Beeson Podcast, Episode #
Dr. James Earl Massey
Date

>>Announcer: 

Welcome to the Beeson podcast, coming to you from Beeson Divinity School on the campus of Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama. Now your host, Timothy George.


>>Timothy George:

Well, today on the Beeson Podcast our preaching series continues with a message by Dr. James Earl Massey. Dr. Massey is Dean Emeritus of Anderson School of Theology. He served for several years as Chaplain of Tuskegee University. One of the great voices in the American pulpit today. I first heard the voice of James Earl Massey when I was a student at Harvard Divinity School. He was then the speaker for the international radio ministry of the Christian Brotherhood Hour. I remember listening to him on Sunday afternoons as his voice would come across with such a clear compelling biblical exposition of such uplifting and encouraging message – to me at that time an inner city pastor in Boston. In time I came to know him as a personal friend. He’s had a great influence on me personally and on our school – as he has on you, Dr. Smith.


>>Dr. Smith:

Most definitely. 


>>Timothy George:

And so we honor this great servant of the Lord, Dr. James Earl Massey. We’ve had the privilege of having him speak at Beeson Divinity School numerous occasions. He was a speaker in the very first Beeson Pastor School that we offered. And on many, many other occasions we’ve been blessed by his ministry. And we’re going to listen to him today preaching a sermon that really comes out of his heart and out of his experience. Using Paul’s great text in II Corinthians about the thorn in the flesh. 

Tell us more about what we’re going to hear from Dr. Massey.


>>Dr. Smith:

Dr. James Earl Massey once told me that a preacher should never preach above his or her experience. And so this sermon is dipped in the liquid of the life experiences of James Earl Massey. He and his wife, Mrs. Gwendolyn Massey, having experienced miscarriages. Dr. Massey’s life being in jeopardy in that he was breach born. He wants to remind the preacher, since he delivered this sermon during the E Y Mullins Lectures on Preaching at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in 1981. He wants to remind the preacher of his or her humanity in human crises. He wants to remind the preacher that they have some thorns that have to be endured and yet grace sustains the preacher in the midst of it. 

I’ve never heard Dr. Massey without him being prepared. He is the epitome of preparedness. Chronologically, cardiologically – the head and the heart always come together. He is bicultural in terms of his orientation. And so there is the sense of inclusiveness in everything that he talks about. His homiletical methodology is really textual thematic, expository in which he treats a textual unit and he does that with II Corinthians 12. 

Finally, Dr. Massey wants to put each hearer into the position of identifying with Paul. Since the thorn is not specifically announced, there’s a blank left so that everyone can identify with the thorn. The painful excruciating experience that humanity must feel as a result of the fall. And particularly as a result of being in Christ. But grace is greater than the thorn. And that is what he established in this sermon.


>>Timothy George:

You know, Dr. Smith, I think one of the most difficult things about preaching is how to apply personal illustrations from your own life to the text that you’re trying to bring to light. Sometimes preachers go off track there.


>>Dr. Smith:

Exactly.


>>Timothy George:

And they just talk about themselves and Paul says we preach not ourselves but Christ Jesus the Lord. I think one of the remarkable things that Dr. James Earl Massey does in this sermon is to give us a solid exposition of this text in II Corinthians and then near the end he brings about this turn in the sermon where he unveils in his own life story the thorn in the flesh and how that had applied to him. He does that with great skill but also with passion. So, you’re drawn into this message. I think our listeners are going to be really blessed today by hearing one of the great masters of today’s pulpit – our friend, our colleague, Dr. James Earl Massey – preaching on A Thorn in the Flesh.


>>Massey:

My text is II Corinthians 12:8-9. “Three times I besought the Lord about this. That it should leave me. But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you. For my power is made perfect in weakness. His grace is sufficient.’”

Troubles are not always evil. Our humanity does not have to be our undoing. As we open this tear stained page, from the diary of Paul the Apostle, we are seeing that he learned this and he learned it quite early. He has expressed for us one of the major insights which came to him in his walk with the Lord. If Paul had not learned this and learned it as early as he did we might not ever have received from him the amazing insights and the grand contribution which God enabled him to make to the Church and to the needy world.

Troubles are not always evil. Our humanity does not have to be our undoing. 

Paul explains that this is so because of the experience of what he terms the grace of God. A sense of the favor that God has granted unto us which gives us an assurance as we live under changing skies. 

Now, this sense of being favored by God can indeed make us adequate for life. No matter what life takes from us, no matter what life places upon us, no matter what life does to us, or refuses to let happen for us. The grace of God, the favor that he extends to us, and an awareness of that favor can give us sufficiency by which to live. 

It was tested in Paul’s life and the text tells the most crucial aspect of that test. But looking at ourselves for a moment, let us remember that our troubles and our problems are sometimes common. They come because we are human. All humans know something about problems. For there is no one who has ever been here that has escaped a problem at least one problem. Someone will have at least one problem in a lifetime. 

Now there are some other troubles and problems which come not merely because we are human but because of what we are or because of what we do in life. 
Paul stated this again and again in his writings and here is one line from him written to the Corinthian Church, “For it seems to me,” he says, “God has made us apostles the most abject of mankind. We are like men condemned to death in the arena. A spectacle to the whole universe. Angels as well as men. We are fools for Christ’s sake.” 

He was not complaining. He was merely stating a fact about the sometimes dismal happenings that his calling and position opened up to him. He was speaking so that his fellow believers would thereby better understand him and pray for him, if they would. He was letting friends and critics know that apostles do not have royal prerogatives of power and honor. No Christian has royal prerogatives. No matter how holy one lives there are some things we cannot escape. Paul was telling one and all that following Jesus can mean and will mean trouble. Deprivations. Dilemmas. Insulting circumstances. Being misunderstood. Undervalued. And usually vulnerable. 

Paul knew that Christian life and service often means something more and something other than peace and prosperity. Something more, something other than prestige and good fortune. Troubles come, yes, because we are human. But some additional troubles come because we are Christian. And some additional troubles come when we are in Christian service. Particularly as preachers. Now it might be helpful if I trace a few of the particular troubles that came to Paul because of his preaching.

If you trace II Corinthians 11:23-28 you will notice how Paul himself has catalogued his troubles. He begins with the mention of imprisonment, times of being beaten, how he’d often been near death, and then he adds, “Five times I have received at the hands of the Jews the 40 lashes, less one. Three times I have been beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I have been shipwrecked. A night and a day I have been adrift at sea. On frequent journeys in danger from my own people. In danger from rivers. In danger from robbers. In danger from Gentiles. In danger in the city. Danger in the wilderness. Danger at sea. Danger from false brethren. In toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night. In hunger and thirst, often without food. In cold and exposure. And apart from other things there is the daily pressure upon me of my anxiety for all the churches.”

As Adolf [DICE-MOND 00:12:22] once put it, “It was not given to Paul to know the comfortable, niceness of the ordinary man.” And it will not be given to you or to me to know that comfort either. If we are truly Christian, and are deeply involved in service, we too will know special problems that attend the path of those who realize there is a thorn in the flesh. Not one will escape it. As for Paul, God allowed a lot of rain to fall into his life, and this flood of troubles as enough to have made a lesser man drown in fear, self pity, and complaining. But no, Paul does not complain. He prays. 

Now, the particular point of his prayer was this problem that refused to leave. There are some things we wait around and think that after a day or two they will be over. Or maybe after a week or a month it will have run its course. But Paul recognized that this was casting a constant shadow over him that he could not escape. It was a very pressing issue in his life. Almost aggravatingly present. And he longed to see a day when he would be free from it. 

So, he prayed about it, try as he might he couldn’t shake it, run as he might it was always as fast as he. Have you ever had a shadow over your life that you could not escape? Some pressing problem that you could not shake? Something that pressed you to your knees and made you stay there? That’s what’s happening here. Like our Lord, he did what all of us ought to do, he prayed once, twice, thrice – he prayed in fervent entreaty and still no deliverance came. This that he had was like a fighter bearing against his face. We do not know for certain what the problem was. But the wording seems to indicate some physical ailment. Some chronic illness that seemed very foreign to the work that he had been given to do. Something that zapped the strength that he needed to do his work. Now, why would not the Lord remove this, if indeed it was a barrier to being a blessing? 

But then the Lord said to him, “This that you think is a barrier is a blessing. Do not look at how it can menace, but rather examine it for what it can mean.” And that is what lies behind his reply. “Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, in my necessities and distresses, because in my weakness I experience strength.”

As Howard Thurman once put it, “There is a strength beyond our strength that gives strength to our strength. But we never know this until we are pressed to pray about something that lingers and will not leave.” 

The strength comes to us in the form of an awareness that since God has favored us we can outlast anything. Suffering disturbs us. We don’t like it. But we must realize as Paul that troubles are not always evil. Our humanity does not have to be our undoing. 

How then does grace, this sense of assurance that we have God’s favor in the midst of all our problems – how does this operate in our lives? Well, it helps us at the point of our frustrating fears. Enabling us to deal with them in order to lick them and kick them if we can. 

I just finished reading the book written by a contemporary therapist who offers his counsel on how to kick the fear habit. He begins by telling how he learned to do this. And his advice grows out of an experience that he had himself. Now, the experience caused a phobia that lasted for five years. It began like this. He was in the Army and was being reassigned to his place of duty. Being transferred from Japan to the Island of Okinawa. The plane on which they were to make this journey had its problems. So many problems indeed that it had a legend attached to it and a strange name. The rest of the soldiers who had ever flown on it called it “Flying Coffin.” Well, the plane had seen it’s better days. And it had seen better times. But now it was barely in flying shape. The soldier realized this when, as he sat on it crowded in with enlisted men and officers, the first two times the plane tried to take off it couldn’t generate enough speed to do so. 

(laughter)

On the third try, the plane got into the air haltingly but continued to move. But then for a thousand miles there was a kind of turbulence in the air that gave the riders in the plane the effect of a prolonged roller coaster ride. So, everybody was sick. When the man finally got off the plane after it landed at Okinawa he was so sickened in fear that he vowed he would never fly again. 

Anxiety even seized him whenever he heard a plane flying over. Or even saw one on the ground. Well, he lived under that burden for five years. But finally through the kind companionship of a pilot friend he decided to attempt being reconditioned. He wanted to get rid of his fear. Anyone who understands that life must be lived wants to deal with fear. And overcome it! Any sane mind wants to be rid of this monster. 

Well, the trusted company and persuasiveness of his friend helped him face his fear and defeat it. That is what grace does for us; gives us the courage; the ability to go beyond our fear, risking ourselves in order to accomplish a necessary end. Courage is not the absence of fear, courage is the ability to overcome it. For sound reasons, grace – this sense of being favored by God – generates that courage in the heart so that we can deal with the fears that cause us so many frustrations. 

Some of you have some fears. Fear that you won’t make it through your current coursework. I mean that without any humor. You can make it. His grace is sufficient. Deal with your fear. And no matter how long it takes you to conquer it, stay there with it. Grace will enable you to master it. 

Well, this grace works with us at the level of prayer so that we sense God’s favor when we’re talking to him about this it makes us fearful. Grace works with us at the level of pondering so that we think carefully into why we have such fear. Looking at it from the highest point of view of course, namely from God’s eyes. Grace works with us at the level of perseverance, enabling us to keep on and keep on and keep on. So that finally the fears have diminished, or have been brought down to manageable proportions. Don’t be mastered by fear. 

As Franklin Delano Roosevelt said back in 1933, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. You can master your fears. Even the fear of possible failure in your first pastorate. You can manage. His grace is sufficient. Grace also operates helping us at the level of our hindering frailties. 

Now, when I speak of hindering frailties I’m talking about something in the disposition, something in the body, something perhaps in the mind against which one must struggle because this is an occasion for weakness. That’s what we see in the text. A “thorn in the flesh,” Paul terms it. Something structured in the personality. Not easily managed but it has to be dealt with in strong fashion. I’m thinking now of soprano Leontyne Price who tells about some of her struggles as a singer. Especially battening against an ever present nervousness when she sings on stage. The crowd hearing her sing during her New York recital debut in 1954 sensed her struggle as she worked her way through the music with a slight vocal tremolo caused by nervousness. But that nervousness deepened when she starred with the Metropolitan Opera Company in 1961. One of the first Americans to Americanize that company. Until then they had been using European artists. But in the early ‘60s they Americanized it and she was not only American but the first among Blacks into that company. So, she had a double burden. When she was interviewed by one of the reporters she admitted to him, “I was scared.” 

No matter how gifted, no matter how highly trained, no matter how well experienced at other levels, she witnessed fear and anxiety because of this frailty with which she was endowed. I speak of it as an endowment because it all came in the package God gave. And there is some frailty in that which you have as a gift from God. But grace can enable you and me to deal with it. And now depending up on her church background in Mississippi where she grew up, great sermons she heard from her minister, trusting in the Lord in whom she believes implicitly, she says, “I’m not scared anymore.” She realizes that even if she fails it’s all right, she’s doing her best. She’s struggling against a natural frailty. 

Now, if you fail because of a natural frailty, go down with a sense of victory. You did your best! And the circumstances were more than you could manage. Ordinarily grace will give us that courage and that stick-to-it-iveness to keep on going and work against the frailty even though our strength is worn out in the working. 

His grace is sufficient; an assurance that God has favored you can help you with frustrating fears and can steady you for the handling of debilitating frailties. 

But there’s a third way the grace of the Lord works with us. It readies us for those deadly finalities. There are sometime when we recognize that failure is going to be. I’m not talking about moral failure. Grace is always sufficient to help us deal with the matter of sin. Jesus came to do that. I’m not talking about failing morally. I’m talking about those times in life when one knows that the end has come. 

Leslie Weatherhead tells about visiting his sick sister and he learned from the physician before he went into her room what her condition was. She had gone into the hospital for a battery of examinations and on the day that the report was to be given to her of her true condition Weatherhead came and the doctor said to him, “You ministers have a better way of breaking sad news to people than we physicians sometimes have. So, would you tell her what we have found?” 

As Weatherhead walked into the room he walked in with a cast down countenance. It was a dark look in his face. And his sister said to him, “Leslie, you have bad news?” He nodded his head. “Ah, you want to tell me what the doctors have discovered?” He nodded again. After a moment of silence she said, “I suspect that you want to tell me that I have cancer.” He nodded again. In a very unexpected word she said to him, “Don’t be troubled at that news. Because everything you have been preaching about the goodness of God is literally true. He is good. And because he is I want you to know that I am proud to be trusted with cancer.” 

I hope you heard me - for the radiant believer who understands the sufficiency of God’s grace does not complain to him about what life does to us. But trusts him for what we can do with life. She knew she was at her end. Had she tried to fight [inaudible 00:30:06]? Yes. But she had lost the fight. She had now accepted the falling of the shadow over her life and she was looking up from an apparently evil happening and she was dealing with it as a messenger from God. “I am proud that he could trust me to bear it.” 

What a view by which to handle the problems with which we wrestle. And those with which we must wrestle later. Our troubles are not always evil. Our humanity does not have to be our undoing. So, I encourage you my brothers and my sisters to arm yourselves to move on in life, bearing up believingly; cheered up because the Lord is with you. If you know him at all he will say to you in that moment of darkness, in the bleakest hour you have experienced, “Fear not, I am with you. Be not dismayed, I am your God. I will strengthen you. I will uphold you with the right hand of my power.” If we don’t give him that opportunity we’ll never know of this depth of experience. 

I have some things against which I struggle. I mentioned a few moments ago about the plane ride of this gentleman who has become an assertive therapist. His fear with which he wrestled with for five years. I also have a problem in flying. Mine has not come because of any trouble I have had in an airplane, as such, but because of the way I was born. Every time I get on the airplane if it’s going to be a great distance I must travel I must pray in order to have the kind of composure in order to stay on without getting sick. I remember when I had to wrestle nearly all night long before taking a long plane ride to southeast Asia last July. And in the middle of the night the Lord gave me assurance that all would be well with me on the trip. An all day long flight when I have this problem, rooted in my psyche, not because of anything that I had done, but because of the way I was born. 

I don’t even know about any [inaudible 00:32:43] psychology that can rid it from me. So, I must live with it as one of my frailties. But I have discovered that the grace of God is sufficient. Well, what about the birth? On the night before I was born there was a widow tending choir rehearsal at the church our family attended. And she felt impressed by the Lord to go by and see how sister Massey was doing. She knew that sister Massey was expecting any day. Well, when she walked by the house she noticed that no lights were on and she just assumed that all was well. But early the next morning she was awakened. She set her feet out into the powdery snow in order to come down to the house. She lived about two blocks further from where we lived to see how sister Massey was doing again. 

She came just in time. I had been born. Feet first. At least one foot first. Because I was sideways in the womb. My mother was in too much pain to do anything for herself or for me. And if that widow had not come when she did I would not be alive today. But because of that woman’s obedience my ticket to life was preserved. Placed in my hand. And I’m waving it this morning. 

Your obedience, my obedience, is someone’s ticket to a blessing. We’ve got to keep going on. If you fail, if I fail, for whatever reason, somebody is not going to receive what God would have wanted them to have. Yes, obedience is a life or death matter. It isn’t whether I’m going to obey or not, it’s whether or not I love people enough to be to them what I ought to be. And if I don’t obey I can’t be that kind of person, nor can you. I shall thank God forever that that woman was obedient. But the way I was born marked my life. At least in terms of being closed in. I must live with that frailty. But I’ve discovered that his grace is available. And being available it is sufficient. It’s available, it’s adequate, it’s timely, and all we need do is cast ourselves upon Him. Not with the kind of feeling that I’m coming because there’s nothing more I can do. A kind of supine resignation. But rather coming to him because this is what I ought to do. Since I as human am limited and cannot be all I need to be unless you are to me what you want to be. With that sort of relationship between the Lord and the led grace prevails, obedience is maintained, service is adequate, and the witness is successful.

With what are you struggling? What are your fears, your frailties? Are you ready for that finality which is just around the corner from every one of us? For this thing I besought the Lord thrice. That it might depart from me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you. My strength is made perfect in your weakness.” Through many dangers, toils, and snares I have already come. Tis grace hath brought me safe thus far. And grace will lead me home. 


>>Rob Willis:

You’ve been listening to the Beeson podcast; coming to you from the campus of Samford University. Our theme music is by Advent Birmingham. Our announcer is Mike Pasquarello. Our engineer is Rob Willis. And our show host is Doug Sweeney. For more episodes and to subscribe, visit www.BeesonDivinity.com/podcast. You can also find the Beeson Podcast on iTunes and Spotify.