Sermon Text: 2 Corinthians 12:7b–10
Date: February 16, 2025
Event: The Sixth Sunday after Epiphany, Year C
2 Corinthians 12:7b–10 (EHV)
I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me, so that I would not become arrogant. 8Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that he would take it away from me. 9And he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, because my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will be glad to boast all the more in my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may shelter me.
10That is why I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties, for the sake of Christ. For whenever I am weak, then am I strong.
Is Jesus’ Grace Sufficient?
Have you ever felt at the point of being completely overwhelmed, that you just couldn’t take one more issue or you were going to lose it? And “lose it” may have different meanings to different people in different contexts. Maybe you feel like you’re going to scream if one more person tries to put one more thing on your tasklist. Maybe you feel like you’re going to get sick if you have one more piece of anxiety-causing news come across your phone or TV screen. Maybe you feel like you’re going to quit your job or run away from some other responsibilities if things don’t change because you just can’t take one more minute of the way things are going.
Those responses all make sense. Each of us has different things piling on us and making us feel overwhelmed. Things that are difficult for you to deal with might be easier for me and vice-versa, but even if we’re all different in the specifics, the generalities are universal. You can only take so much before something needs to change.
We have some specific promises of God to consider in matters like these. He promises through the apostle Paul that we will not be tempted—or tested—beyond what we can bear (see 1 Corinthians 10:13). And perhaps those limits are higher in God’s eyes than they seem to us, but whether it’s on your own or by making use of the support that God provides in your family, friends, neighbors, fellow Christians at church, etc., you will be able to bear up under any kind of testing and temptation.
But that doesn’t mean it won’t feel overwhelming. And God knows that. In fact, he tells us in Psalm 50:15, “Call on me in the day of distress. I will deliver you, and you will honor me.” He acknowledges that there will be distress and hardship, but that prayer is a lifeline for us. When you feel at the brink and edge (or ideally, well before that), God says to call on him and he will rescue you.
But, sometimes things we thought were good in our lives are revealed to be bad, and things that we thought were bad are revealed to be good. This isn’t exactly the kind of epiphany that we want to make, because it probably means suffering and hardship. Yet, do God’s promises still apply even in those instances? Even when we got things really mixed up?
This morning, in our Second Reading, we have a very specific illustration of this kind of epiphany. The apostle Paul, who had been granted many blessings along with his challenges, noted that “so that [he] would not become arrogant,” God allowed what he calls “a thorn in his flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment” him.
Plenty of attempts have been made to guess what this thorn in the flesh was, and we’re not going to spend much time on that here this morning because most of it boils down to speculation. However, we can probably say this much: it was most likely some kind of physical ailment, as it is something in the flesh, and it was likely something that Paul saw as hindering his work as a gospel minister.
So what does Paul do? He takes up God on his promise and calls on him in his trouble—three times! And perhaps in a different way than you and I have ever experienced, Jesus answers his prayers and pleading directly, but it’s not what Paul wants to hear, “My grace is sufficient for you, because my power is made perfect in weakness.” Put that another way: “No, Paul, I will not take this away from you. I will be with you to empower you to endure it, but this thorn remains. And it is to this end: pairing your obvious weaknesses with the blessings that I give, you will see that the credit belongs to me, not you, and that your true strength is external in me, not internal within yourself.” If Jesus removed the thorn, the temptation would be stronger for Paul to boast in himself—in his work—rather than seeing Jesus’ power at work through him.
So, Paul had to resign himself to the fact that it was God’s will to let this hindrance and difficulty remain. He had to trust what God was doing and know that even if he didn’t understand it, he would trust that God was keeping his promises and doing what was best for him.
Our new district president, Pastor Heckendorf, attended our circuit pastors’ meeting this past Monday. While studying this text for this weekend’s sermon, he offered up a phrase that has stuck with me since he said it: “It is easy to trust God, until you have to trust God.” Trusting God is easy when you don’t feel like you’re leaning on him. When the income is comfortable, the food is plentiful, the home is sound, the health is solid—do you trust God? Of course! But when everything is good, that’s not really difficult. When God feels like the third or fifth or tenth line of defense, of course we trust God!
But what happens when the thorns in the flesh come for us? What happens when it feels like there are no other lines of defense—that I’m left trusting God alone because there’s nothing else to rely on? What about that challenge at work or even in securing a job? What about the health scare with no clear treatment options? What about the relationships with family or friends that are just wilting away, and no matter what you do, you can’t fix or change it? Do you struggle with God in prayer regarding these issues? Do you turn to your heavenly Father, who loves you dearly, and ask him to bring relief and solutions to these matters? Do you remind God of his promises that he won’t let you be overwhelmed and will provide a way out—and that he’ll work all things for your eternal good?
I hope you do. However, I know I’m not always so good at that. Perhaps I pray once, nothing changes, and then I give up. Or I assume that God’s answer to me is the same as it was for Paul, a firm, “No.” And so I ignore all of God’s promises to deliver me in the day of trouble, all of his direction to pray to him persistently, and I just stop—and perhaps begin to sink under the weight of these crosses and suffer at the pain of these thorns.
But, my brothers and sisters, what joy and relief we leave on the table when we just give up. Petition your God! Plead with him! He has not left you or abandoned you; your prayers are not being shouted into the void. They are coming before the God who loves you, who has saved you from your sins, who gave up his life that you would have freedom from death and hell and the certainty of eternal life with him. And with every decision that he makes, everything he allows in our lives, whether good or bad (from our point of view), he allows with a purpose, and that purpose is always focused on eternity.
Paul had the thorn that wouldn’t be taken away so that he didn’t get full of himself and start trusting in himself for salvation rather than Jesus. Perhaps some suffering in your life is being used for the same purpose—to keep you focused and reminded of how dependent you are—we all are—on God alone. We cannot get rid of our sins, but he has. We can’t make good come from bad, but he will. We cannot enter the gates of heaven on our own, but he draws us to himself.
Paul identifying this thorn as a “messenger of Satan” is something that has really stood out to me this week, and I can’t help but think about God’s conversation with Satan at the very beginning of the book of Job. All of Job’s troubles, to a certain extent, begin because God is bragging on how faithful Job is. At that time, God said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one like him on the earth, a man who is blameless and upright, who fears God and turns away from evil” (Job 1:8). Satan scoffs at this. Satan replies that Job is only faithful because God has given him many blessings and kept him physically safe. “But,”Satan argues, “just stretch out your hand and strike everything that is his, and he will certainly curse you to your face!” (Job 1:11). Surprisingly, God’s response to Satan’s challenge is to agree, but with limits. First, Satan cannot hurt Job himself, only the things near and dear to him (Job 1:12). And then, he can only affect Job’s health, but not take his life (Job 2:6).
And this has had me wondering—is God bragging on you? Is he holding you up to even Satan and saying, “Have you considered my servant, [Fill In Your Name Here]?” And perhaps, has Satan crafted a snarky response giving some crummy reason for your faith and dependence on God? And has God, knowing that the faith he’s given you is much more robust than that, given Satan permission to do something that would feel bad to us to test us, to try to pull us away from our faith in Jesus as Savior?
And if all of those things happened for you, and you stand your ground in your faith despite these thorns in the flesh, what does that say? Well, first it says to Satan that he’s wrong, you are not so easily overcome. And as Jesus said, his power is made perfect in weakness, so when the earthly props that we are leaning on get kicked out from under us, does God use those moments to help us depend on him even more than we used to? Does he put so many things in our lives that we have no control over to allow us (or force us) to say, “Lord, please help me—in the way that is best according to your will!”?
By holding fast to your Savior in good times and bad, you are focusing your life and attention where it should be: on Jesus. At the same time, you might be proving God right and Satan wrong. Satan was allowed to do something nasty to you, to send his messenger to you, to scourge you with these thorns. What does it matter? To live is Christ, to die is gain. Even if all is taken from me, our Savior’s power is still complete to save us; his grace is, indeed, sufficient for our needs.
Of course, we still pray for relief when bad and troublesome things are in our lives. That’s what those who have gone before us have done (like the apostle Paul), and that is what God himself tells us to do. But as we deal with these thorns, these sufferings, these hardships—whatever they may be—we are also freed to ask the question, “If God is not going to take this away, then he’s using it for good. I know that his power is made perfect in weakness. So, what good might he be working from this?”
We may never have an answer to that question until we can ask God directly in heaven, but we can know what God’s plan ultimately is: he wants us to be with him forever in heaven. And so, he’s freed us from our sins and allows all things in this life—both good and bad—to keep us focused not just on the here and now but on the eternity that lies ahead of us. That eternity is the free gift that our Savior won for us through his life and death in our place.
Is Jesus’ grace really sufficient for you? Absoultely. Both today and through eternity. Amen.
