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Hillside O’Malley SDA Church

David Shin

Thorn in the Flesh

There's a video that went viral on YouTube a few years ago, and as of last night, or yesterday, there were 4.5 million people that had watched this clip of a group of men that were gathered around a gentleman that had a splinter in his foot.

Now, it is mystifying to me why 4.5 million people would want to watch this, but there they are.

The men are gathered around and there is a gentleman with a pair of tweezers.

You've been through this situation before if you've ever had a splinter, and I guess that most of us would have.

And they are just mesmerized and transfixed as he grabs a pair of gold tweezers and seeks on a few attempts to pull this sliver out.

And I was hesitating whether to put these pictures up here, but there it is.

So he's trying to get the sliver out, and he finally grabs the end of the splinter and pulls it further out, and it is not just a small splinter, and The room erupts into amazement and awe, and there are men that are shrieking and saying, what in the world did you get in your foot?

And after it is pulled out, the man actually takes a picture of the splinter that was in his foot.

The thing about splinters is that it is not debilitating, but it is highly annoying, isn't it?

Whatever you do, it seems to be there in the background.

And our passage of study today deals with a man who says that he has a thorn in the flesh, and he asks God to remove it, and he receives a fascinating response.

So I want to invite you to open your Bibles with me, if you have not already, to our Scripture reading, 2 Corinthians 12, in verse 7, Paul reflecting on his metaphorical thorn in the flesh, a thorn that became so bothersome that he asked God to remove it from his life.

2nd Corinthians chapter 12 verse 7, And lest I should be exalted above measure by an abundance of revelations, a thorn in the flesh was given to me, a messenger of Satan, to buffet me lest I be exalted above measure." Now here we have some clues indicating the context of what he's talking about.

Now to be clear, This is not a literal thorn in the flesh.

Paul is not writing to the Corinthian church asking them to send a player of tweezers so that he can pull this thing out.

In other words, it is like a thorn in the flesh, and it was given to him or allowed to persist in him lest he should be exalted above measure by the abundance of revelations.

In other words, this thing, whatever it was, was to keep him in a posture of dependence.

It's a messenger of Satan, but Paul asked God to remove this.

Now here's the question, what is the thorn in the flesh that he's talking about?

Now when you cross-reference this with some other passages in Scripture, you can gather some clues as to what this thing is.

And so, here are a few passages, Galatians 6, verse 11.

You see how large a letter I, Paul, have written unto you with my own hand." Now, this was kind of remarkable.

Some of the other letters that he wrote, like Romans, he would dictate the letter to his assistant and they would write it for him.

Some of his letters were written not by him but by someone else.

They are still from Paul because they're his thoughts and words that he dictated, but these literary assistants would help him to write these letters.

And 1 Bible commentator, commenting on Romans, commenting on Romans said, Paul took advantage of various assistants to do the actual writing of at least some of his epistles.

A mentioned assistant of Paul is Tertius who wrote down the Book of Romans and added his own greeting to the church in Rome.

So why is this that Paul, in his letter to the Galatians, points out, look, this is remarkable because I wrote this letter myself.

I didn't have someone else write it for me.

Why was he sometimes dependent upon people to write his letters for him that he dictated to them?

When Paul was brought before the religious leaders, you can see some indications as to what his physical infirmity was.

And those who stood by said, do you revile God's high priest?

Then Paul said, I did not know, brethren, that he was the high priest.

For it is written, you should not speak evil of a ruler of your people.

Now it would be very evident who the high priest was, just by the manner of dress, dress that the high priest had.

But Paul was not able to perceive that it was the high priest.

Now in Galatians chapter 4 verse 15, the Bible almost explicitly indicates what kind of infirmity Paul had.

For I bear witness that if possible you would have plucked out your own what?

In other words, it was very well known among the community of believers and the community of faith that Paul had very poor eyesight.

Matter of fact, It was so poor that it had evidently just drawn out the sympathies of God's people, and perhaps it was even expressed to Paul, look, I just wish that I can give you my eyes so that you could see.

Paul had a condition of poor vision, and this was before LASIK surgery, before glasses.

And so he lived constantly with this condition.

This is from 1 scholar, Bible commentary.

He thought that by earnest prayer the difficulty might be removed.

There's good argument for asking God to help him with his eyesight.

How much more effective could he have been?

Not dependent on assistance to write his letters to the churches.

And so, Paul prays in the next verse, 2 Corinthians 12, verse 8, concerning this thing I pleaded with the Lord, how many times?

It was a thorn in the flesh, something that was always there in the background, no matter what he did, there was a constant reminder, oh yeah, I have poor vision.

It's kind of like that sliver that you have in your finger just nags you all day.

And Paul said, look, this thing is like a thorn in the flesh.

And he asked God, not once, not twice, but 3 times and said, Lord, please, this condition is just wearing me down.

Any of you have something in your life like that?

Discomfort, Perhaps it's a medical condition, perhaps it's an uncomfortable situation in your life, perhaps it's a personal affliction, and you go to God and say, Lord, please remove this thing from me.

Is God able to remove these types of things from our lives?

Yes, He does do this sometimes, but God does not always remove the consequences for sin.

And I reflect back on Adam and Eve when they took a bite of that fruit in Edenic perfection, the entire human race, and I would argue the entire world, bore the results of sin.

The natural consequences of Adam and Eve's sin spread to the entire world.

All of us who are born into this world are born with the natural consequences of sin.

We get old, we die, we get diseases, our hair falls out, All of these are a natural consequence of sin.

And so God does not remove those natural consequences.

Now, there are certain instances when someone has a condition that God intervenes and remove those things, but God does not always do this.

And another application from the thorns is that those thorns, those results of sin, are sometimes a continual source of discomfort.

So Paul prays and said, Lord, please, remove this discomfort from my life.

And he prays this 3 times, and it is almost mystifying the response of God.

So here it is, 2 Corinthians 12, verse 9, he says, look, I pray 3 times, remove this thorn in the flesh, help me with my vision, restore my sight.

And he, this is God, and he said to me, my Grace is sufficient for you.

In this case, God said, look, I'm not going to remove this thorn in the flesh, this condition that is debilitating, that is causing poor vision, that is a constant nuisance and discomfort.

Paul prays 3 times and God says, look, in this case I'm not going to remove this consequence from your life.

There's some other implications that we can go through, but here's a personal question that you can just reflect on.

Has the Lord ever allowed some discomfort in your life?

God's number 1 goal for your life is not your personal comfort.

It's not to live in a penthouse somewhere and get a manicure every day and a pedicure and have a full body massage and eat food that is just luxurious and so forth.

Sorry, the prosperity gospel preachers are wrong, okay?

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Thorn in the Flesh

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