2 Corinthians 12:1-10

This boasting will do no good, but I must go on. I will reluctantly tell about visions and revelations from the Lord. 2 I was caught up to the third heaven fourteen years ago. Whether I was in my body or out of my body, I don’t know—only God knows. 3 Yes, only God knows whether I was in my body or outside my body. But I do know 4 that I was caught up to paradise and heard things so astounding that they cannot be expressed in words, things no human is allowed to tell. 5 That experience is worth boasting about, but I’m not going to do it. I will boast only about my weaknesses. 6 If I wanted to boast, I would be no fool in doing so, because I would be telling the truth. But I won’t do it, because I don’t want anyone to give me credit beyond what they can see in my life or hear in my message, 7 even though I have received such wonderful revelations from God. So to keep me from becoming proud, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger from Satan to torment me and keep me from becoming proud.8 Three different times I begged the Lord to take it away. 9 Each time he said, “My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness.” So now I am glad to boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ can work through me. 10 That’s why I take pleasure in my weaknesses, and in the insults, hardships, persecutions, and troubles that I suffer for Christ. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

We need to remember that we are weak for at least three reasons:

1. Because we are.
2. Because if we don’t, we run the risk of falling into the temptation of pride and trusting in self-strength instead of the Spirits.
3. And third if we don’t remember our weakness we will be in grave danger of miss one of the greatest truths in Scripture:

That the strength of Christ’s Kingdom is built upon weakness. Jesus said: “My grace is sufficient for you, for MY POWER IS MADE PERFECT IN WEAKNESS.” 2 Corinthians 12:9. This is the universal truth of Christ’s kingdom, that the strength of His Kingdom is built upon weakness. Today in the church we have all but rejected this truth, because we want it to be built on our strengths, not our weaknesses. That is why instead of seeing powerful things we see pathetic and puny ones. For when we built on our strengths, we get what we can do not what He can do. One of the problems with trying to build based on our power is that we end up pointing people to self instead of the Savior. It’s also exhausting because we live lives as if everything rests on us instead of on Christ. Now if you want to see this truth, that the strength of Christ’s Kingdom is built upon weakness you don’t have to look any further than the cross of Calvary. II Corinthians 13:4 tells us that while Christ was crucified in weakness He now lives by God’s power: “Although he was crucified in weakness, he now lives by the power of God. We, too, are weak, just as Christ was, but when we deal with you we will be alive with him and will have God’s power.” Christ built His kingdom on the weakness He experienced on the cross. Poet Dorothy L. Sayers captures this truth in the poem:

The Choice of the Cross

“Hard it is, very hard,

To travel up the slow and stony road

To Calvary, to redeem mankind; far

better to make but one resplendent miracle,

Lean through the cloud, lift the

right hand of power

and with a sudden lightning

smite the world perfect.

Yet this was not God’s way,

Who had the power,

But set it by choosing the cross,

the thorn, the sorrowful wounds.

Something there is, perhaps, that

power destroys in passing, something supreme,

To whose great value in the eyes

of God – that cross, that thorn, and

those five wounds bear witness.”

It would have been so much easier for God to just lean through the clouds and smite the world perfect with His power. But Jesus didn’t do it that way because in order for the Savior to bring us salvation He had to become weak. As Philippians 2 tells us, He had to set aside His divinity and humble himself, making Himself NOTHING, taking the very nature of a servant. Trading first his crown for a cradle and then for a cross. Becoming human and humbling himself even unto death. The world looks at this Biblical truth in unbelief for they cannot understand it. Why would Christ allow Himself to die in weakness? Why die in this helpless and humiliating way, after all, isn’t He supposed to be King of Kings and Lord of Lords the One who in Matthew 26:53 claimed to have all the forces of heaven at His disposal?  Matthew 26:53: “Don’t you realize that I could ask my Father for thousands of angels to protect us, and he would send them instantly?” So why did he die in weakness to win the war? Because Jesus couldn’t buy our salvation by force. The constant message throughout the Bible is that in order for us to be forgiven of the guilt and shame of our past there had to be a sacrifice for sin. Throughout the Old Testament, we see worshippers needing to bring an animal to the Temple to be sacrificed for their sins. A sacrifice was needed as a substitute so that even though they deserved to die for the guilt of their sins something else could take their place. The New Testament tells us that the blood of those innocent animals really couldn’t satisfy and take away sin, it just covered but didn’t clean. These sacrifices were really just pointing forward to the time when the Savior, the Lamb of God would come and allow Himself to be nailed to a cross and die in our place. Jesus gave up His throne for a crown of thorns, trading glory for groaning so that we could go from sinner to saint. On the cross, Jesus became weak, so that we could become strong. To the world this weakness is foolishness but to the ones who have experienced the power of His weakness it is life. As Paul wrote in I Corinthians 1:18: “The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” Jesus power was made perfect in His weakness upon the cross, He became weak so that we could become strong. As the old hymn “Just a closer walk with Thee” states: “I am weak, but Thou are strong. Keep me Jesus from all wrong. I’ll be satisfied as long as I walk, let me walk, close to Thee.” What about you are you trying to serve in your own strength or are you walking in His strength because you have not only admitted your weakness to Him but submitted them to Him?

2 Corinthians 12:1-10

This boasting will do no good, but I must go on. I will reluctantly tell about visions and revelations from the Lord. 2 I was caught up to the third heaven fourteen years ago. Whether I was in my body or out of my body, I don’t know—only God knows. 3 Yes, only God knows whether I was in my body or outside my body. But I do know 4 that I was caught up to paradise and heard things so astounding that they cannot be expressed in words, things no human is allowed to tell. 5 That experience is worth boasting about, but I’m not going to do it. I will boast only about my weaknesses. 6 If I wanted to boast, I would be no fool in doing so, because I would be telling the truth. But I won’t do it, because I don’t want anyone to give me credit beyond what they can see in my life or hear in my message, 7 even though I have received such wonderful revelations from God. So to keep me from becoming proud, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger from Satan to torment me and keep me from becoming proud.8 Three different times I begged the Lord to take it away. 9 Each time he said, “My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness.” So now I am glad to boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ can work through me. 10 That’s why I take pleasure in my weaknesses, and in the insults, hardships, persecutions, and troubles that I suffer for Christ. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

We all want to get into shape the problem is we don’t want to do the workout. Part of the problem is that we miss the main goal of working out, we make it looking good instead of living good. It’s not so much about how you look but how you live. We want to get stronger which requires some strength training. But in order for us to be successful in strength training, we need a good trainer. When it comes to our spiritual strength training many people fail because they try to train by themselves. Instead of getting stronger they strain and hurt themselves or get less strength than they would have, had someone been there to guide them. In Psalm 29:11 David declares “The Lord gives his people strength,     The Lord blesses them with peace.” This is a promise directly from God, He is offering to be your strength trainer. But too often we don’t want His strength because we think we’re strong enough on our own. Pastor Kyle Idelman tells a story about the time his 4-year-old daughter came into his office as he was rearranging the furniture. He had this large heavy desk and was pushing it from one side of the office to the other. His daughter wanted to help so she got between his arms and just started pushing with all her might. She huffed and puffed, stained and struggled with her dad behind her. At one point she stopped, looked at her dad and said, “Daddy, you are in my way, just stand over there.” Kyle hid his smile and did as she said. Again, she huffed and puffed, struggled and strained but this time the desk didn’t budge an inch because her Daddy wasn’t behind her pushing any longer. This is the sad story for many Christians today, instead of coming alongside and working with God we end up consigning Him to the corner while we struggle in our own strength. This points to another reason why we need to understand the truth that we are weak and He is strong. You see until we realize God is strong and we are weak we’ll tend to live our Christianity backward. Where we live life as if God needs us, instead of the other way around. We will buy into the belief that God needs OUR time, talent, treasures. We’ll believe God depends on us far more than we depend on Him because He just couldn’t live without us. But here is the truth if God is not impressed by the biggest, baddest, bad guys on earth, He’s certainly not going to be all that impressed with my puny efforts. It’s here in 2 Corinthians 12 that we see Paul being tempted by that feeling, as he says in 2 Corinthians 12:7 “So to keep me from becoming proud, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger from Satan to torment me and keep me from becoming proud.” It’s not hard to picture Paul being tempted to pick up pride and becoming conceited. I mean the man’s a legend. When he spoke large crowds of people gathered and were convinced of the truth of Jesus Christ. He was instrumental in starting many new churches throughout Greece and Rome. He not only knew the Bible backward and forward but He wrote half of the New Testament. To top it off according to 2 Corinthians 12 God had given him a vision where he experienced the glory of paradise and saw and heard things he wasn’t permitted to tell us about. How easy would it have been for him to fall victim to the poison of pride? The problem with pride is it would have poisoned Paul’s ministry and made it about self instead of the Savior. It would have gotten in the way of what God wanted to do thru him. But as Bill Cosby once said: “People say: ‘God will find a way.’ God can’t find a way if you’re in the way.” And Paul’s pride would have gotten in the way of God’s will, so God sent a “thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment” him. Now while on the outside this may appear to be mean on the inside it helped Paul’s heart not to become puffed up with pride. While this thorn hurts his flesh and didn’t feel good it actually served to strengthen his faith. God allowed Paul to suffer because if he hadn’t Paul’s pride would have made him think God was weak and he was strong. It would have made him believe that God needed to do things Paul’s way rather than the other way around. Paul’s suffering served to strengthen him by stripping him of selfish pride. As the old Gospel hymn proclaims: “I am weak but thou are strong… Jesus keep me from all wrong”. It’s a good thing to remember,  you and I are weak, but God is strong. For if we don’t remember that, then we will end up doing wrong because we’ll get in God’s way and not give Him the room He needs to work in our lives. Where do you need to admit your weaknesses today? Until we face the fact that we are weak and He is strong we will keep relying on self-strength instead of the Saviors.