2 Corinthians 12:7-10 Matthew 11:25-30

This is the fifth sermon on the Benefits of Suffering and I am wondering if any of you, as we have gone through these sermons, has asked the question, what happens when the suffering doesn't go away?...when it just seems to be there all the time?&maybe not even serving any good purpose at least as far as we can see? Paul addressed this in 2 Corinthians that Jill Parsons just read when he talked about the thorn in the flesh. It is an interesting choice of words. The Greek word for thorn describes a barb that when it goes in, like a fishhook, it is very difficult to get out. You can't pull it out without actually feeling pain and exacerbating the damage. So that was the word that Paul chose to use. The amazing thing is that he never identified what the thorn was in his flesh. Lots of people have guessed about it. Theologians have thought it was perhaps a chronic illness that he had. One writer suggested that he was ugly and that the thorn in the flesh was his appearance. Apparently his appearance turned some people off. Others have thought maybe is was some of the Judaizers, some of the persons who critiqued him and followed him around trying to counter what he was preaching and thereby thwarting the advancing of the Gospel. Whatever it was, it was a fortunate choice of words because it allows us to apply it universally. This way everyone at some time or another has a thorn in the flesh. The thorn in the flesh can represent some pain, some suffering, something that bothers us that just doesn't seem to go away, that we just can't quite get rid of. It could be a personal problem. It could be a person who bothers us. It could be a physical issue, an illness, or it could be a spiritual issue that disturbs us. As I jotted down some things it could be, I wrote that it could be a handicap or a disability. It could be unhappy employment or in this economy, no employment. A person who is very irritating could be a thorn in the flesh. Loneliness is a possibility. Maybe you experience that and that is your thorn in the flesh. Being in bad living conditions. I can identify with that. There have been several times in my life when I have lived in places that were really unfit to live. I remember when I worked for the state of Kentucky back in the days when I was doing speech writing for Governor Nunn. I lived in an apartment that had paper-thin walls and you could hear every movement of persons in the whole building. It was highly distracting, especially if you wanted to concentrate on something like writing a speech. Not only that, it was dirty and the lighting was one of those light bulbs that hung from the ceiling with no lampshade or fixture on it. Lousy living conditions was definitely a thorn in my flesh. It could be a difficult relationship. It could be a money issue. It could be almost a limitless number of possible things that cause you to suffer and seems impossible to get rid of and will not go away. It could even be a bad habit like smoking, biting your fingernails or drinking and doing drugs or something like that. All of these things could represent a thorn in your flesh.

As we examine that passage of Paul in 2 Corinthians, we get the reason why the thorn in the flesh was given. Paul writes, “It was given to keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassing great revelations.” Paul was the recipient of revelations from God. He even had visions of heaven. He says that the purpose of the thorn in the flesh for him was so that he didn't become arrogant. It also kept him from taking himself too seriously. He could perhaps laugh at himself and at some of his failures because everything didn't always go right for him. He didn't always get to travel where he wanted to go and he wasn't always successful with the conversions that he wanted to make. So the thorn in Paul's flesh was given to fight the sin of pride. That would be quite relevant in Paul's life because he was highly successful in bringing about converts and starting new churches. He was highly successful arguing with Peter over how the church should be designed. It probably was a temptation for him to have the sin of pride. So the thorn in his flesh was given to him for the purpose of keeping him from being overly prideful. It apparently also had another affect and that was it kept other people from admiring him too much, giving him too much adulation, making him seem too important to himself. So it could be that this passage written by Paul could have said, “This thorn in my flesh was given to me to save me from me.” That is frequently what the thorn in our flesh is given to us for is to save ourselves from ourselves, from being too full of ourselves and being too prideful about what we've accomplished in life.

There is an Old Testament example I want to share with you. King Ahab was a very religious man but he went and married Jezebel. Remember Jezebel in the Old Testament? Jezebel was a foreigner. She wasn't even a Jew. She worshiped a false god named Baal. When she came in as King Ahab's wife, she began to turn the Jewish synagogues into Baal worship centers. Ahab simply went along with it. I don't know why he succumbed to her power. There was at this time a prophet named Elijah. Elijah spoke out against Baal worship. He even did battle with priests from the Baal worship centers and overcame them even to the point where thousands of them were actually killed. But guess what? Jezebel was always a thorn in Elijah's side. No matter where he went, Jezebel was there to confront him. She was there to put down his God. She was there to raise up her false god. She was always a pain in the neck to poor Elijah. Finally, Elijah just went out and sat under a tree. Though he had conquered prophets of the false god, he was exhausted from trying to escape Jezebel and her horrible ways. He simply cried out to God, “Please help!” And God sent him fresh water, rest and refreshment and God took care of him in his battle against the thorn in his flesh, Jezebel. Ultimately, Jezebel died a horrible death and the Baal worship virtually disappeared from the country.

Take another example in the New Testament. Remember Mary and Martha? I can just picture Martha who was the fastidious one, the obsessive compulsive one who wanted everything to be absolutely perfect. Maybe she was a bit of a workaholic. The thorn in her side was Mary because Mary liked to take it easy. Mary maybe made the distinction between clean dirt and dirty dirt. She said, “OK. We'll clean up the dirty dirt but the clean dirt which is just mess and fuss, I'm not going to bother with. I've got more important things to do like sitting at the feet of Jesus.” One time when Jesus visited them, Martha was up fixing the supper. She had cleaned the house and she was just upset with Mary. “Mary, you are not helping at all.” Finally, she went like a tattle tail to Jesus and said to Jesus, “My sister won't help me. All she wants to do is sit here at your feet and listen to you. Look at all the things we've got to get done before we eat!” Jesus' answer was simply to smile compassionately at Martha, removed the thorn in her flesh by simply saying, “Mary has chosen the best part.” Being in the presence of Him, listening to His instruction, not worrying about all these details but taking care of things that impacted salvation was more important. Mary had her priorities right, listening to the teaching of Jesus.

We all have thorns in our flesh. I look back at my life. I have many things that I could identify as thorns in my flesh. I have shared with you that I had learning disabilities in school. Though I thought I was smart, I was a horrible test-taker. I sweat blood over tests. They were really a thorn in my flesh. I would walk halls with flash cards memorizing as well as I could. Some of my classmates would walk in and read something over once and get an “A”. With me, spending hours trying to memorize all the answers, I would get a “C”. This gave me an inferiority complex! I've shared with you, too, that my twin sister was in the “sparkle class”. The teachers considered me to be in the “rock garden”. That was nice, wasn't it? Having that experience then led me to overcompensate for it by going and getting a doctorate. To succeed, I had to hire tutors who could tutor me through my classes and doctoral program because learning was the thorn in my flesh. It was hard for me to learn by listening to lectures. But I could learn if I had interaction with people. I could learn kinesthetically. That is, I could learn by doing. I was finally able to pass everything and get the credentials that I got. But that was an intense thorn in my flesh for years. I think it was given to me to keep me humble just like Paul because it has definitely had that effect. It lets me know that I'm not perfect. I remember a counselee once was working on an issue that I had worked through myself. I wanted her to think, “OK, this is fairly easy.” I said, “Look. I worked through it myself and if I can work through this issue, you can, too.” She said, “Oh my gosh. Dr. Bach, I could never do what you do.” And I'm thinking, “If you only knew how I've had to struggle with things. If you only knew what hard work it was. If you only knew that I put my pants on the same way you put your pants on, that we are just alike in this, that there was nothing special about me.” I made some choices that got me in the path that I took and she made choices that took her a different path. Yes, because I knew that I could do this, I knew she could also do it, too.

So we have thorns in our flesh to keep us from the sin of pride. We have thorns in our flesh to keep us from taking ourselves too seriously. We have thorns in our flesh that enable us to go to God and ask for his help constantly and continually. Though the thorn in the flesh seemed evil, in suffering here, it seems bad; when you keep in mind its purposes, it can be manageable. If it forces you to turn to God and lay it out to Him and say, “God, I have really struggled to handle this, but you help me with it.” That is creating that personal relationship with God that He wants from us. In that sense, it is a tremendous gift. Then you read in this passage that God never took away Paul's thorn in the flesh even though he went in desperate prayer three times to God to take it away. What did God say to him? “My grace is sufficient for you. For my power is made perfect in your weakness.” That is true for all of us, too. We can overcome any thorn in the flesh.