Turn with me this evening to St. Paul's second letter to the church at Corinth. And as we read together, it is from the 12th chapter. As we read from the first verse, hear then the word of the Lord. I must go on boasting, though there is nothing to be gained by it. I'll go on to visions and revelations of the Lord. I know a man in Christ who, fourteen years ago, was caught up to the third heaven. Whether in the body or out of the body, I do not know. God knows. And I know that this man was caught up into paradise, whether in the body or out of the body, I do not know. God knows. And he heard things that cannot be told, which man may not utter. On behalf of this man, I will boast, but not on my own behalf. I will not boast except of my weaknesses. Though if I should wish to boast, I would not be a fool, for I would be speaking the truth. But I refrain from it so that no one may think more of me than he sees in me or hears from me. So to keep me from becoming conceited 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. Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. But He said to me, My grace is sufficient for you. For my power is made perfect in weakness. Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, Then I am strong. Amen. May the Lord bless this, his own word to us and to our understanding and encouragement. Let's pray together. Our gracious Lord, who by thine own Holy Spirit has caused thy word to be written, Grant that now by that same Holy Spirit we shall be together, enlightened in our understanding and blessed as we would walk before Thee. Grant to us the company of that same Holy Spirit, we pray Thee, that we may ever find in You our great hope and strength. Guide us then, we beseech thee, that all truth might speak afresh to our lives. For we pray it in Christ's name. Amen. The passage that I want to draw to your attention this evening is one that is designed to speak to us about the very nature of a unique encouragement. For here, the Apostle Paul is facing the most difficult of his times. He is facing the reality both of opposition in the life of the church that he has served, and also a sense of the restraint of God upon his life. And for us, as we rest in the almighty sovereignty of God, there is, of course, a great insurance. There is a sense that we are in his hand, but there is not one of us, I suspect, that does not know that when trial and temptation overturn our confidence, that we begin to wonder where God's sovereignty rests. How do we find confidence when the sovereignty of God brings to us that which we do not desire, the gift that is unlooked for? For then, surely, we know it is hard. For like the apostle, he faces both the sense of opposition and also the wondering of where is God. Here in this passage, the apostle has been stung into sarcasm. And he's been stung there because of the accusation that has been made against him by those whom he calls super apostles. Those who have followed his ministry have come to the church at Corinth seemingly carrying letters of introduction from the church at Jerusalem. And they come to him and they accuse him of being less of a leader than any would desire and therefore less of an apostle. Indeed, their accusations have been brutal. They have claimed that he is little better than an amateur loudmouth, because he has said that his own preaching was not of the great eloquence of the orators of his day. And they have argued that he is ill-equipped to be the apostle that he claims His preaching has no rhetorical power. He is, in fact, so they claim, too ordinary a man to be an apostle, and that he lacks the human skills to be a truly grand leader. for their expectation of a leader was to be physically, emotionally, relationally, and spiritually superior. And they argue here that the Apostle Paul acts none of those things, that he exhibits none of these great qualities, and so claim these so-called super apostles. He is less than he claims to be. Oh, they have argued earlier that in his letter writing, he is intimidating, but in person, He lacks the qualities that a leader has. And he is, by any estimation of theirs, weak, ineffectual, a little man. Certainly not the supernatural leader that they anticipated. And indeed, you hear in the earlier part of this great letter that there are intimations that he was a man who had enjoyed sickness and therefore because of his illness was immediately incompatible with being an apostle who surely God had made well. And they associated physical weakness with spiritual weakness. And so they claim that they, not he, are true leaders of the church. Now these are the sorts of accusations that have motivated the great apostle to write this letter. He wasn't upset for his own sake, he says, but because these pseudo-apostles were not just injuring his personal reputation, they were in fact hurting the gospel itself. And though seemingly and superficially orthodox in their doctrine, they seemed to have impeccable Christian credentials, what in truth they were doing was presenting a worldly image of what it means to be spiritual. And as they were doing that, What in truth was happening was that they were subverting the very gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. For into the claim of being more spiritual than the Apostle Paul, they were offering people a false Jesus. A Jesus who no longer suffered. A Jesus who did not carry a cross. Jesus who was not lowly enough to be born in a manger. And this distortion the Apostle Paul could not stand by and hear. And so he insists that while he has no desire to blow his own trumpet, like a fool he will do so. I must go on bursting, he says. Although there's nothing to be gained, I will go on to visions and to revelations from the Lord. And then the apostle begins to address, possibly for the only time we see it, the visions that he has received and the whole question of supernatural experience. And you hear his own sense of awe at this. He does not even talk about himself, dear, in the first person. I know a man in Christ, he says, who 14 years ago was caught up to the third heaven. And there he heard inexpressible things, things that men are not permitted to tell. And so the apostle begins to describe what was a profound and a mystical and almost ecstatic experience that he had had, an experience that was so overwhelming and that was so profound that in his modesty he addresses himself in the first person and forbids himself from speaking about this experience. As he does so, he makes very clear that such experiences, such ecstatic, such supernatural experiences are very rare indeed. thus rebuking those who constantly suggest that they have these deep, constant experiences of God. For he says, it happened 14 years ago. This is not something that happens every morning when you get up and have a quiet time. This is a unique experience of God that came to him at a time when he needed it. It was almost a once-in-a-lifetime experience. It was not, as some of our brethren claim today, to be a regular feature of their spiritual lives. What it was, however, was profound. It was vivid, so vivid that he says, I do not know whether it was in the body or out of the body. I know its reality, but such was its power that I was carried away. I don't know, he says, God knows. And as he does so, he reminds us that he was caught up into the third heaven. Again, no normal experience in his life. It is both for him personal and private. And he says, I heard inexpressible things. Man is not permitted to tell. Like all mystical experiences, which may be real, They defy description. And in this case for the Apostle, the nature of the mystery that he experienced was so sacred that it was not intended for public declaration. He is not about to tell us all that occurred. Oh, there are people who constantly want to know things that we are not entitled to know. answers to questions that we would love to hear, but says the apostle, the things I know are not designed for public declaration. Why would he be given such an experience? Undoubtedly, it was to enable him to face all that he would endure and be called to endure for the sake of the gospel. It was as though he were caught up into heaven itself and then returned. And the effect of that vision upon him was utterly overwhelming. He refers to it as we hear the surpassing greatness of the revelations. It's as though heaven's doors opened and he was given picture, either of the future, much more of the very glory of God. He is given sight of that which is his future, and indeed perhaps the future of every believing Christian. It was beyond comparison. It was exceedingly grand. And the one thing he makes very clear is that he was sustained and strengthened by everything that he was given to see there. But at the same time, it had another effect on him. because Paul saw and understood what others didn't know and did not understand, because for the apostle he had been drawn into the very presence of God and taken into this, the third heaven. He knew something of the superlative nature of what God had prepared for the future. And so the Lord gave to him a thorn. He gave to him the unlooked-for gift, the thorn that was given to corral his natural tendencies of the flesh. It was an unlooked-for ministry that was offered to him. It was the ministry of the thorn from the hand of the Lord. And the word that is used here that translates thorn better indicates not simply that which is like a prick to our finger. You'll know if you will pick a rose that's got a thorn in it and it catches you and you're in pain. Well, that's one way of thinking of a thorn, but here, The word thorn means impaled and it is this sense of anguish and pain. The apostle never discloses to us what the nature of this thorn was and as a consequence It has been a matter of great speculation for every commentator from that day to this. And there have been some who argue that this was simply a physical manifestation, that Paul was given poor eyesight or loss of hair or some physical unpleasantness. Others say, no, this is a spiritual thorn, unusual temptations to the sins of the flesh, they argue, lust and impurity. And others say, no, it is emotional remorse, remorse for the torture of Christians. This is the perpetual remorse that he stood by and collected the garments while Stephen was stoned to death. And others say, well, no, this is really a thorn of the adversaries that God brings to him on the variety of his missionary journeys, opponents that constantly irritate and assault his gospel. We do not know. And you know the reason we do not know is because God does not want us to know the secrets. It is enough to know that this was a thorn given to the apostle in order that he should be reminded that he could not speak of what had been given to him. And it was a thorn that was given in order to make Paul humble. and to remind him of his inherent weakness. And so the anonymity of Paul's thorn is designed so that we will identify with his weakness as we live constantly affirming the sovereignty of God And yet, when God brings to us the unlooked-for gifts, sometimes of pain and struggle and of difficulty, to remind us that we too have thorns as did the Apostle. And the one thing about a thorn is that instinctively you want it to go away. I am no gardener. I leave that to my wife. I would rather clean three toilets than go out into the garden. She does that. She loves it. Every time I go out there, I get a thorn. And worse. And the first thing you want to do is let this pain go away. It's the instinctive reaction to any time you are impaled in any way. You want it to stop. And the apostle is no different. And remember, this thorn is not a prick on his finger. This is a thorn that strikes deep into his soul itself. Three times I pray that it should go away. And he cried to the Lord. and it did not go away. No, we're good at that. When pain comes to us and we pray to the Lord, we are good at telling Him why we should be without the trial that comes to Him. The work that we do would be much more effective if we did not have this particular thorn in our way. Our life would be more radiant if we did not have this thorn given to our souls. We can tell of the Lord how much better we would be as believers if we did not have thorns that touched us. We can think of a dozen reasons, or perhaps you can't, you are more sanctified than I, but I can think of a dozen reasons why a thorn is always a hindrance and not a help to my ministry and to my service for Christ. which is why I always ask him to take it away. And I don't believe that it is wrong to ask. Even our blessed master in the garden at Gethsemane, you'll remember, cries in those sanctified moments as he faces all that is to pass before him. And he prays, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me. And in those same moments he says, ah, but not my will. but thine be done." And such submission is that which brings wisdom to us. It is the submission of our Savior before the wisdom and the purpose of God that we also learn. It's the importance, of course, of learning what thorns in our life are designed for. It is to learn that ours is a life lived under obedience to him and to his perfect will. And the fact is, for most of us, we never know the purpose of the thorn that comes to us specifically. We don't know why it is that our particular thorns come to us, nor do we know, as the Apostle Paul, if those thorns are going to be temporary or if they are going to be enduring. We don't know if we are going to be delivered from them. And sometimes the Lord is pleased to remove those thorns from us. But what He shows us is the thing that we most resist, which is that we must submit to Him. It is easy to submit to God's sovereignty when all He does is produce what we think is good. But when He produces what He thinks is good, and we don't want it. It is much harder to submit gently to his sovereignty, and I suspect that there is not one person in this room this evening who has not known what it is to have to learn the lesson of submission to hard things that we never looked for from the hand of God. but to be able to submit and say, it is the Lord who has given this. For the Apostle Paul, he is able to tell us that the thorn came to him even as a messenger from Satan to torment him. How it challenges our easy understanding that Satan is always the one who brings God's yet because he is God's enemy that he brings always bad things to us. He is God's devil. He is under the sovereign hand of the almighty God. And when he brings that which touches us in torment, It is because the hand of our God has permitted, not because he is equal to the Lord. And so the apostle learns here that even as what brings to him pain comes from the torment of his enemy, he knows that it is the design of God. and it is a design for his life. It is the design in this case that his ego will not triumph over his desire to proclaim the gospel. Instead, Paul tells us the lesson that he learns, and it is the hard lesson that each one of us learn. Therefore, he says, I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest on me." And in these verses, we are given to understand the nature of true spirituality as we stand under the sovereign hand of God. because the Apostle Paul's experience here reminds us that the prayers of even the greatest saints of God do not always get answered in the way that we wanted them or they wanted them. It's easy to think that because the Apostle Paul was the Apostle, the man who stands out in the church of all the great characters and heroes, that he is always listened to, and indeed he is. But there are times when the Lord says no. Three times I prayed, three times God says no. We take comfort from that truth because you know it reminds us that prayer is not magic, that it is something that comes as a gift of answer from the Lord. It is not unconditional in the sense if we ask for it, we get it. It is a gift from a caring Lord. And there is no way that the caring God who is our Father is going to give us something that is not good for us, no matter how long we may ask Him, no matter how many times we may ask Him. And Paul Paul had to accept the gift of the thorn in his flesh. And it reminds us, too, that there ought to be into our lives as believers who have tasted of the grace of God the recognition that suffering is a part of what it is to be a Christian. Oh, we shy from it, for none of us likes to suffer. But it is part of the way in which God shapes us for himself. If all of our life on earth is a preparation for our time in His presence, suffering becomes one of those great elements, as it was in the life of our beloved Savior, that prepares us for His presence. It reminds us, too, therefore, that if our prayers are persistently declined, It is because what is better, though we do not want it, is shaping us that we might see Him and love Him and serve Him the better. Sometimes the grace of God is brought to its peak of fulfillment only through the crippling weakness of our own souls. But we see, too, in this mysterious but wonderful passage, that human weakness and divine grace go hand in hand together. I would guarantee that most of us here do not look for weakness. I promise you, I did not look for a boot on my foot for this weekend. I didn't look for weakness to come amongst you stumbling. Simply a foot bruised and handled on a stick. It seems to have been the purpose of God through the foolishness of my own choices. We don't look for weakness. It's unwanted. It's something we would shun, whether it is physical, emotional, spiritual, mental, or relational. We don't want it because our desire is to be strong. We don't want deficiency in our life. But the Lord works in our lives so that we must learn to trust and to enjoy what His purpose is for us. Not easy. But it is the purpose of His sanctifying us so that we learn to depend upon His strength, not ours, upon His grace, not our determined effort. For us to enjoy the living God, it is important sometimes that the thorn minister to us. because we learn that when weakness comes our way and when God is pleased not to remove the weakness, he exchanges it for a strength that we cannot imagine. Listen to him as he explains what he has found through the ministry of the thorn. Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses. Why? So that Christ's power may rest on me. And when the Apostle Paul uses that word rest, it is an unusual formation of a word that has as its root the same word as that which in Hebrew is the tabernacle. And it's as though the Apostle Paul is taking his mind and the mind of his readers back to that Old Testament example of the tabernacle where God is to meet his people. And you will remember that the tabernacle was a place so holy there could be no sin, there could be no transgression near it. In fact, the tabernacle was held outside the camp of Israel. They must travel to it, cordoned off from all that is weak and defiling. And now, says the apostle, it is precisely opposite. It is the weakness of sinners that draws the power of God, because His weakness is turned into strength. Why? For Christ's sake. And you know, there is the wonderful promise to us. The place where we are weak, is the place of breakthrough for the mighty grace of God. It is for everyone here, no matter your story, the reality that it was the power of God's grace that broke through, power of your own will and your own life, to draw you to himself. It is only in the weakness that forced you to say, I am a sinner in need of a Savior. For everyone who is a Christian has said that in some way or another. To remember that it is in our weakness that we found the grace of God. And it is in our dependence that we find that continued grace that causes us to grow in Him. It is the place of our weakness that is the place of the breakthrough of God's grace. It happened to the Apostle Paul. And the Apostle makes it clear that the nature of that grace was the cross experienced in his own life. It's the reason that we say true spirituality delights in weakness because it is in the place of confession, confession of the weakness that we find the supernatural grace of God flowing through us. And as we are cast down, so we are exalting. Only in dying Do we find that it is God who has made us alive? Only in throwing away our lives do we find God giving them back to us. Only when I am weak, then I am strong. The alternative you hear in the words of the 106th Psalm In the 15th verse we read, and he gave them their request, but he sent leanness to their soul. If God were to take away those thorns that we long for him to take, how we would regret the leanness that come upon our soul, that we should not grow and mature. For the thorn, and there is no doubt in my mind that every single person in this room knows a thorn. Some of us know more than one. We know what it's like to have that thorn. We know what it's like to will and to wish it away. But to know you would not want leanness to your soul when he promises the riches of his grace, that he's founding Christ, who is the very anchor. And so our Lord Jesus Christ holds out his hand to us in love. And he says, here is a thorn. Accept it with the promise that comes, most gladly will I glory in my infirmity. For when I am weak, then I am strong because of God's good grace. Let's pray together. Our Heavenly Father, how we thank you that in the mystery of your will, in the power of your great giftedness, you bring to us that which we do not desire but cannot live without. Thorns that touch, that mature and strengthen as they drive us ever closer to Yourself. O grant to us by the ministry of Your Holy Spirit that each one of us here this night might welcome the hand that You extend in discipline to our souls, that we may grow in You, desiring only in our weakness to taste of the fullness of your grace, to rejoice in the beauty of the presence of our beloved Saviour, of the great gift that is ours through Calvary and through the resurrection of him who, though he were dead, lived, that we might live also. how we thank you and welcome him and all he brings, that we might grow into his fullness and mature to his likeness, to his praise and for his glory in this, the life entrusted to us through Jesus our Lord. Amen. Will you rise with me as we sing in response to hymn 310 in our Trinity hymnbooks? Rejoice! The Lord is King!