A Sharpened Thorn

"A Sharpened Thorn" – 2 Corinthians 12:7-10 From the one still in a mother's womb, every one of us carries a sharpened thorn in the body. In the Bible the word thorn is used as a metaphor for something that causes pain, trouble and hardship, and that God permits with a purpose. Paul carried his constantly, and it was given to him so that he would not be exalted above measure. God's answer was not to take it away, but to tell him: my grace is sufficient for thee, for my strength is made perfect in weakness.

I. We must have the mind of Christ.

A. To know the Bible is the highest thing.

1. You may know many things on earth, but to know the Scripture is the highest.

2. Memorizing is not easy: there are so many things in one's mind, and as the years pass the mind has to learn to defend itself.

3. Not that I resemble my mother or my father, but that our mind be the mind of Christ.

4. For the one harmed by his own mind is himself; suddenly a thousand thoughts come to you that are not true.

B. If we were spiritual, we would conquer the earth.

1. We could establish peace where we are.

2. Peace is not in human beings, and the reason is that instead of being spiritual we go on being common.

3. And common is the one who has not known the Lord; we have the Holy Spirit.

C. The wise man numbers his days.

1. Life is spent and it ends; this one ends.

2. The wise man does not live by what he wants nor by what he intends.

3. The wise man says: I am of this age, and there are some things God must still work.

4. Because we all strive toward that day of meeting Him.

5. Life is not the easiest thing; that is why many look for a way to be rid of it and destroy themselves.

6. But we were washed by His precious blood, at a very high cost: His life. Our salvation was bought with blood.

II. There was given to me a thorn in the flesh (2 Corinthians 12:7).

A. We all carry a sharpened thorn.

1. From the one in a mother's womb: those little beings that are growing carry a sharpened thorn in their body.

2. All of us, whether we like it or not: in poverty or in wealth, with a profession or without one.

3. In the Bible the thorn is a metaphor for something that causes pain, trouble and hardship, which God permits with a purpose.

B. What a goad is.

1. Long ago there was a long rod with a point, so that the oxen, as it pricked them, would be driven to walk.

2. If they were lazy and idle, the rod pricked them and they quickened their pace.

3. So too the wasp and the bee: the little bee carries behind it something almost impossible to see, and when it settles on your skin it stings.

4. And that makes the skin swell and become infected. That is a goad: a sharpened thorn.

C. All that Paul lived was a thorn.

1. Paul never knew what it was to live in the flesh after the Lord revealed Himself to him and threw him from the horse.

2. He became that spiritual man, a man of seeking, of passion and of surrender.

3. He left those blessed books written, which have made us grow so much and see things clearly and precisely.

4. If we are confused, it is because we neither read nor pray; if you read the Bible daily, you become one who knows.

5. The more you learn, the firmer and more settled your life is: not built on insecurities nor on traumas, but on believing.

6. He who knows the Scriptures does not live a double life, does not live in doubt and does not live without faith.

D. Your flesh must die.

1. If your flesh does not die, it is you who speaks, who opines, who suggests.

2. You are not a person who sanctifies himself: you say whatever you please and whatever you want.

3. The LORD will never allow us to fall short of being men and women of faith with a noble spirit.

4. For the earth is full of the haughty, and we too are full of haughtiness; and so we are playing a double game.

III. Lest I should be exalted above measure.

A. The first reason for the thorn.

1. So that there be no pride and so that I think no high thought of superiority about myself.

2. So that I do not feel superior and so that we are not conceited.

3. The fullest sense of being conceited is that of the one who is told: do you think you deserve everything?

4. When one feels superior, he has already found pride and has already become conceited and capricious.

5. I am leaving if they do not serve me: you are at the shop while they are closing out the till, and you are already boiling over.

6. Why are there so many things in our life that must die? Then the thorn comes; because a meek man conquers the world.

B. What could Paul have been vain about?

1. Amid so much need, so much water at sea, so much walking, so much sleeping in the worst places.

2. But Paul knew what the nature of the human being is.

3. There are people you speak with and you say: how good it was to talk with her. And time passes, and you say: this is not the one who spoke to me.

4. Why? Because it is easy to be exalted.

C. When does one become exalted?

1. When you believe you are above: you have no mercy and no gentle counsel, only an absolute opinion for everyone.

2. To agree together in order to scheme, to talk, to opine and to suggest is already to be exalted.

3. When one believes himself a general in the major leagues, and the house becomes a courtroom with a judge and a group of hearers.

4. When we opine, when certain things do not please us, when we take from the Bible only what suits us.

5. Rebellion always comes when a mortal is exalted; and since we are so prone to it, we must have a thorn.

6. One is exalted when he develops the habit of finding fault with everyone; and one is always exalted against someone, and that is absence of love.

D. God set a weakness in his body.

1. If Paul never fell ill, never had troubles, never had anguish, if all was rosy for him, he would be exalted.

2. That is why, being a humble man who knew God, that weakness was given him.

IV. What Paul's thorn was.

A. A suffering that did not go away.

1. It could have been physical, emotional or even spiritual.

2. A constant trial, something that did not easily disappear; a reminder to depend on God.

3. Paul found himself in prison, they stoned him, he found himself in so many hardships.

4. And a thorn that tormented him: perhaps he could not laugh easily, perhaps eating was difficult, perhaps his mind wandered.

B. What the Scripture lets us glimpse.

1. It is not known exactly what it was; it could have been an illness.

2. It is often said it may have been trouble with his sight, which would also come with age; it is thought he reached seventy-two.

3. Galatians 4:15 says: ye would have plucked out your own eyes, and have given them to me; from that it is understood that he had lost his sight.

4. In so much darkness and so much punishment, it is not to be doubted; but it is not certain.

5. It could also have been constant persecution, an emotional struggle, or a constant spiritual attack.

C. The attacks Paul received.

1. They are not attacks you have ever felt nor will feel; Paul was chosen to be a great fighting warrior.

2. He cared nothing for the hard days, nor the rain, nor the want, nor the shipwrecks, nor the stonings, nor having to go down the wall and flee.

3. Attacks of discouragement could come, not for lack of will to do God's will, but because the load on his shoulders was so violent he could not move.

4. I picture him as a caged tiger trying to get out, because the night becomes agony and he rises with a weight already upon him.

5. Intimate spiritual opposition, enemies for no known reason, persecutions one cannot explain.

6. Emotional, because in the emotions lie all the feelings; psychological, when the mind and the whole mental process are tormented.

D. The end of Paul.

1. When at last they were going to kill him, he was alone, wholly alone in his final days. Part of his thorn.

2. They make him kneel, they bind his hands behind him, they set his head against the stone, and there stands the executioner with his face covered.

3. Paul must have been listening to the sound of the executioner sharpening. That is a thorn.

V. My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9).

A. What the thorn is, then.

1. A hardship or a suffering God permits to keep us humble and dependent on Him.

2. And to show His power in our weakness.

3. Because it is easier to be haughty, ill-mannered, answering what one wants, how one wants and when one wants.

4. To live hating mankind, quarrelling, looking to see who thinks himself what, and with what money he bought that car.

5. Let us be meek and humble, which are the same thing.

B. Let grace be what sustains us.

1. You cannot hold yourself up on being the best person, the quickest or the most willing.

2. Suddenly you say: how weak I am, I am troubled over a trifle.

3. What sustains us is grace; everything God can give us, that is grace.

4. Because there are sharpened thorns that always want to destroy us from every side.

5. When you least believe it, when you think you can be content for an hour, something happens.

C. What the Lord wants is that we live at peace.

1. I did not ask you whether one ought to; I asked whether one can.

2. You rise uneasy and you go to bed uneasy; you hear the telephone and you are uneasy.

3. A finger goes numb and you already think you need tests from head to foot.

4. What the Lord wants is that we have a beautiful strength born of confidence.

D. Three times I besought the Lord.

1. God had given Paul extraordinary revelations, visions of the third heaven.

2. And to prevent spiritual pride, that weakness came.

3. Paul did not complain nor grow bitter: he prayed.

4. And God's answer was: my grace is sufficient for thee.

5. My grace is enough to sustain you, if you are one who prays, who fasts, who seeks God and who is meek.

6. But if you live in cunning and in yourself, you may have salvation, but the rest you will not have.

E. Spurs are for fighting cocks.

1. Cocks defend themselves, fight one another and defend territory.

2. We are not to have spurs: we are the body of Christ.

3. With the grace of the Lord you can be delivered out of them all; you do not have to be strong.

4. It is as if the Lord said to us: I will be strong in your place.

5. Your weakness is no hindrance: it is the place where my power shines.

6. The Lord did not take away the thorn, but He gave him strength to bear it.

VI. Gladly will I glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.

A. Paul did not merely accept his thorn: he transformed it.

1. Because he discovered that in his frailty the power of Christ is shown most clearly.

2. In every circumstance of your life, ask as Paul did: what is your frailty?

3. And what must you do? Believe, and take that action which is yours and which you leave lying there.

4. Lamenting is easier for you, talking is easier, doubting is easier.

5. And in doubt there is no blessing; it is in believing and in acting on faith that we see the miracle. The one who lets faith die is oneself.

B. Spiritual principles for our life.

1. God permits certain weaknesses to protect us: sometimes what we think is breaking us is keeping us.

2. The grace of God is sufficient and sustains us.

3. God does not always take away the problem: there are troubles that may last ten years or a whole lifetime.

4. But He always gives the strength to go through it; God does not take it away, but He gives grace, and that grace makes you walk.

5. Weakness is not defeat: it is an opportunity for the power of Christ to be seen.

6. God is not glorified in our strength, for we have none, but in our dependence on Him.

VII. We all have thorns.

A. From one corner to the other.

1. And in the end, they are what help make us strong; the devil can never laugh at us.

2. We all have aches: not necessarily an illness, but because we walked much or wore ourselves out.

3. We all have fears: of dying, of sickness; if we start naming them, they are many.

4. We all have family burdens; and if not, then for whom are you fighting?

5. We all have limitations, and sometimes we feel like a lost chick: what a moment, what a circumstance, where to hide.

6. And memories of the past, which are what stay longest, and hinder, and are a thorn.

B. There are things that do not go away.

1. One can be laughing at night with a dearly loved sister and by morning receive word that she has gone to be with the Lord.

2. She is better off than you and I; but one knows what it is to feel with another whose thorn is active.

3. That is why grace sustains us: because we do not know when we leave this earth.

4. It is not an illness that takes us to heaven: it is that God says, this is the day, and it is over.

5. We do not know tomorrow; we know the present.

6. What falls to us, falls to us; and what we must weep, we weep, but not in rebellion nor in strife. Let grace be enough for us; we are not victims.

C. God does not abandon us in any of them.

1. God is always with you and loves us with a love we can never thank Him enough for.

2. And how does He bear with us? If you are with a person three days, by the time you leave you are already finding fault.

3. How little we bear, and God bears with all our faults, all our wickedness and everything we suggest.

4. So the thorn is good for us: that God may be glorified in our existence, when we see that we depend wholly on Him.

5. Church of Christ: you are the body of the Lord, you are not just anything.

6. And since you are not just anything, God expects each one to be as He wishes to make him; for He makes each one different, and all for His glory.