Many of us are trying to get rid of something God gave him. Dr. Tony Evans says those painful problems we think of as burdens may really be blessings. One of the reasons God gives you a thorn is because he wants to show you some new things. This is the alternative broadcast featuring the timeless biblical teachings from the archives of Dr. Tony Evans. When life gets thorny, many times our only instinct is to do whatever it takes to get things back to normal. But in today's message, Dr. Evans took listeners to the book of Exodus to show that God often has something better in mind for us through those uncomfortable times.
Let's join along as he explains. A dense fog covering seven blocks to a depth of 100 feet is composed of less than one glass of actual water. A fog covering seven blocks so you can't see even a hundred feet in front of you because it's that thick only has a glass or less of water that composes that much fog. You see, there are 60 billion droplets that are spread out of particles settling over that seven block area, but it can blot out your ability to see things clearly. Many today are living in a spiritual fog. They allow a cupful of trouble, irritation, or as our text tells us today, thorns, to cloud out their vision and dampen their spirits. How do you live in the sunshine when all you see is fog? Now, make no mistake about it.
On a foggy day, the sun is shining. But the question is, how can such a little bit of water cause all of this confusion? In 2 Corinthians chapter 12, verses 7 through 10, where Paul discusses the thorn. In verse 7, he introduces us to it, the reality of a thorn. He says, because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations for this reason, to keep me from exalting myself, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to buffet me.
That's not buffet me. To trouble me, to torment me, to irritate me, to exacerbate me, or to put it in everyday contemporary colloquial language to get on my last nerve. The Greek word for thorn referred to a splinter or a needle of some kind that pricked you. We've all had a needle or a thorn or a splinter from wood to get in our finger or toe and irritate us.
It could be used of a hook that catches a fish, piercing its skin, of which it can't shake itself from without tearing and making things worse. A thorn is anything that nags or irritates your life on a continuous basis. A thorn is anything that nags, irritates, exacerbates, or frustrates your life ongoingly. You can't shake it.
It hangs around. Paul says, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh, something to irritate me. Now, you can read commentaries galore, and you have a lot of guesswork as to what Paul's thorn was. For example, Paul talks about how when he was trying to write the churches, he had trouble seeing. In fact, he had an amanuensis, a recorder who would write for him, and so some will say, well, it was his eye problem. But still others will say, well, he was always being followed by this group called the Judaizers, who were undermining his ministry, and so they were an irritation to him.
Maybe it was that. Paul speaks of being lonely. He says, everyone has forsaken me. Some say it was loneliness, but the Bible never says what his thorn is, and that's good. It's good that he doesn't tell us what his thorn is so you can put your thorn in. Anything that irritates, nags, frustrates, exacerbates on a continuous level.
In fact, he lays it open in verse 10. He says it can be insults, distresses, persecutions, or difficulties. Some of you are having to deal with emotional thorns, things that have to do with your feelings. You are lonely.
You perhaps have been single for an inordinate amount of time, and you are simply tired of being alone, and it pricks you, nags you, irritates you. Or perhaps it's depression that keeps popping up. You can't shake it. Maybe it's memories or regrets.
When you look back over your life, you wish you could have done things differently, but you can't, because that's history now, but you've not been able to shake it. It's an emotional thorn. Others have relational thorns, people who get on your nerves. They're always popping up at the wrong time, which is anytime they show up. This could be the person living in an unhappy marriage.
They have no biblical grounds for divorce, so they feel stuck spiritually, but they are unhappy with needs not being met or other kinds of challenges and such relationships or people that you work beside and you've been trying to get a new job, trying to get transferred, or praying that God would transfer them. And every day you got to look at that person, and it becomes an irritation. It's a relational kind of thorn.
Others have financial thorns, a long time trying to find a job or the right job, and it's not coming through, or perhaps you're stuck in an unhappy work situation, or it looks like every time you try to get out of debt, just when you think you made it, something else breaks down, something else shows up, and you can't shake this financial situation. I guess one of the worst thorns there is are physical thorns. Disabilities, chronic illnesses, headaches that won't go away, things that are wrong with your body that are not healed. It's a thorn. Please notice this phrase in verse 7, there was given me a thorn.
Now we could spend an hour on that. He says, my thorn was a gift. Well, take your gift back. He says, it was given me, and if you think that's bad, that God is giving away thorns.
See, now I know you don't hear about this too much today. You hear about how he's giving blessings, money, cars, houses. Well, let me tell you something else he's giving, thorns. There was given me a thorn in the flesh in my humanity, and look at the theology here, a messenger of Satan to buffet me. God gave me a thorn and let the devil deliver it.
Come on, work with that now. The thorn was handed to me, given to me, and you'll discover when you read the whole passage, by God. But the delivery service was a messenger of the devil. You ever looked at, maybe you have a relational thorn, somebody in your life keeps getting on your nerves, you say, you ain't nothing but the devil. Well, you are partially right, but the gift came from God.
Watch this now. Gotta talk theology. God is sovereign, meaning he's in charge.
Nothing happens, and I mean nothing. No matter how tiny or big, that either is not caused by God, he made it happen, or allowed by God, he okayed it happening. There is no third category, like luck or chance or fate, words that ought not be part of any serious Christian's vocabulary, because to have luck, chance, or fate is to deny sovereignty. It's to say, that got by God. You can't have an omniscient God who knows everything and something get by him. You say, but the devil is messing with me.
If the devil is messing with you, God had to okay it. There's a great example of that in Scripture, and Dr. Evans will talk about it when we listen into more of this lesson from the Freedom Through Forgiveness series in just a moment. This classic sermon compilation is a look at the connection between release and relief, when we experience the mercy of God and pass it along to others. And we'd like to pass along a copy of this six lesson collection to you as our thank-you gift, when you support the alternative broadcast with a contribution. Along with it, we'll include the companion booklet, 30 Days to Victory Through Forgiveness. It explains how in a single month, you can learn to let go of the pain that others have caused you, or that you've caused yourself.
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I'll have our contact information again for you after part two of today's lesson. We all know Job, his life has fallen apart. But when you read Job chapter 1, God starts it off. God says to the devil in Job 1, have you considered my servant Job? I want you to think about Job for a little while, devil. Devil says, well the only reason he's serving you is because you're blessing him. Take away his blessings, he won't serve you. And then God tells the devil, go right ahead.
I'm going to give Job the thorn and you can deliver it. If the devil is messing with you, God okayed it first. Now, mess with your theology. God approved it, because God is sovereign.
Let me say it another way. God uses the devil to do his dirty work. When God wants to keep his hands clean, because he's perfect, can't sin, and is apart from evil, he uses somebody with dirty hands.
You ever called somebody to do something for you because you ain't want to get your hands dirty? If God is going to allow a dirty deed, he uses a dirty person. He says, it was given to me, but it was a messenger of the devil. Satan didn't get in the Garden of Eden without God allowing him to be there. The great question of theology is, why would an all-powerful God allow a lesser creature that he created, the devil, to do what he has done? Good question, especially when you use the word allow. See, the answer is in the question. The devil is not the devil, the devil is God's devil.
He operates by permission. How do you know what you're facing is a thorn? Verse 8, concerning this, I entreated the Lord three times that it might depart from me. If it's nagging you, irritating you, and getting on your nerves, you prayed about it, and God hadn't done anything about it, that's a thorn. Anybody got a thorn? Sticking you? Just needling you. Authority says to buffet me. That means to torment me, or irritate me, or frustrate me.
Now watch this now, watch this now. Many of us are trying to get rid of something God gave you. You say, well, if God gave it, how can it be so bad? Because the devil delivered it.
Isn't that what the text says? It was given to me. I prayed about it. I said, God, get rid of this thorn.
It's sticking me. He says, I prayed three times, because it was too irritating, frustrating, so I wasn't being carnal, I wasn't being sinful, I was talking to God. You told me, preacher, to pray, I prayed. And I've still got this thorn.
Well watch this now. If you pray about something, and you're a serious Christian, and a serious prayer, and it's a thorn, because it's irritating you, and God doesn't take it, that's because he's not finished with the gift, because it's a gift. A thorn is a gift. It was given to me. So the question is now, why would God give me a gift like that?
Something that nags me in perpetuity, something that won't go away day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year. Why would a good God—and God is good all the time, and all the time God is good—why would a good God give me something to prick me like this? I don't deserve this.
I deserve better. Back to verse 7. There are two reasons God gives you a thorn.
Number one, and because of the surpassing greatness of the Revelation, the first thing, the first reason—this is very important now—that God gives you a thorn is he wants to show you some new things. Let's look at Paul's Revelation here in this chapter, verse 2. I know a man in Christ—Paul's talking about himself in the third person—who 14 years ago, whether in the body I do not know or out of the body I do not know, God knows such a man was caught up to the third heaven. And I know how such a man, whether in the body or apart from the body I do not know, God knows, was caught up in the paradise and heard inexpressible words which a man is not permitted to speak.
Now watch this. Paul is the only man in all of history who was taken to heaven, got to see heaven, and allowed to come back to earth to discuss it. He says he went to the third heaven. There are three heavens. There is the atmospheric heaven, where the clouds are, the oxygen is. There is the stellar heaven, the stars, the planets, the solar system. And then there is the throne room of God, paradise, the place where every believer goes when they die. That's the third heaven. He says, I was taken to paradise.
I like what he says. He says, whether in the body or out of the body, I don't know. In other words, it was a dimension I'm not familiar with. It was an experience that is unlike any experience I ever had. See, I can't fully explain heaven to you, because it operates in another dimension.
It operates outside of space, outside of time. He says, I cannot fully explain my state. I'm not sure how to articulate it, but that's one thing I do know.
What I saw there, I cannot put words together to formulate. He calls it inexpressible. One of the reasons God gives you a thorn is because he wants to show you some new things, things that go beyond what's normal for you, things that go beyond what's average for you. So many Christians are satisfied with the normal. So they spend all their time trying to get rid of their thorns, complaining about their thorns, fussing and cussing about their thorns, asking why all day long when God is trying to show you something you've never seen before. And the thorn is a necessary part of the revelation. When God gives you a thorn, he has something new, something unique. God is going to expand your anointing when he increases your thorn.
Did you just hear me? God's got something in store for you when he gives you a thorn. So the good news is, if you've got a thorn, it's a gift from God, but because it hurts you, delivered by the devil, cuz the God who gave the gift that was delivered by the devil has got something in store for you.
Thorns can come at the weirdest times. Jesus had this high event, this big event, baptized the heavens open. This is my son in whom I'm well pleased. The Holy Spirit descends like a dove. Rest on him at his baptism in Matthew 3. The next thing we see in Matthew 4 is the Spirit led Jesus into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil.
Did you get that? After this big celebration, the Spirit, God the Holy Spirit, led Jesus into the wilderness for the devil to mess with him. That's a thorn. See, it happened to Jesus. This is a thorn. God led Jesus to be messed over by the devil, cuz there was something big coming for Jesus.
Magnificent. So easily we go from paradise to pain, glory to suffering, blessing to buffeting, because of the thorns. There's a second reason God gives a thorn.
God's got something new he wants to show you. The second reason he gives a thorn is to keep you from exalting yourself. A thorn keeps you dependent. A thorn is to show you something new, but the problem is, without the thorn, when God shows you something new, your tendency and my tendency is to forget our need for the God who showed it.
Have you ever noticed how the more blessed you are, the less sense of your need of God? But because God is gonna take you from here to here with a thorn, and he knows that that jump to this new expression he wants to show you will make it possible for you to forget him, he creates a thorn to make you dependent back on him. Dr. Tony Evans, explaining why things that make us uncomfortable also make us grow, in a message he titled, How to Understand a Thorn. It's just one part of his timeless six lesson teaching series called, Freedom Through Forgiveness. As I mentioned earlier, when you make a contribution to the alternative, you can get this entire collection as our gift, along with the companion booklet, 30 Days to Victory Through Forgiveness. Just contact us at 1-800-800-3222, and let us say thanks for your help by sending you this special double resource package. Again, that's 1-800-800-3222, or make the arrangements online at tonyevans.org. Tomorrow, more on what our God-given thorns can teach us, and how to deal with the discomfort they cause along the way. I hope you'll join us.
