SHARERS IN GOD’S COMFORT
Posted by Pastor Greg Allen on June 14, 2020 under 2020 |
Bethany Bible Church Sunday Message; June 14, 2020 from 2 Corinthians 1:1-7
Theme: God comforts us in our trials so that we may share His comfort with each other.
(All Scripture is taken from The New King James Version, unless otherwise indicated).
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As a preacher, I’m excited to begin this study. I don’t think that there’s a portion of the New Testament that provides as many ‘joyfully preachable’ passages as 2 Corinthians does. All of the Bible is, of course, profitable to us. But 2 Corinthians is unique in that it contains so many portions that are filled with warm passion and joy.
Let me share with you a little about the differences between 1 Corinthians—which we have just finished studying together—and 2 Corinthians. 1 Corinthians is practical. It dealt with the solving of many problems in the church. 2 Corinthians is passionate. It expresses Paul’s emotions toward the people whose problems he sought to solve. 1 Corinthians looks down at our feet to see where we’re standing. 2 Corinthians looks upward to the heavens to show us where we’re going. 1 Corinthians is straight-forward and analytical. 2 Corinthians runs the gamut of emotions—from overwhelming joy to broken-hearted appeal. It’s a truly remarkable portion of God’s word; and we should be deeply grateful that the Holy Spirit has preserved it for us.
It’s a very hard book to organize, though. Because it is written with such passion, it’s hard to form a solid outline of it. But that’s okay. When you and I write a letter or type a message with great passion and love, we don’t always sit down to develop an outline first. We just let our heart overflow. That’s what I believe Paul was led by the Holy Spirit to do in this letter.
But there is, nevertheless, a basic three-part structure to it. In Chapters 1-7, Paul—as an apostle—wrote joyfully to his Corinthian brothers and sisters of the glories of the ministry. For those of us who seek to serve in the ministry of the Lord Jesus, it’s a great portion of God’s word to dig into. Then, in Chapters 8-9, Paul wrote about the joys of giving. In that section, he encouraged his Corinthian brothers and sisters to minister a gift for the meeting of the needs of others. We can draw a lot of instructions from it for our own support of the Lord’s work. And then, in Chapters 10-13, Paul changed his tone dramatically, and wrote a stern warning to those who rejected his apostleship and who embraced false teachers instead. But he closed it all off in a very warm way. So; I would say that the whole letter is about the ministry of the gospel of Jesus Christ; and that you can divide the letter up in this three-fold way:
Chapters 1-7—The Passion of Ministry.
Chapters 8-9—The Practice of Ministry.
Chapters 10-13—The Protection of Ministry.
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So then; let’s jump right into Paul’s first section—The Passion of Ministry. In the first two verses, we find Paul’s introduction:
Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, and Timothy our brother,
To the church of God which is at Corinth, with all the saints who are in all Achaia:
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ (2 Corinthians 1:1-2).
Notice a couple of things from this introduction. First, Paul is presented as the human author of this letter—but he wasn’t the only one. He also included his ministry partner Timothy in the introduction. Timothy was very much involved in Paul’s ministry to the Corinthian church. In the previous letter, Paul had to encourage the Corinthian believers to welcome Timothy as a partner with him in his ministry; and so, it’s natural that he would now want to include him in the greeting. Most likely, Paul took the lead in writing this letter, but with Timothy’s support all the way. And you’ll notice that it was not written to the Corinthians alone. It was also written to the larger body of Christians who were living in Achaia—which was the region of ancient Greece. It’s to the Corinthians—but also to the church at large.
But a particularly important thing to notice is the way Paul introduced himself in this letter. He called himself, “Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God …” He had to make a point of the fact that his apostolic authority was from God. And this gives us a clue to something of the background of this letter.
You see; after he had been used by God to help establish this church in Corinth, he wrote a letter to them that instructed them on some theological and moral issues. We don’t have this letter in our Bible; but we find mention made of it in 1 Corinthians. They wrote back to him and asked him some more questions; and he wrote another letter to answer those questions. That second letter—in which he answered their questions—is what we have in our Bible under the name ’1 Corinthians’.
But his second letter—that is, 1 Corinthians—stirred up controversy within the church. He had to tell them some very stern things in it—and some of the Corinthians began to question that he had the right to tell them such things. Some in the church—who, it appears, were not genuine believers—even went so far as to question whether he was an apostle at all; and they were rebelling against some of his moral instructions. He had to write a third letter to the church; and it was a particularly harsh one. We don’t have this third letter either, but mention is made of it in 2 Corinthians. Paul wished that he hadn’t had to write that harsh letter at all. It made him very sorrowful—and caused him to worry that the Corinthians would reject him completely. But his ministry colleague Titus came back from a visit with the Corinthians and told him that they had received his rebuke, had repented, and had still truly loved Paul. And Paul was so overjoyed that he wrote this passionate, joyful, gushing letter that we call ’2 Corinthians’.
Paul wrote four letters to the Corinthians altogether—two that we have, and two that we don’t have. And if we want to be accurate about it, we’d say that the second of those four letters is 1 Corinthians, and the fourth of those four letters is this one—2 Corinthians.
And Paul wastes no time in this happy letter. He began this letter with an expression of joy because he got the good news that the Corinthians still loved him. In verses 3-7, he wrote;
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort those who are in any trouble, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our consolation also abounds through Christ. Now if we are afflicted, it is for your consolation and salvation, which is effective for enduring the same sufferings which we also suffer. Or if we are comforted, it is for your consolation and salvation. And our hope for you is steadfast, because we know that as you are partakers of the sufferings, so also you will partake of the consolation (vv. 3-7).
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Now; these opening words are about comfort. The specific word that Paul used—the one that is here translated “comfort” or “consolation”—is from the same Greek word that is used in the New Testament to describe the Holy Spirit. He is called the Parakletos—or “the Comforter” or “the Helper”. He is given to all of us who are Jesus’ followers as the divine Third Person of the Trinity who dwells in us, and comes alongside us and comforts us in our troubles, and consoles us in our times of grief, and helps us in our times of need. That same Greek root word for “comfort” or “consolation” shows up a total of 10 times in just these five verses alone.
We need such comfort and consolation very much. I read a story in a book by Dr. Harry Ironside that illustrates it well. It was told many years ago about a pastor who was under pressure to complete two sermons for the next day’s services. He had to work at home; but his children were playing and making so much noise and he couldn’t concentrate on his work. He asked his wife, “Please keep the children quiet! I’m trying to do my work.” As they all played, one of the kids—a little girl—got her finger hurt in a doorway and screamed and began to cry very hard. And the father had it. He complained angrily to the wife, “Can’t you keep these kids quiet?” And the little girl cried all the harder. When her mother asked if her finger still hurt, she said that it didn’t; but what made her cry was that Daddy didn’t say, “Oh …!”
Well; when we’re suffering a trial or affliction in the household of our Lord, we need to hear, “Oh …!” We need the comfort and consolation of knowing that someone understands our pain, and that someone is sympathetic to it, and that we’re not alone in it. We need someone to relieve the pain, and encourage us, and show us how to get better.
And even the great apostle Paul needed that kind of comfort. He went on to write, in verses 8-11;
For we do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, of our trouble which came to us in Asia: that we were burdened beyond measure, above strength, so that we despaired even of life. Yes, we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves but in God who raises the dead, who delivered us from so great a death, and does deliver us; in whom we trust that He will still deliver us, you also helping together in prayer for us, that thanks may be given by many persons on our behalf for the gift granted to us through many (vv. 8-11).
He had received their letter. He had gotten good news from them. He was overjoyed. And at a difficult time, he had experienced the comfort of God. He heard, “Oh …!” And he begins his letter with a bubbling, gushing overflow of joy because of it. It becomes the opportunity for him to teach his readers about true comfort in our Lord Jesus Christ.
You know; I have taken some graduate courses in seminary on pastoral counseling. The goal of counseling ought to be that we help someone come to a settled place of comfort and consolation in the love and sufficiency of Jesus Christ. But something that I have learned over the years—something that was not always stressed adequately in the counseling courses that I took—is that there is an important prerequisite in being able to help others find comfort in Jesus. And that’s that you absolutely must have walked through some times of trial yourself first—and must have found comfort in Jesus Christ in a personal way—before you can really help guide someone else to that comfort in Him. You need to have heard that “Oh …!” from the Lord yourself before you can effectively be able to pass that “Oh …!” on to someone else.
I’d want to be very careful about how I say that. I would never want to give the impression that we aren’t able to help someone with a particular problem in life unless we had first gone through that exact same particular problem ourselves. I wouldn’t want to say that only those who have experienced a specific kind of trial are qualified to help someone else who is going through that specific kind of trial. That’s something that people are often fond of saying; but if it were strictly true, then very few of us would be able to be of any comfort to one another. But there’s one thing I do know for sure; and that is that the first and greatest prerequisite for helping someone else to walk with Jesus through any kind of personal trial is to have made sure that, through our own personal experience of trial, we have walked with Jesus. The exact nature of the various trials may differ; but the Person with whom we must walk and whom we must trust in that trial is always the same—Jesus.
Clearly, Paul had walked with Jesus through some very great trials in his ministry. He received comfort from the Father through Jesus in those trials. And because of it, he learned how to pass that comfort on to others. And all of this teaches us a great lesson from these opening words in 2 Corinthians; that God comforts us in our trials so that we may share His comfort with each other.
And this means that you and I—if we will faithfully learn to walk with Jesus in our times of trial—have the potential for great ministry in one another’s lives.
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Now; let’s look at the lessons—some basic principles—that Paul had learned about the ministry of comfort that he now passes on to us. First, in verse 3, we learn that when it comes to true comfort …
1. THE HEAVENLY FATHER IS ITS SOURCE.
We see this in verse 3, where Paul wrote, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort …”
Paul says that God our Father—who has adopted us through faith in His Son Jesus Christ—is first of all ‘the Father of mercies’. To say that He is the Father of mercies is to say that He is the originator of mercies—the divine originator of all displays of kindness toward someone in need. The whole concept of ‘mercy’ has its source in Him; because all who need mercy are under Him and must receive it ultimately from Him. I love what we’re told in Micah 7:18;
Who is a God like You,
Pardoning iniquity
And passing over the transgression of the remnant of His heritage?
He does not retain His anger forever,
Because He delights in mercy (Micah 7:18).
Think of that! God our Father ‘delights’ in mercy! But even more; our heavenly Father is also called ‘God of all comfort’. Just as He is the source of all mercy, He is also the sovereign, divine source of all comfort and consolation and encouragement and “Oh …!” Notice that Paul says that He is the God of “all” comfort. If it happens at all, it ultimately comes from Him.
We should take this quite literally. There may be displays of mercy and comfort in this world that seem to have been brought about without any acknowledgment of God. But the fact is that, apart from the heavenly Father, there really is no mercy or comfort. In His common grace toward this world, there are occasions in which it is shown even among unbelieving people. But if it is shown among them, it’s because He is the source of that common grace. We shouldn’t look anywhere else for it than ultimately from Him. He has shown us this most perfectly in the gift of His Son on the cross to save us—which is the greatest of all displays of mercy and comfort that the universe has ever seen.
And that leads us to the next principle that Paul shows us about comfort; and that is that …
2. ITS PURPOSE IS THAT IT BE SHARED.
This thing that has been shown to us by God, which has its source only in God Himself—this thing called ‘comfort’—is meant by God to be passed on by us to others. Paul wrote in verse 4 of our God who is the Father of mercies and God of all comfort; “who comforts us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort those who are in any trouble, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.”
Now; this whole matter of passing comfort on to others begins with you and me personally experiencing the comfort of God in our own times of trouble and affliction. There really is no other way to learn it than by experience. In our own times of trial, we must personally turn to the heavenly Father, through faith in His Son Jesus, and trust Him through those trials. He sends His Holy Spirit as our Comforter and Helper, who strengthens us in those heavy times of burden. And we thus learn—through the school of experience—that God helps us. We cry out to Him in prayer and He hears us. We turn to His word and find that it instructs us and encourages us. And then—having ourselves first experienced the comfort of the Father through Jesus His Son—we’re able to pass that comfort on to someone else in His name. It doesn’t mean that we have to go through exactly the same thing that they are going through to be able to pass that comfort on to them. Rather, it means that we know who to go to for comfort.
There’s a sense in which this is illustrated to us by the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Himself. In Hebrews 2:17-18; we’re told;
Therefore, in all things He had to be made like His brethren, that He might be a merciful and faithful High Priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For in that He Himself has suffered, being tempted, He is able to aid those who are tempted (Hebrews 2:17-18).
Jesus knows what it feels like to be tempted. He experienced temptation as He walked upon this earth. He turned to the Father and trusted Himself to Him in times of temptation. And the Father helped Him. And so, He knows how to help us and is able to help us; because He Himself had been where we are. And now, in Him, we who have also trusted the Father—and who know, by experience, His comfort—are enabled to pass that same comfort on to others around us in the family of God.
We can be satisfied with this comfort; because, as Paul goes on to tell us …
3. IT’S SUFFICIENT FOR OUR SUFFERING.
In verse 5, Paul wrote; “For as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our consolation also abounds through Christ.”
Now; notice that Paul says that the sufferings of Christ “abound” in us. We need to remember that, so that we’re not surprised by it. The ‘sufferings of Christ’ that Paul speaks of come about because of our association with Him in this world. He suffered in this world; and if we belong to Him, we will suffer too. But to whatever degree that suffering may ‘abound’ and seem to overwhelm us, our comfort—our consolation—also equally abounds “through Christ.”
Paul illustrates this to us in this letter in a couple of ways. In 2 Corinthians 4:7-10, he wrote;
But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us. We are hard-pressed on every side, yet not crushed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed—always carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body (4:7-10).
As much as Paul may have been knocked down in ministry, he was—by that same amount—also lifted up in victory. And it was all to show that the power was of God and not of Paul. He wrote a similar thing in 12:7-10;
And lest I should be exalted above measure by the abundance of the revelations, a thorn in the flesh was given to me, a messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I be exalted above measure. Concerning this thing, I pleaded with the Lord three times that it might depart from me. And He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in needs, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ’s sake. For when I am weak, then I am strong (12:7-10).
Aren’t you glad for those words? Aren’t you grateful Paul passed them on to us? Well; they didn’t come easy. He had to experience the trials—and then, experience the comfort of God in them. He was able to show us, by His own experience, that God’s comfort is sufficient for every trial.
And Paul, it seems, was very aware that this wasn’t all just for Him. He learned another important principle about the comfort we receive in Christ; that …
4. IT MAKES IT POSSIBLE TO MINISTER TO EACH OTHER.
In verse 6, he wrote; “Now if we are afflicted, it is for your consolation and salvation, which is effective for enduring the same sufferings which we also suffer. Or if we are comforted, it is for your consolation and salvation …”
What’s interesting about this is that Paul doesn’t speak of this as if it might merely be a possibility—as if he were saying, “Who knows? Maybe the things that I suffered were for your consolation. Or maybe the comfort I received through it all was—in some way—a benefit to you.” No! He talks about it as if it were a sure thing. The suffering he underwent was absolutely for the comfort and salvation of others. The consolation he received from God in it all was absolutely for his Corinthian brothers and sisters. It was the necessary ministry training and ministry provision that he needed in order to serve his brothers and sisters in the cause of Christ.
I wonder how much of a difference it would make in our own times of suffering if we remembered that! Don’t you believe that the experiences of trials we undergo are in the sovereign hand of God? Of course they are. And so also is the comfort we receive in those trials. But what a difference it would make in us if we remembered that—right in the midst of the trial. What a difference it would make if we kept it in mind that God intends for us to pass on what we’re learning in it all to others—that it’s not just for us, but also for them. We’d sure pay attention better; wouldn’t we? It was what made it possible for Paul to say—with full integrity of heart—what he said in Philippians 4:9;
The things which you learned and received and heard and saw in me, these do, and the God of peace will be with you (Philippians 4:9).
And notice finally what the apostle Paul—writing from two-thousand years of distance from us today—could say at the end of it all. With regard to the consolation of God, he affirmed that …
5. WE CAN HAVE CONFIDENCE IN ITS WORK.
In verse 7, he wrote; “ And our hope for you is steadfast, because we know that as you are partakers of the sufferings, so also you will partake of the consolation.”
Paul had learned that with the sufferings for Christ also came the consolation in Christ. And to the degree that you and I share in the same sufferings of Christ through our association with Him by faith and through our faithful obedience to the work He calls us to, we can be sure that we also will share in the comfort that Paul experienced. We can be sure of it because it comes from the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is “the Father of mercies and God of all comfort.”
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Dear brother or sister in Christ; are you going through a particular time of trial right now? Are you undergoing a time of suffering? Then the first thing you need to understand is that our heavenly Father knows about it. He passes on His consolation and comfort to you. He looks upon you and says, “Oh …!” And His comfort and consolation gives you the strength and the wisdom you need in order to undergo it all to His glory and honor. Go to Him in prayer; and partake of His comfort.
But know—and make sure that you don’t forget—that the comfort you receive from Him is not for you alone. It is meant to be passed on. It is only by being passed on that it is—in fact—made complete. So trust in the Lord Jesus Christ through it all, learn all that you can, and make it a part of what you pass on to others. Rejoice in our Father’s comfort; but be good stewards of it also and pass it on faithfully to your fellow suffering brother or sister—through your words to them, through your prayers with them, through your encouragement toward them, through sharing with them just the right Scripture, through your expression of “Oh …!” to them.
Because our heavenly Father comforts us in all our trials specifically so that we may share that comfort with each other.
EA
