2024-09-08 Sermon Notes
💡Big Idea
Takeaways and Next Steps
- Our thorn is nothing compared to the thorn that Christ bore for us.
📖Bible Passage
Scripture
Points
- Satan sent a some sort of trouble onto Paul, which Paul describes as "a thorn in the flesh".
- Three times Paul asked God to take away this thorn in the flesh
- Philippians 4:6-7 "don't be anxious, but instead bring everything to God in prayer."
- ⭐: Every trouble is a call for us to pray and to seek the LORD.
- They show us our need for God.
- The climate change movement is another attempt for man to push God away and to say, we do not need God. We can solve our own problems apart from God.
- God uses His providence (including the troubles in our lives) to teach us that we are deficient and insufficient and that we need God.
- but God gives us so much more than thorns. He blesses us abundantly
- he gives us food to drink, air to breathe, people to love and be loved by, and innumerable other blessings.
- But yes, even the thorns from God are a blessing.
- Afflictions (thorns) in our lives do one of two things:
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- It repels us from the LORD
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- or it compels us to the LORD
- Romans 5:3-5 : "Not only this, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces perseverance; and perseverance, proven character; and proven character, hope: and hope doesn't disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us."
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- In this text we see Christ and our warrant to go to Him for grace.
- 2 Corinthians 12:9: "He [Christ] said to me"
- Christ heard Paul's prayer.
- Christ answered Paul's prayer. He was not silent.
- Paul may not have received the answer that he wanted, but Christ actually gave him something better.
- Paul asked for silver, and Christ gave him gold.
- Paul asked simply for Christ to take away affliction, but Christ gave him something better: Christ's grace.
- "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness."
- 2 Corinthians 12:9: "He [Christ] said to me"
- Grace truly is more precious than gold.
- It is wonderful that God would bring grace to us, a sinner.
- In a world that is graceless, the LORD comes to us with a message that is full of grace.
- Ephesians 2:1-9: "You were made alive when you were dead in transgressions and sins, in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the children of disobedience. We also all once lived among them in the lusts of our flesh, doing the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest. But God, being rich in mercy, for his great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ--by grace you have been saved-- and raised us up with him, and made us to sit with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come he might show the exceeding riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus; for by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, that no one would boast."
- Isaiah 53:6, 10 This is grace:
- We were sinful, deserving of punishment.
- And yet, Christ bore our punishment for us.
- Though He was perfect, and undeserving of any punishment
- He willingly chose to pay for our sins.
- What is your thorn?
- Yes, it is indeed painful and hard.
- But consider the thorn that Christ bore.
- He bore the penalty for our sins.
- the crushing of the LORD
- Our thorn is nothing compared to the thorn that Christ bore for us.
- We deserve these thorns:
- Every moment of our lives is in rebellion to God as if we're saying to Him: "bring on the thorns"
- In this passage we see the Holy Spirit and His gift of grace to Paul
- It is not that God gives us His grace to compensate for the thorns.
- No He gives us His grace even through His thorns.
- The Gospel pierces and offends us.
- We try to save ourselves with piety and self-righteousness.
- So God sends thorns in our lives to humble us, and to warn us of the futility of our schemes to save ourselves.
- Case study: God wrestled Jacob and humbled him.
- Jacob learned that he needed to lose his own self-sufficiency and to rely solely on God.
- The world teaches us to raise our children to be entirely self-sufficient.
- In contrast, God teaches us to raise our children to know that they are insufficient, that they must be humble and that they need God for everything.
- Sufficient: It is true that God's grace is sufficient, but this is actually an understatement.
- God's grace is not just sufficient, it is far more than sufficient.
Could we with ink the ocean fill
And were the skies of parchment made;
Were every stalk on earth a quill
And every man a scribe by trade
To write the love of God above
Would drain the ocean dry
Nor could the scroll contain the whole
Though stretched from sky to sky.
- "The Love of God", 1917 Hymn by Frederick Lehman
- Paul's reaction to Christ's response.
- 2 Corinthians 12:10: Therefore I take pleasure in weaknesses, in injuries, in necessities, in persecutions, and in distresses, for Christ's sake. For when I am weak, then am I strong.
- When I am weak, then I am strong.
- We sinners are so strong. We are proud and arrogant. We desperately need thorns in our lives to humble us and to show us what is already true, that we desperately need God.
- It is only when we realize that we are weak that we can receive God's strength.
Application
Further Study
💬Discussion Questions
2024-09-08 Sermon Notes
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💡Big Idea
Takeaways and Next Steps
📖Bible Passage
Points
Application
Further Study
💬Discussion Questions