Your Thorn for the Shaming of Satan | John Piper

Father, as you have been faithful to Jacob and to Scott, I ask for the same help. May I speak the truth? May it be in accord with your Word, both in content and in spirit. May it be saving for those who are outside Christ. May it be strengthening for all of us and may Christ be honored. I ask this in Jesus' name, amen. So let's think together for a few minutes about the experience of the Apostle Paul and the way his body and his soul was made the theater of unparalleled revelations of God, lifelong pain, demonic harassment, and the glory of Christ. And then apply that to the next 60 years of your life or whatever you have left. Now I'm not assuming you brought a Bible to a commencement service but there are Bibles few under the pew in front of you and lots of you have smartphones with Bibles and I give you permission to take them out. Because we are going to look very seriously for 10 or 15 minutes at 2 Corinthians 12, 7 to 10. And if you don't want to look, just listen. So either watch the exposition while you listen or just listen carefully. So 2 Corinthians 12, verse 7, "To keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, pause." So the situation is that God has granted Paul extraordinary revelations of himself from heaven, verse 3 and 4. This man, he's talking about himself, was caught up into paradise, verse 4. He heard things that cannot be told, which man may not utter. So the situation is that the Apostle Paul had been caught up into paradise, whether in the body or out of the body. He didn't even know and God had revealed things to him so glorious and so wonderful. He can't even talk about them. That's a spectacular privilege. That's an unspeakable, literally unspeakable joy. And God gave Paul this privilege and this joy knowing it was putting him at risk of being conceited. Now this is mind-boggling at several levels, one. I thought seeing God makes you humble. I thought 2 Corinthians 3, 18 taught that the more you behold heavenly reality, the less conceited you would be. 2. I thought God cares for us and does not lead us into temptation. One of the aims of Bethlehem College in seminary is to guide students out of simplistic readings of the Bible through the swamp of cynical questions about the Bible into the bright fields of wise, deep, coherent understanding of the Bible. So what does God do? Middle of verse 7, "A thorn was given to me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from being conceited." So God has two ways, at least, to keep Paul from being conceited for unparalleled revelations. One, don't give him any, two, give him plenty plus pain. I'm getting ahead of myself, who gave the thorn? We know the answer to that question. We should work class. How do we know the answer to that question? We know the answer to that question because of the aim of the thorn. He says it twice, "Less we miss it," front of verse 7, back of verse 7, verse 7 at the beginning, "To keep me from being conceited," end of verse 7, "To keep me from being conceited." Now you all know, everybody in this room knows the design of Satan in this world is not to minimize conceit. He's not about destroying conceit in God's people. That's God's goal. God gave the thorn with that aim and purpose. A thorn was given to me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from being conceited, and to make sure that our minds don't stop being boggled, please God, for these graduates, forever, don't let their minds stop being boggled, by the word, to keep us from having our minds not boggled, he said, "I'm going to do it through Satan." God uses demons to undo the design of the father of demons. God uses Satan to defeat the purposes of Satan. This is not exceptional, like, whoa, that's an eccentric view. This is not exceptional. He did it with Job, he did it with Judas, he did it with Paul. He'll do it with you. What happened when Satan entered into Judas? He handed Jesus over to be crucified. What happened when Jesus was crucified? I'll read it to you. This is Colossians chapter 2 verse 15. He disarmed the rulers, the satanic rulers and authorities, and put them to an open shame by triumphant over them in him. The death of Jesus disarmed Satan in his warfare against God's people. He stripped him of his one damning weapon, unforgiven sin, who should bring any charge against God's elect. He is God who justifies, who is to condemn, it is Christ Jesus who died. None of your accusations stick anymore, Satan. You have been stripped of the one weapon with which you could dam us, unforgiven sin. No more. When Satan entered Judas, he signed his own death warrant with the blood of Jesus. The suicide of Judas was symbolic of the suicide of Satan. Over and over again in the history of God's people, God shames Satan as a suicidal fool in the service of salvation, over and over. Praise God. That's what he's doing here, putting Satan to work for Paul's protection from pride. Bring the Father of all pride to work, to destroy pride in his apostle. I like the way God works. So is that the sum, is that the sum of God's purpose in these magnificent revelations and this painful thorn? No, that's not the sum, it's not even the main point. It's not even the main goal of the thorn and the revelations. Verse 8, "Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it, namely the thorn, this messenger of Satan, that it should leave me." And the answer of Christ is no, no, no. And then he gives his reason, verse 9. But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you. My power is made perfect in weakness." In other words, Jesus says to Paul, "Paul, this thorn, this messenger of Satan is going to make you weak." In such a way that if you have any power, it would be mine. So what's going on here? What's going on is not merely that he grants unspeakable revelations, not merely that he is preventing pride, not merely that he's shaming Satan, but he is perfecting the manifestation of the power and the grace of Christ as what's going on here. Paul sees it and now he understands, "My body and my soul are being made the theater for the drama of Satan's shame and Christ's glory." Verses 9 and 10, "How do you respond to this, Paul, in two minutes? I'm going to ask you how you respond." Verse 9, "Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses and insults, hardships, persecutions and calamities for when I am weak, then I am strong." Here are counselors today and pastor today, some who would say to Paul at this point, "You're in denial." Stop putting on that fake Christian face. Get real. Get angry with God. He's hurting you. Even from the Old Testament, what a good, godly complaint looks like. If there is anything that you have taken away from being here for these years, I hope one of them is we hate fake because Jesus hates hypocrisy. But we love something more than we hate fake. We love the miracle of sovereign grace in a suffering life called Sirius Joy. We love that. It's rare. Paul responds to this god-given thorn in verse 9 and 10 with two of the strongest Christian hedonist words in the Bible. 1. I will boast all the more gladly, hate this star, superlative of hate that oaths from which we get hate on his own. 2. I am content with weaknesses, you.co, same word God used when he said, "This is my beloved son, with him I am well pleased. You can't get more pleased than being pleased by God in his son." That's a big word. A big, big, emotional, joyful word for a response to a thorn. Crazy fake if you've never tasted it. So Paul is saying, "Father, if I may have greater revelations of your glory, if I may be protected from conceit, through the pain of this thorn, for the shaming of Satan's weakness, for the glory of Christ, I will be most glad and content." If the Lord Jesus carries delays his coming, some of you are going to live in this body of yours called your tent in the Bible, another 60 years, for me to imagine, I won't. If you have any bent toward pride, if you have any bent in your fallen self toward conceit, and if you truly desire greater revelations of God, you may be virtually certain, he will give you those revelations and a thorn to go with it. The greatest issue facing you, I think this is true, I don't think it's an overstatement. The greatest issue facing you will be this, when God makes your body and your soul a theater of revelation and pain for the sake of your humility, Satan's shaming and Christ's shining, how will you respond? Will you respond like the world, murmuring, complaining, questioning, accusing? Or will you be like Paul, and I'll read it again, "I will boast, most gladly of my weaknesses so that the power of Christ may rest upon me, for the sake of Christ, then, I am well pleased with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, calamities." Even a few years you conclude that God has not given you one thorn, but a crown of thorns. Will you not pray, will you not pray, Father? If I might get a glimpse of heaven, if I might be saved from pride, if Satan and his ugliness might be exposed as worthless in my life, if I might magnify the beauty of Jesus, then Father, would you grant me the miracle to be most glad and well pleased? And I just ask you, thoughtful, serious Christian hedonists, I ask you, would not that make the power and the grace of the Lord Jesus look magnificent in your life to everybody around you? God brought you to Bethlehem so that you would learn to see these things in the Bible and live them in your body. And as you go, we will pray for you that the fruit of these years will be that. Father, it's a miracle, it's a miracle to experience serious joy when the thorn or the crown of thorns is pressing down on us or our wives or our children or our parents. It's a miracle to be glad through tears. It's a miracle to be well pleased through heaves of sobbing. It's a miracle. That's why we exist, work and we pray. Jesus name. Amen.