How Christ’s Power Is Perfected in Weakness

There are three reasons why I want to focus on this text in particular, 2 Corinthians 12, verses seven to 10. Number one, it's God's word. And those of us who have grown up in the church need to just say those words very slowly.

The God who created the universe, holds it in being, guides every part of it, knows everything, is infinitely good, and infinitely wise, has spoken. That's breathtaking. So that's reason number one.

I think those four verses are the mind of God. If tonight, when we're done in 30 minutes or so, we have understood them, we know what God thinks. Number two, these four verses, as much, almost as any verses are not only Christ exalting, but they are Christ's intention to be Christ exalting, which is very offensive to thousands of people.

That Christ intends to exalt Christ, drove away C.S. Lewis for years. It drove away Brad Pitt to this day. That's no joke, it's his testimony.

It's his testimony. This truth drove him from Christianity. He grew up a Southern Baptist kid.

It drove away Oprah Winfrey when she was 27 years old. What I'm about to show you, drove these people away from church and Christianity. It drove away Eric Reese, professor at the university.

It drove away Michael Prowse, who writes for the London Financial Times. What we're gonna see in these four verses is an egomania. That's what Eric Reese calls it.

Christ's egomania. And one of my purposes is to help you not be driven away, but you can't get ready not to be driven away until you see it and how offensive it is to the human mind. That's number two.

This verse, these four verses go to the heart of that issue. And the third is because there's hardly a sweeter set of four verses to make Christian hedonism plain, compelling in our suffering. So those are my three reasons for choosing this text to talk with you about.

I love this text. I worked my way through 2 Corinthians doing look at the book, about 170 episodes or something like that. And they're not on the internet yet, but they will be.

And so as I worked my way through it, I just thought, I love this book. I love this book and I love this man. I have an exercise room in my attic where I jog three times a week.

And I have a big picture of my dad, about this big, big picture of Jonathan Edwards on this wall, a little picture of Dan Fuller over here. And then a big picture of the apostle Paul, Paul Rembrandt's rendition. Because, and before I run, I turn off my audio book and I just go from one to the other.

Thank you, God. Thank you. Thank you for my father.

Thank you for Jonathan Edwards. Thank you for Dan Fuller. And I love the apostle Paul.

I love you. You hear me? You hear me? In heaven, I love you. I really do.

I mean, my love affair with the apostle Paul is one of the main reasons I'm a Christian. I don't know how you became a Christian or stay a Christian through all the ups and downs of your life. But if you fall in love with a person who has suffered as much as Paul, met the Lord Jesus on the Damascus road, and he's either a liar or an inspired apostle, I cannot not believe him.

Okay. That's why we're doing what we're doing now for the next few minutes here. So I apologize that those of you at the back are gonna see very small print.

There's only one slide that has small print, but it's small for you. And I will try to make everything as plain as I can. And you're welcome to come sit on the floor right up here if you want to, in order to see this better.

But they asked me, can't you split that in two? Because if you split it in two, it'll look like that. But I can't because I have to make some connections between what's at the front and what's at the back. And so just hang with me and squint and let's do the best we can.

So I'm gonna read it, and then we'll spend the next 30 minutes looking at the book. So, to keep me from becoming conceited, because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given to me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited. Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it would leave me, should leave me.

Let's picture that now. Please, Jesus, it hurts. Please take it away.

No, please take it away. No, please, please, it hurts. No.

But he said to me, my grace is sufficient for you. My power, my power, this is really offensive. Just think it through.

My power is made perfect in your pain. Therefore, you talk about an unusual human, that's a weird therefore. Because you're gonna use my pain to make you look good, therefore, I'm gonna be happy in it.

That's crazy. Don't you wanna be crazy? I just so wanna be crazy like this. Therefore, I will boast the more gladly, hedonista, the word from which we get hedonism, gladly of my weaknesses so that the power of Christ may rest upon me for the sake of Christ.

Therefore, I am content, content, glad with weaknesses. And what he means by weaknesses is insults, hardships, persecutions, calamities, all the sorts of things that today people are getting their back up about and going on the internet and saying, I won't be treated like that. The world doesn't have a clue what this man is like.

This man is so from another planet. And so is Christianity. For when I'm weak, then am I strong.

So let me pray one more time before we push in here. Father, we only have a few minutes to, see glorious things and I ask for your help. Help me not to go down rabbit trails that would be unhelpful but to focus on those things that these folks in this room right now need to hear.

I pray this in his name, Jesus' name, amen. Twice, this is remarkable that he would repeat it exactly the same way, to keep me from being conceited. To keep me from being conceited.

The beginning of the verse, the end of the verse, this action of the risen Christ is to keep me from being conceited. Got it, got the main point? Jesus means to kill pride, conceit, self-exaltation in the apostle Paul. What caused it? I mean, what's the danger? What has happened that makes that necessary? Because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations.

What's that? Here they are in the preceding verses. I know a man in Christ who 14 years ago, this is Paul. This is Paul, he's not talking about a third person.

He's using the third person, I wish we had time to talk about this, to show how much he's gonna push this into the background while the super apostles who are opposing him put it in the foreground. They're so big into revelations. They're so big into boasting in their big shot abilities to be better than Paul.

And Paul says, I know a man who had way better experiences in Jesus than you've ever had. But I'm just gonna boast in weakness. That's the idea here.

So I know a man in Christ who 14 years ago was caught up. Who caught him up? God did. Who's caught up into the third heaven.

Whether in the body or out of the body, I don't know. God knows. And I know that this man, me, was caught up into paradise.

Third heaven, paradise. Whether in the body or out of the body, I don't know. God knows.

And he, me, heard things that cannot be told, which man may not utter. Now, this is what you've all prayed for. If you just show yourself.

If you just send an angel or just do something amazing. My life is just so ordinary. I want something like that.

This is a great text for you. Because what's the upshot of this? Danger. Spiritual danger.

I mean, you would think if there is anything sanctifying in the world, it would be to go to heaven for a half an hour. People write books about that. One of them's named Don Piper.

Don Piper. I wrote him because, well, I won't go into that, but died, went to heaven, came back. Wouldn't that change your life? No, it absolutely wouldn't change your life.

It'd make you proud, make you arrogant, make you conceited. That's what it would do. So, why would Jesus give him that experience? Why would he give you? Why would he let me do what I'm doing right now in this 40 minutes? This is going to make me proud.

I'm going to go home tonight and think, I think they liked it. You see how dangerous that is? That's just unbelievably dangerous. I mean, desiring God is a successful ministry.

We have a big budget. Millions of people all over the world tune into our stuff. That's horribly dangerous.

You got it? So, he says, Jesus knows in giving me that, he knows my flesh. He knows where that's going. Is this going nowhere good? So, what's he going to do? He's going to solve this problem of sinful conceit by giving him a thorn.

What's that? Nobody knows what that is, except I think we can say with a fairly high degree of confidence that it's physical, not relational. I mean, some people have said, his enemies are his thorn. I don't think that works.

I think in the flesh here is really significant. And, you know, here's more reasons why I love him. Here's Galatians 4.13. You know it was because of a bodily ailment that I preached the gospel to you.

Paul lived with a bodily ailment and it was offensive to the people that saw him. Maybe runny eyes or some horrible patch of skin or maybe he was stooped over, I don't know. Scoliosis, something that made him just hard to look at.

And though my condition was a trial to you, you didn't scorn or despise me. And here's 2 Corinthians 10.10. And they, the super apostles who are opposing me, they say his letters are weighty and strong, but his bodily presence is weak. This man is so unimpressive, he shouldn't be considered an authoritative apostle.

He's just not impressive enough. And then you talk about suffering. Here's just a glimpse into chapter 11 of this book, 2 Corinthians.

I experienced far more imprisonments than those super apostles. Countless, he could not count the beatings. You ever had a beating? If I had a cluster of beatings, I'd count them and I'd tell you every one of them.

He couldn't even count them. Five times I received at the Jews, hands of the Jews, 40 lashes less one. Five times 39 is, five times nine, 45, carry the four, 195.

You don't have a back left after that. You don't. That may have been the thorn.

One, you shred a back 195 lashes in five different settings, just after they got healed. Shred it, heal, shred it, heal, shred it, heal, shred it, heal, shred it, heal. You can't move in the morning when you get up.

I love the apostle Paul, next to Jesus. I love him because he endured all that for us. Three times he was beaten with rods, once stone.

So it's just easy. The thorn could have been any of those. Okay.

So who gave him the thorn? He's a messenger of Satan to harass him. Well, Satan is not eager for Paul not to be conceited. Right? Satan is not into helping you be godly.

God is, Jesus is. And so this thorn is from God, from Jesus, through Satan. Now that's worth spending another half hour on.

This is not new in the Bible. This is Job all over again. He went out from the presence of the Lord and he struck Job with boils.

Satan struck him with boils. And here's what Job said. Shall we receive good at the hand of God and shall we not receive evil in all this Job did not sin with his lips.

Satan went out from the presence of the Lord and struck Job. Satan struck Job. Satan is real.

He hates you. And he will make you as miserable as he can inside and outside. And when Job responded to his wife who said, curse God and die.

He said, shall we not receive evil as well as good from the Lord? And the writer said, that's not a sin to talk like that. And you know it's not because the inspired writer in chapter 42 says, Job's family showed him sympathy and comforted him for all the evil that the Lord had brought upon him. I'm a Calvinist.

God governs everything. No exceptions. Satan included.

He's on a leash. He cannot do anything to you but what God ordains for him to do. Include, make you humble.

And I get a great deal of pleasure out of thinking of Satan being made the instrument of my sanctification. Because that's exactly what this says, is it not? The design is no conceit. I want a humble apostle.

I want a humble apostle, no conceit. My solution, use Satan to take away your braggadocio. So what might that mean for me tonight? I mean, my life has been a healthy life.

My life has been a happy life. My life has been a blessed life. And it's been an embattled life in many ways.

And God has been merciful to figure out my need for pain and pleasure, like the old Swedish hymn said. And I'm not done, right? 79 is like the beginning of the hard times, not the end. I'm not expecting it to be easy.

Dying is not easy. And I just pray that this will happen. That's why I linger over it.

Okay, let's, so we've got God through Satan, humbling Paul with his thorn, because God blessed him so much with his ministry and with his going into heaven and seeing these revelations. Now he prays for this thorn to go away three times and the Lord doesn't take it away. Here's what Jesus said, verse nine.

He said to me, my grace is sufficient for you. So I'm going to bring pain into your life and I'm not gonna answer your prayer to take it away, not the way you think. And I'm going to be enough for you.

I brought this along mainly as a, this is Johnny Erickson Todd's newest book. I think it's newest, he might've written another one since, this is about a year old. The Practice of the Presence of Jesus.

My wife and I read this together every night, one page a night, they're little short devotions. If there was ever a beautiful exposition of these verses in a human life, it's Johnny Erickson Todd. Now she'd be so embarrassed if she heard me say this, but I cannot not love her.

I mean, I love a lot of people. I just, I love Johnny Erickson. I wrote her when I read this preface because she calls herself a five point Calvinist.

She's never been this explicit about her Calvinism. And I was so blown away by, you're going public with five point Calvinism in the introduction? And I saw a road to her and said, what's up? And she just, she wrote back and said, how can you not, how can you not celebrate the things that have sustained you for 55 years of paralysis? If I have time at the end, I'll read this, but I know I won't have time. So get the book.

I'm requiring this as a seminary text in my class in May on second Corinthians. Okay. My grace, she would say, Jesus is enough.

Jesus is enough. That's what she would say. And that's what this is.

My grace is sufficient. I'm enough. I'm enough for you.

Aren't I, Paul? Then he explains, this gets so important. For my grace, what does that mean? My grace is sufficient for you. For my power is made perfect, complete.

All that I want to be experienced of my power is gonna happen this way. My power is made perfect in weakness. And that weakness is the experience of this thorn, which is spelled out here with insults, hardships, persecutions, calamities.

So my power is made perfect in weakness means the sufficiency that I am for you is the working of my power in and through weakness. Now, that doesn't work yet as an argument. There's something missing because a lot of people are weak.

A lot of people having insults, hardships, persecutions, calamities, and Jesus gets no glory in their life. His power is not perfected in their weakness. What's, so weakness plus Jesus doesn't mean glory for Jesus.

What's missing? Therefore, here's the way Paul reasons. Okay, you said you're sufficient for me. You said that the reason you'll be sufficient is because when I'm weak, you're going to manifest your strength.

Here's the conclusion I'm drawing. Now, Brad Pitt and Oprah Winfrey and the early C.S. Lewis and Michael Prowse and Eric Reese drew the conclusion. Oh, so you cause pain in your loved ones in order to make yourself look great.

I'm not going to worship a God like that. And they left. So you have Jesus making his power great great through pain in Paul.

And Americans by the millions walk away. I don't want a Christ exalting Christ. I want a me exalting Christ.

Now, Paul being unusually human, actually unusually Christ exalting did this. Therefore, therefore I will all the more gladly. And that's the word that riveted me a couple of years ago when I was working through second Corinthians.

I will all the more gladly boast of my weaknesses. Why? What kind of logic is that? You're being used to make him look great. And it's costing you sleepless nights and you're going to be happy.

You're going to infer gladness way in the world. I will gladly boast of my weaknesses so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. That word rest right there.

Episkenao to tabernacle or to tent. So there's a, it's like a tent and Christ is manifest on or in the tent. And I think the tent is gladness.

How will Christ be seen tenting on you in your pain? Gladness. Pain doesn't make him look good. Duty with groaning doesn't make him look great, but gladness in suffering for his sake, because he's enough, that makes Jesus look amazing.

And that's what Paul lived for, to make Jesus look amazing. And therefore he said, therefore, therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses so that the power of Christ may rest upon me because when I'm glad in my weakness, he looks great. For the sake of Christ then, for the sake of Christ then, therefore I am content.

Now that word and that word, I think essentially referring to the same reality. For the sake of Christ then I am content with weaknesses. Why? Because for when I'm weak and then you would have expected him to say, then he looks great.

Then he is strong. And he said, then I'm strong. I said, hmm, hmm.

And I think that's Paul's way of redefining human power. This whole text is a redefinition of Christian power. I was thinking about this so much recently because I just, I want to know what power is.

What is power? And almost all of us, when we think power or strength, we think physical, right? I can lift a thousand pounds. I can lift a car. You know, it's on my kid.

I'm like, lift the car up. That's power. Or power that takes a rocket up and rescues the astronauts who've been up there way too long.

That's power. What's that? A thousand tons, power. None of that applies here.

This is not physical. Okay, so what is power that's not physical? And it's the power to take a heart that would be bitter and angry and resentful and self-pitying because of my thorn and make it glad. And Paul says, that's the kind of power that raises people from the dead.

I mean, I have to readjust my entire concept of power because you would think, that's not power. That's like psychological adjustment. Well, if that's what you think, you're just not thinking like the Bible.

Your conversion from being a self-centered, Christ-ignoring human being to being a passionate person for Christ who is willing to die. That's a miracle. That takes power you have no control over and is more powerful than holding the universe in being.

So a different order. And I just have to readjust my whole thinking. Like I've got people in my life I wanted to be saved.

With man, it is impossible. With God, nothing is impossible. That statement means there is a kind of power that God wields that has nothing to do with lifting barbells or launching rockets.

It is the kind of power that you need tonight. When you go home and you think back over this talk and you say, I'm sure not like Paul. I'm just not gonna rejoice in my thorn.

And you get on your knees and you say, but he said, there's a power. There is a supernatural power that will be made manifest, perfected if I could experience that miracle. We love the phrase sorrowful yet always rejoicing at desiring God.

Sorrowful yet always rejoicing. One of my tests for Christian maturity when I watch a pastor preach or I watch somebody on the internet is, can I detect tears? They don't have to be on the face right then. I just wanna know, has this person tasted enough pain and gone deep enough with Jesus that they get what it means to be sorrowful yet always rejoicing? Okay, let me wrap this up by giving you summary statements.

There's so much more we could look at, but I've got, I think, seven or eight summary lessons. I'll just read them. One, great gifts from God are often fraught with the danger of pride in us.

So be careful what miracles you ask God to perform in your life by catching you up to heaven or giving you some amazing experience of supernatural wonder. Be careful. He might give it to you, which would be good.

I mean, I don't think Paul sinned by going to heaven, and I don't think he would have said, oh, if I'd known it was gonna cost me a thorn, I wouldn't have gone. I think he would have. Number two, great gifts of God's grace are often accompanied by painful life circumstances.

I doubt that there's a mature Christian in this room who couldn't just say you're over 40, which is really young, who cannot document those two tracks in your life. God has blessed me so much, and he has brought so much trouble into my life. Very rare for a person not to be able to see both of those.

Number three, Satan is on a leash and cannot hurt God's people more than God wills for their good. That's wonderful, because he's on the loose today. Oh, good night.

Number four, God sometimes rescues his people from sin through ordaining that they suffer with the view to greater dependence on God's grace and power. One more slide. Five, Jesus' ultimate aim in saving us the way he does is to see that his grace and power are glorified.

So your comfort in this world is not his ultimate aim. His aim is that he get glory, and if it costs you your life or 195 lashes on your back, he will do it. Number six, this is not selfish egomania.

So when Jesus brings suffering into your life to make his power and grace look good, this is not egomania. Now, this is crucial. I skipped over that, and we're ending right now with this, to try to help you not walk away like those five people did, because you say, oh, Jesus is an egomania.

He abuses his disciples. He gets pleasure out of the abuse that he gives like a bad dad, and so I'm not gonna follow Jesus. This is my effort to keep that from happening.

This is not selfish egomania, because this glorification of Christ reaches its climax. So his glory reaches its climax in the gladness of his people in the glory of Christ's grace and power through suffering and into eternal happiness. Let me see if I can say it more simply.

It is selfish and egomania to exploit other people indifferent to their well-being in order for you to advance your well-being. That's selfish, that's egomania. God doesn't do that.

Jesus doesn't do that with his people, right? Rather, he magnifies his glorious grace by making us glad in his glorious grace, by bringing satisfaction in his glorious grace. He brings us into his own pursuit of pleasure rather than stepping on us to get to his pleasure. God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.

That's why Paul would say, therefore, I will boast all the more gladly in my weakness for when I am weak, then am I strong. He knew Jesus was not exploiting him, abusing him. He wasn't.

He was doing the kinds of things in this world that require the deepest fellowship with Jesus. I've talked to thousands of people over the years and I've never heard anybody say, I went the deepest with Jesus on the sunniest days. Nobody has ever said that to me.

I went the deepest with Jesus on the stormy days, the hard days, the days when I didn't think I could survive another minute. Jesus met me. That's certainly the way Johnny talks.

On page 107 and 194, amazing. Finally, number seven, all prayer should ultimately be for the hallowing of God's name and Christ's glory so that its answer will always be in the deepest level. Yes, now that's something I didn't even talk about.

Like what about answered prayer and non-answered prayer? Please take it away. No, please take it away. Please take it away.

No, we all know that experience. And when he didn't get the answer to that prayer, what he got was gladness in the grace of Jesus, gladness in the power of Jesus, contentment in weakness for the glory of Jesus. So if you ask Paul, did your prayers get answered? I think he would answer it two levels.

He would say, no, not the ones I asked for, but in all my prayers, I am praying hallowed be your name, God. And I think you should pray that way. So tonight, when you ask God to take away your thorn another time, which you should, I got thorns in my life.

I ask every day for them to be taken away. Most of them are relational. Physical is just not important enough for me, but I'll tell you, people are.

And I pray that the thorn would be taken away. When you ask that, say underneath, above all, hallowed be your name, above all, Christ be glorified. And then every prayer is yes.

Father, I pray now that as we move over to hear some other dimensions of the kind of crazy, beautiful, unusual humanity that Paul exhibited here, you would be on Tony and be on Marshall, and you would grant us, oh God, to walk in Paul's footsteps. He said, imitate me as I imitate Christ. Please work this miracle of power in our lives, I pray in Jesus' name, amen.