. Is that like kind of a... What is sufficient? It sounds kind of lame. Well, let's look at it this way. If God gave you all of His grace and all of His power, you would explode. Is this finite creature going to encapsulate the infinite God? He says, the grace I give you, trust me, it'll be enough for your little puny being to handle. It's sufficient. It's adequate. All the greatness of my grace will be in you. All that you can handle. Not until glory, when we get a resurrection body, can we even be in the presence of God and stand the fullness of his presence around us, let alone his grace. He said, my grace is sufficient. Trust me. And so Paul learned to be content. I have content with weaknesses. You know, you're a hard charger. You're smart. You're strong. You're gifted. And you're weak. That doesn't go together. No, it doesn't. It's counterintuitive. But you'll be a greater person than if I hadn't done this to you. Insults. You know, in the world, when you're weak, you get insulted. Hardships. Yeah, life's harder when you're weak. Persecutions, people will go after you when you're weak. Calamities, that seems to happen to weak people. I learned to be content with this. I saw that this was for my best. And God trained me. I learned to be content. God has placed a thorn in your life to show you that the power to achieve what you achieve is not of you. So when people see your heartache thorn, and wonder how you survive, you point to Jesus Christ. When people hear of your thorn and wonder how in the world you make it, you point to Jesus Christ. When people see your joy in Christ, knowing of your great affliction, God gets the glory. When people hear from you your quiet trust and praise for your Savior, knowing of the great struggle you're going through, God gets the credit. the ministry of weakness. My power reaches its best peak in weak people. So I will afflict you to keep you and to make you usable. Let's pray. Father, this is so counterintuitive, so much against the natural thinking of our sin-blasted hearts that you will have to teach it to each of us. You don't just afflict people of a certain age. You afflict your saints. Lord, I thank you that you show us great and wonderful things, and there are great and wonderful experiences ahead for each of the people of God. But with them will come thorns to keep us from becoming exalted beyond measure so that we blow up and burst with pride and fall to presumption like King Uzziah did. Lord, help us to have faith, to believe your promises, to embrace our thorn, to kiss the thorn because it's from you, to thank you and to praise you for your honor and glory alone, that we might be a demonstration that God is alive and real in our lifetime. I pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.