This moment in grace we see. Grace, grace, God's grace, Grace
that will guard us when we're weary. Grace, grace, God's grace,
grace that is greater than all my sin. Thank you, Prabhup�da. But while you're turning back
there to 2 Corinthians 12, I'll say it's been a pleasure to spend
the evening with your pastor and his wife. We came down to
see my father-in-law. It's always the highlight of
the trip for Melinda and I to come by and see Paul and Mindy.
We enjoy that. Let's look here at 2 Corinthians
12. And let me give you a little
background before we get into it here. The Apostle Paul had
been a question by some at the church at Corinth as to whether
or not he was a true apostle of Christ. They said that his
presence, they said his letters are strong and weighty, but his
presence is weak and his speech is contemptible. I expect if
we saw the Apostle Paul in a lineup of preachers, We'd probably not
pick him out as being the Apostle Paul. We probably wouldn't believe
that's the man that wrote, that the Lord used to write three-fourths
of the New Testament. And so Paul had begun to speak
about some of the things he had suffered. And in the course of
it, he said, but rather than glory in me and in these things,
he said, I'll glory in my infirmities. And so he's told about this case
of him being taken up. and seeing things that it wasn't
lawful for a man to utter. Things that it wasn't possible
for a man to utter. And he said, now, he's the one
I'll glory in. That one I saw when I was lifted
up there. I'll glory in him. But as for me, he said, I'll
glory in my infirmities. And here's how he learned that.
The Lord gave him a thorn. He said, lest I be lifted up
from having seen these revelations, the Lord gave me a thorn in the
flesh. Pride is the worst enemy of God's
child. It's a terrible enemy. And even
the Apostle Paul had to be saved from that. His old man of his
flesh was just as deceitful as ours is. And he had to be saved
from that. And so God gave him a thorn in
the flesh. And he says there in verse 8,
he says, And for this thing I have assault the Lord three times
that it might depart from me. You remember our Savior in the
Garden of Gethsemane. He prayed three times and said,
if it's possible, Father, for this cup to be taken from me,
nevertheless, not as I will, but Thy will be done. He went
back three times and prayed that. And we know Christ is preeminent.
It pleases the Father that He have all preeminence. And He's
preeminent in knowing how sufficient His own grace is for our flesh. He knows that better than we
even know it, because He suffered in our flesh. And so this One
who knows that better than we know it, He didn't take the thorn
away from Paul. Just as the Father didn't take
the cup out of His hand, He sent a messenger and strengthened
Him. And so Paul says here that verse 9, He said unto me, My
grace is sufficient for thee. For my strength. is made perfect
in weakness. And then Paul says, Most gladly,
therefore, will I rather glory in my infirmities that the power
of Christ may rest upon me. I want to talk to you about His
strength being made perfect in weakness. His strength made perfect
in weakness. Everything that we suffer, it
doesn't matter what we suffer, We're going to find out His grace
is sufficient. And we're going to find out that
His strength is made perfect. It's made manifest. It's shown
to be His strength alone through our weakness. That's how we see
that His strength's upholding us. So we're going to look here
at Christ's all-sufficient grace. We're just going to take this
verse 9 and divide it into three parts. He says, my grace is sufficient
for you. We'll look at that. Then we're
going to look and see, he says, for my strength is made perfect
in weakness. We'll look at that. And then
we'll look here at the end when he talks about the power of Christ
resting on us. What does that mean? So let's
look first of all here at Christ's sufficient grace. The Lord says,
My grace is sufficient for thee. This is Christ speaking. He said,
My grace is sufficient for thee. Now catch that first word, My,
and look at the last two words, for thee. My grace is sufficient
for thee. This is the Lord Jesus Christ
speaking. The God-man. And He's speaking
to those that He became surety for before the foundation of
the world. He's talking to you who He's redeemed by His own
blood. And He's saying to you and I
who He's called by His grace, He's saying His grace is sufficient
for us. Now, this is not only God saying
this. This is the man who is God saying
this. This is the one who came down
as God and took our flesh but went back as the God-man. And so He knows what He's talking
about. He knows it better than we know it that His grace is
sufficient for us. Have you ever gotten a thorn
in your finger, or you get a splinter or something like that in your
finger, and you grab hold of that finger, and you look at
it real close and examine it, and you begin to care for it,
and it makes you hurt all over because that member is wounded. Well, this one that's speaking
to us is our head. This is Christ our head speaking. And He's speaking here to Paul
who is a member of His body that has a thorn. And He's speaking
here to one of His members that has a thorn. And just like we
do, He is touched with the feeling of our infirmities, and He looks
at that member, and He cares for that member, His child, and
He takes care of it. sends forth His grace. It's going
to be the healing power for that member. This is what He does
for that member. Just like we do for one of our members. Our finger or our hand or something
like that. It does much for us if we could
understand how one we are with Christ. We don't really get that. But we are one with Him. We're
members of His body. One with His flesh. One with
His bones. We're one with Him. He's our
head and we're His body. Ephesians 1 says His body is
the fullness of Him. If one member of His body is
missing, His body won't be full. It won't be complete. And so
He's caring for the members of His body. And His grace will
be sufficient for us. He gives us grace for grace.
And he's the one from whom all grace comes, and there's no end
to it. There's no limit to his grace
at all. He's telling Paul here what he
said back in Isaiah when he said, I've graven you upon the palms
of my hand. Your walls are before me always. This thing was needful for Paul
though. That's why he didn't take it
away. And that's why he don't take our thorn away. Because
it's needful for us. It's needful that we don't get
puffed up in pride. We have to be dependent on Him
always or we'll be haughty. We'll be so arrogant and so full
of ourselves that nobody can stand to be around us. And so
He does this for our good to bring us to depend upon Him.
Let's look at this word grace. Now you know it means the free
favor of God. He elected His people by grace,
by His free favor. He didn't go by any goodness
in us or any evil in us. It was according to His grace.
And the word here means His grace actively working. It means His
grace mightily working in power to accomplish His will for you
and in you who believe. So when we come to great suffering,
especially if it lasts for a while, you know what we do. Like the
psalmist said, we say, has God forgotten to be gracious? Has He in anger shut up His tender
mercies? That's how we start thinking.
And it doesn't take much for us to think that, because we're
so weak in our flesh. But we start thinking things
like that. Well, if He didn't choose us based on anything in
us, He chose us because He would be gracious to us. And when we
fell in Adam, it didn't change His grace toward us one iota.
So when we're thinking these things or going through this
suffering, it's not that his grace has changed. Christ still
came forth for us and took flesh and came forth and laid down
his life for us and redeemed us by his grace. You know the grace of our God,
our Savior, our Redeemer, how that though he was rich, yet
for your sake, he became poor. And through his poverty, utter
poverty, he gave everything that we might be made rich. He did
that even after you and I had no strength, when we were without
strength, when we looked at Him and considered in our minds Him
to be our enemy and we didn't want anything to do with Him.
Yet He came forth and He still laid down His life for us that
through His poverty we might be made rich. And God the Holy
Spirit came and quickened us, gave us life and regenerated
us and brought us into Christ. formed in us, even after all
this sinning and rebellion that we did against Him, even when
we were dead in trespassing and sin. So His grace, He's never
going to change His grace. It's unchangeable. His love for
His people is everlasting. So His grace is not going to
change. We don't realize it, but His grace is always at work
for us. And this is one way we sure don't
realize it. Whatever that thing is that's
making us to suffer, Whatever it is that is the thorn for us,
that's His grace sending it, isn't it? And when we pray and
ask Him, Lord, will You take this from me? That's His grace
when He doesn't take it from us. That's His grace too. When
he keeps us there suffering like that, that's his grace working
actively for us, because it's exactly what we need is to keep
us right where we are, right where we need to be so we can
better experience his love and his grace. The gifts and calling
of God are without repentance. So never think that he's withdrew
his grace. That's not it. That's never it.
Now, let's look here at this next word, sufficient, sufficient. God's grace in Christ is sufficient. It meets our need exactly. And
it is always enough grace to meet our need. It's always. Now,
as far as sufficiency goes, do we have any sufficiency in us? Look back a couple of pages back
there to chapter 4, or let me see, maybe it's chapter 3. Yeah,
I think it's chapter 3, verse 5. Look at this word. Not that we are sufficient of
ourselves to think anything as of ourselves. How weak are we? We're not sufficient to even
think as of ourselves. Chapter 3 and verse 5. We're
not sufficient to even think of ourselves, but our sufficiency
is of God. It's all of Him. And it's always
just what we need, and it's always enough to meet that need. Exactly. And it's never going to be exhausted.
I like this illustration that Spurgeon gave. He said, you picture
this man standing up on a mountain and he's standing there and he's
looking around this vast horizon, you know, just the vastness of
it. And he says to himself, every
year I breathe so many cubic feet of air. What if I breathe
up all the oxygen out of the atmosphere? And God could say
to it, My atmosphere is sufficient for you. Well, His grace is that
sufficient too. Look around the horizon and look
at the atmosphere and compare that to His grace. His grace
is just that sufficient. Just that sufficient. And it's
going to meet whatever the need is. It's going to meet whatever
the need is. Romans 3 says His grace is sufficient
to justify us through the redemption that's in Christ Jesus. Romans
4 says His grace was sufficient to make the promises of God sure
to every elect child of God. Romans 5 tells us His grace was
sufficient to give us the gift of everlasting righteousness
in Christ. Romans 5 says His grace was sufficient
to superabound over all our sins. Romans 5.21 says His grace was
sufficient to reign unto eternal life by Christ Jesus our Lord. His grace is sufficient. It's
sufficient to supply us with gifts according to the grace
that is given to us. It's sufficient for us in health
and it's sufficient for us in sickness. It's sufficient for
us in prosperity and sufficient for us in poverty. It's sufficient
for us in life and sufficient for us in death. It is sufficient
to bring us to Himself, and it is sufficient to raise our bodies
like unto His glorious body. Whatever our need is, from being
justified, to being regenerated, to being brought in to cast all
our care on Him, to being cared for all our days, to being brought
with Him into glory and conformed to His image, His grace is sufficient
to meet our every need. Well, this is something we don't
get, though. I don't like suffering. I sit
here and can preach about it, but when it happened to me, I
don't like it. Paul didn't like it. He sat there
and said, I prayed for it to be taken from me. We don't like
it. And we can look back on suffering
and say, well, His grace was sufficient. And we can look ahead
and we can say, His grace will be sufficient. But what about
right now? What about right now? when we're
suffering, when it comes on us now. It's easy to believe in
grace for the past and for the future, but to rest in His grace
for the immediate necessity, that's true faith, to rest in
His grace now. So, brethren, whatever the situation
and whenever the situation, know this, He says, My grace is sufficient
for thee. All right, let's look at this
next word. He says, Verse 9, "...for my strength is made perfect
in weakness." Christ's strength is perfected in weakness. And
we know Christ is the power of God. He's the power of God. Now,
how was the power of God made manifest? When He says, "...my
strength is made perfect in weakness," He means it's shown forth, it's
made to be seen, it's made to shine brilliantly in all its
glory through weakness. Now, how was the power of God
made to show forth? How was it made perfect? It was
made perfect in weakness. Christ Jesus. Look at Philippians
2. Philippians 2. Look at this word here. This
is how it was made to show forth. Verse 6. He was in the form of
God. This is Christ. He thought an
out robbery to be equal with God, but made himself of no reputation
and took upon him the form of a servant. and was made in the
likeness of men and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled
himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the
cross. Now, this is how the power of
God was made manifest to this right here, not like man thinks
it ought to be made manifest. We want to flex our muscles and
we want to show how strong we are. The way that God manifest
His power was He began fulfilling His law and the prophets when
as yet He was in the womb of the virgin. When they had to
flee from Herod because it was written that they would. This is the power of God was
made manifest by being wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid
in a manger. That's totally opposite to how
we would think power ought to be made manifest, isn't it? His
power was made manifest when that one who bore Him brought
Him to the temple, and the Scripture says, to do for Him after the
custom of the law. He was fulfilling the law then.
He was. The power of God allowed His
captors when it was time. He allowed those that came for
Him to take Him into captivity. That's not how we... We would
do what Peter did. We would think, this is how you
make your power manifest. You draw your sword and you start
fighting. And he said, no, you put your sword up. This is how
God's manifesting His power. He willingly was made the sin
His people are. on a cross, taken up there to
a cross and nailed to a cross, and all the world looking at
that hour. You know that's the most momentous,
that's the most important thing that has ever transpired in the
history of this world, is what was taking place on that cross?
There have been some enormously important things take place in
the history of this world. But that's the most important
thing ever. He's declaring God just. He's showing that God is
righteous. He's a right judge who will do
right by His people. He had to be made sin for God
to be just to punish Him in our place. And He did it that God
might be just to give us mercy. And by it, God was justifying
us. And while all the world looks
at that hour and sees nothing in it but utter weakness, we
look at it and say, that's the power of God. And not only that,
but then he chose to call out a bunch of nobodies and send
them forth preaching the gospel to a bunch of nobodies and calling
out a bunch of nobodies and assembling a bunch of nobodies. Because
that's how he's manifesting his power. Look at 1 Corinthians
1. You know this, but let's read
this. If there's anybody here that don't know him, I'll tell
you what's going to happen. If He brings you down to see
your nothingness and see that you're nothing, then that cross
that you've been looking at and saying, how could that be power? How could that be God's power?
You're going to see it's God's power. And you're going to realize
that this gospel going forward is God's power. And you're going
to realize that these nobodies He's called that you've been
looking down upon, that this is how God manifests His power.
He said, I'm going to make some babes. I'm going to use babes.
I'm going to use strengthless babies to manifest my power. Look here at 1 Corinthians chapter
1, verse 23. We preach Christ crucified unto
the Jews a stumbling block and unto the Greeks foolishness.
But unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ,
the power of God, and the wisdom of God. Because the foolishness
of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger
than men." We're talking about weakness now, aren't we? The
weakness of God is stronger than men. For you see your calling,
brethren? Not many wise men have the flesh,
not many mighty, not many noble, but God has chosen foolish things
of the world to confound the wise. And look at this next thing.
And God has chosen the weak things of the world to confound the
things which are mighty, and base things of the world, and
things which are despised have God chosen, and things which
are not to bring to nothing things that are. Here's why. That no
flesh should glory in His presence. It's of God that we're in Christ.
It's of God that Christ has made unto us wisdom and righteousness
and sanctification and redemption so that we glory only in the
Lord. That's why He does this thing.
And He says, now listen now, He went into that grave, but
He didn't stay in that grave. He was raised by the power of
God. Now look at this back over there
in 2 Corinthians. Look at chapter 13. Chapter 13
and look at verse 4. For though he was crucified through
weakness, yet he liveth by the power of God. For we also are
weak in him, but we shall live with him by the power of God
toward us." That's how we're going to live, by the power of
God. So this is how His strength is
made perfect. He does it through these weak
and base things. That's how He does it. That's
how He does it. He makes His power to be known
because we've got no sufficiency in ourselves. I like this. Arthur Pink gave an illustration
one time, and he said, for a believer, a sinner to be called and given
faith and cast all his care in Christ's hand and to persevere
in faith all his days. Amidst all of the storms we go
through and the trials that we encounter and everything being
more powerful than we are, he said, it's like a miracle of
grace that you can compare to a man going across an open bay
with a lit candle in the midst of a hurricane and keeping that
candle lit. How do we stay lit? It's His
grace. He says, this is how you're going
to see. It's my strength doing it and not your strength doing
it. He giveth power to the faint. That's who He gives power to.
To them that have no might, He increases strength. That's who
He gives power to. We don't have any strength, do
we? No strength. No strength. We couldn't justify
ourselves. He did it. We couldn't give ourselves life.
Christ is our life. We had no strength to make ourselves
separate and holy. He's our sanctification. We had
no strength to resist temptation. Christ is my preservation. He's
keeping us. We've got no strength to resist
the devil. But he bruised his head, and he's going to bruise
him under his feet shortly. I have no strength right now
in this present trial, except for him. And in him, I've got
all strength. That's why we come here to what
Paul says at the end. He says this. This is a lesson
we don't ever stop learning, do we? We don't ever stop learning
it. But he said this. Now, this is the purpose of it.
This is the end of it. Third thing I want you to see,
he says, most gladly, therefore, most gladly, therefore, will
I rather glory in my infirmities that the power of Christ may
rest upon me. Look at that next thing. Therefore,
I take pleasure in infirmities and reproaches and necessities
and persecutions and distresses for Christ's sake. For when I'm
weak, then am I strong. Now, what does he mean here when
he says, I glory in my infirmities and I take pleasure in them?
Well, if you take pleasure in them, Paul, why don't you pray
for three times that this thorn would be removed? It's not that
he didn't take pleasure in them at first, like we don't take
pleasure in them at first. But it's like what he said in
Hebrews 12 afterwards. When they yield that peaceful
fruit of righteousness and bring us back to Christ's feet, who
is our strength, and we see He's all our strength, that's when
we take pleasure in Him. That's when we realize this thing
was so good. It was so good that He showed
me I didn't have any strength. That's when it is. Now, you think
about what He says there. You think about what He says
there. He says, I want a glory in my infirmities that the power
of Christ may rest upon me. And he says there at the end
of verse 10, when I'm weak, then am I strong. You know, this is
the case whenever we start poking our chest out, you know, whatever
it is, it comes on as we start. We poke our chest out and we
straighten up our back, stiffen up our neck and we say, I can
handle this. I'm going to get through this.
Well. We're not strong, man. Because
we're depending on us. The weakest thing there is. We're
thinking we can do it. We can figure out some way in
our great intellect and our grand wisdom that we can get through
this thing. That's the dumbest thing we could depend on. The
weakest thing we could depend on. But he just takes his power
off of us when we do that and lets us just fall flat of our
face. And then He picks us up again and we see who our strength
really is. And as we go along and we start
walking on our own again, He just eases that power off of
us a little bit and let us see what we are again. And just keeps
on showing us over and over that the way that you're strong is
to look out of you, away from you, me away from me, and us
look to Christ alone and trust Him alone. There's our strength.
He's all our strength. Now, it comes down to this. How
strong do you want to be? How weak can you be? How much
can you see? The more we see our own weakness
and our own nothingness and our own inability, and the more we're
brought by His grace to trust Him for everything, we can be
as strong as we want to be. I'm not talking about in us,
I'm talking about in Him. I don't know how to say this.
I don't know if you get what I'm saying. However strong you
want to be. We need to be as weak as we can
possibly be in ourselves. And knowing that our strength
is Him. We can be as strong as Him then. He's all our strength.
All our strength. That's what Paul, when he's in
prison, and he said in Philippians 3, he said, I want to know Him
and the power of His resurrection. I want to know the fellowship
of His sufferings that I may be made conformable unto His
death. Look at Ephesians 1. I'm going to end with this. I
do believe that if we could see this more and know this more
right here, His power, that He's really walking with us everywhere
we are. He's working in the midst of
this church as real as He was when He walked this earth and
walking with each of His saints as real as when He walked this
earth. If we could see this and understand this more, it would
make us willing to lay down our lives. It would make us willing
to lay down everything, being made conformable unto His death.
The more we could see that it's His power, not our power. It
really would. Now, this is the power that we're
talking about. This is the power that Paul wants us to see. Look
here at Ephesians 1.19. What is the exceeding greatness
of His power to us who believe? That first word power there means
ability, exceeding greatness of his ability to us who believe
according to, it's according to this, to the working of his
mighty power. That word, there's a different
word. That power means his prerogative, his sovereign power, which he
wrought in Christ when he raised him from the dead and set him
at his own right hand in heavenly place. Now that's the power he's
working toward us. It's the power of justice satisfied.
The power of the faithfulness of God. It's the power of his
grace and mercy. It's the power of his exaltation.
Christ has all power. Everything's under his feet.
It's the power of him that he used when he regenerated us.
Just like He had that rock over His tomb and it was sealed, and
just like He had those armed guards, we had a rock sealing
us too called our stony heart. We had armed guards around us
too. Our old man of flesh and all those worldly friends and
some of us in religion had it and had false professors and
what have you keeping guard of us. But He came forth. He sent
a messenger with a message, an angel from above. It came. And
He sent a preacher. It's like that angel rolled back
that... that stone at His tomb and sat upon it. By the power
of which He is able to subdue all things to Himself, He subdued
our old man and made him sit down and the guards became His
dead men that tried to guard us. And He brought us out and
He quickened us and made us alive inwardly and He showed us Christ.
And He made us cast all our care on Him. And here's the power
that's guiding us the rest of our days. This is where Christ
is. Verse 21. far above all principality
and power and might and dominion and every name that's named,
not only in this world, but also in that which is to come. And
He's put all things under His feet and gave Him to be the head
over all things in the church, which is His body, the fullness
of Him that filleth all in all. If we could just understand that
it's Him now. That's Christ who said to Paul,
now my grace will be sufficient for you. My strength is made
perfect in your weakness. This is Him. I wish we could
get it. I wish we could see Him and just
know how real He is with us and know how strong His power is
toward us. And we don't have to see the
dangers that surround us and know the things He's saving us
from. I wish we could see it. When he gave Philippians 2, when
he said that about him making himself with no reputation, he's
telling us, brethren, he's working in you both to will and to do
of his good pleasure. So work out your daily affairs
with one another with fear and trembling, knowing that he's
working in you, that he's right there in your midst. How would
we act if we knew Christ was standing right here, right now,
looking at us personally? How would we treat one another? What would we say about one another
when they're not around? How would we talk about them?
I bet we wouldn't talk bad about him. Well, that's what he said. He's he's right there and he. So we don't have to get distressed,
we can trust him, whatever it is, because that's the power
working in us. All right. Amen.