Second Corinthians 1:3-7
2 Corinthians 1:3-7 · Mike Doyle · Oct 24, 2021
Letters to the Corinthians, No. 80
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/49261924485222

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

So we're talking about 2 Corinthians, and the primary subject matter today is suffering and the reasons why, or maybe the reason why we have suffering. And since we've been through the first epistle, William Kelly says there's a striking difference as compared with the opening of the first epistle.

In the first epistle, if you remember, he thanked God not for the spiritual state of the Corinthian saints. It was very far from it. He thanked God that they had been rich in endowments, that they had been blessed with every spiritual blessing. This epistle has a much different tone. yet not less distinctly from the same mind and heart, the second epistle is to the Corinthians. In other words, you really get to see in this epistle Paul's heart more so than you did in the first one. Of all the epistles, none overflows in a more rapid change as indeed 2 Corinthians flowed from deep, deep exercise of soul.

So you already have the background up there. Notice that I stole this from Hal Malloy. My printed version shows the type to be a lot bigger and Malloy's name to be a lot smaller. So when we put it together, sometimes it doesn't come out the way we want.

But from a background standpoint, this epistle was written within a year of this first one. And the first one enumerated all the problems that were in Corinth. From that epistle comes a wave of distrust in relationship to Paul himself, which not only was a problem in Corinth, but all around Asia Minor. Their distrust was based on the fact that they accused Paul of not being sincere, They question his authority as an apostle. Their sin nature, as Molloy says, who does Paul think he is to judge us? Gee, none of us have ever had that attitude. Their perception, quote, Paul was in it for the money. Because he was taking up a collection.

So in this letter, Paul details what the life of ministry of the Lord should look like through us as a vessel. This is how you recognize that the source of ministry is from the life of the Lord Jesus and not from self. Big comparison as we go through this. Paul is not at all defending his life and ministry, but he's just simply explaining how he lives. by faith and how God uses him as a vessel in his ministry. So the character of the epistle, the theme, is Christ's life and ministry through a servant of God to fulfill his eternal purpose, declaring, sharing, and revealing his glory. And that's really what Paul is trying to do here is explain He lives his life based on the principles that he teaches.

So, he starts out and he said, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Blessed is a word that just means to speak well of. And notice that it has a definite article. I know this is a little geeky, but whenever you see the, a definite article in front of a word, it points to a specific thing. Like I could say, see all those houses down the street? And then I could say, the house, that one right there.

So he's talking about the God of our Lord Jesus Christ. And that he is the father of mercies. And he's the father of compassion. God of all comfort, parakletos, and this word means to call near to one side, it means encouragement. So he gives a title to what he's about to say.

Now in doing my research, and those of you who read None But the Hungry Heart, there's a index a biblical index in there, and if you just look up these five verses, there are nine or 10 references to just this content. So I'm gonna read some today from some of the things I found in there. The first one is, it's a new day to your soul when you realize that Christ is the source of everything. and that it is from himself you must draw and not from ministry about him.

Many can explain scripture and even apply it who are not under the effect of it themselves. They have not come from him and are not themselves imbued with that which they are trying to convey. There is much wise counsel and good teaching, which is not applicable to the moment or to the need. It does not affect what is the Lord's desire as the end of ministry, which is to lead the soul to himself, because it's not spoken in communion with himself. You must first get to where he is, and then you are brought into harmony with the scene where he is.

Interesting that lots of people, we were talking about anointing this morning in Sunday school and anointed for the Old Testament saints and we have been anointed for what? Well, when you start talking about 2 Corinthians, One, in these verses, you find that there's a principle involved in this.

When he says, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of all mercies and the God of all comfort, he talks about this word comfort a lot and the word mercies a lot. The word mercies means compassion. The word comfort in these seven verses who comfort us in all our afflictions, purpose, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted of God.

And we'll expand on that principle as we go forward. Verse five, for just as the sufferings of Christ are ours in abundance, so also our comfort is abundant through Christ. Verse six, but if we are afflicted, it's for your comfort and salvation. Or if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which is effective in the patient enduring of the same sufferings which we also suffer. And verse seven says, our hope for you is firmly grounded, knowing that as you are sharers in our suffering, so also you are sharers in our comfort. So, the God of all comfort.

So I think we can safely assume that the whole issue here is comfort. That's what we're talking about. The theme of this section is comfort. Notice that it's from, Roger did these, three or four of these slides in 2004. Comfort is used as a noun six times and as a verb four times in these verses. What does comfort mean? It means to come along the side of, It means to call or to counsel, to just empathize with. Comfort as a noun, a consolation or a solace, a setting at rest, an exhortation.

So God is the God of all comfort. You know what, he's the only true source of comfort there is. We look for it in every other possible avenue available to us. We wanna be comforted. We look to it for our family and our spouse and people we trust or think we trust.

And there's only one person that can comfort us, and that's God himself. There is no one but God that can set our hearts at rest and truly comfort us. He is the God of all comfort. So why do we need God's comfort? Why do we need that? We need the Lord to set our hearts at rest during a difficult circumstances in a Christian walk. If you know anything, you know that the Christian walk is not easy.

One of the hungry hearts said, our blessed Lord's great work was to proclaim the Father, not only to relieve man according to his own sense of want, man's want, but according to the fullness of the Father's heart. My need is not the measure of God's grace. In all things, his love superabounds. Therefore, his love is properly the measure of his grace. Until we know where his grace has set us, we can't enjoy our new relationship, nor ascend to the love of the Father.

John Darby says, we get a, we get hold of the starting point of this epistle by seeing that God had comforted Paul by the coming of Titus after all his troubles in Ephesus and the troubles he had in Corinth too. And when he reached Macedonia, he said, there were fightings without and within, there are fears everywhere, and God sends Titus to comfort Paul. If you go to Acts, you can read about the riot that he starts in Ephesus.

And a jewelry maker rouses up the whole town and they're after him. And I mean, it's like one of those demonstrations downtown. And Paul is the subject matter of the demonstration. They're trying to get him. He'd gone through these riots that lasted for days in Ephesus, and at the same time, he has a pressure on him about the church at Corinth.

Not only their condition, but he's actually sorrowful that he'd ever written a first epistle to them at all. And the reason he was is that he was afraid that he had alienated them from him, because he loved them. And as you know, we took a long time going through First Corinthians, but it's a pretty stinging letter. I wouldn't want to have to get a letter like that from Paul the Apostle. But he was now joyful because Titus said, look, I've been down to Corinth.

And you know all that stuff you wrote him about how they ought to clean up their act? Well, they're doing it. They're complying with what you told them. And that really encouraged them. Now, guess where I got this little sketch. I think it's perfect.

Who comforts us in our tribulation. Tribulation is a great word. Thalypsus, it means to be under pressure. affliction, anguish, distress from strong Greek dictionary. The best example I know, everybody here see the first Star Wars movie? Remember the scene where the hero Han Solo got flushed down into the garbage dump and the walls started coming in on him? That's pressure. That's tribulation. That's what this represents. And that's what that word means. Because he couldn't stop it. And it was coming real slow. And he was gonna be the compacted.

Now, who comforts us in all our tribulation. Now here's the purpose. Why does he do that? So that we may be able to comfort them who are in any trouble. By the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted of God. What does affliction do? It provides an opportunity for us to learn more of our Father and His mercy, as well as providing a deeper understanding of what others may be called upon to go through. The Lord deals with us in order that we might be able to minister in an apt way.

T. Austin Sparks says, his stewards are to be men of understanding who can touch the various needs, who can reach the heart so that the Lord's children are saying, that just fits me.

That touches my case. That person must know. That one must have been through it. Yes, the Lord knows. And he would take you and me through experiences such as will make us sharers in a living way, and that's what he's doing. Let's talk about that for a second. Every one of us has trials. We all have tribulation all the time. It's going on.

And most of the time, we either have an attitude of why me? or whining, or we're gathering up the saints to pray and tell God, stop it. I don't need any more of this trial. We never think about why you have it. You never think about, gee, maybe what God is doing is preparing me for something. How many times have you talked to somebody about, oh, I don't have a spiritual gift, I don't have any ministry.

Really? Are you suffering? Then you've got a ministry. Because what you're learning, you're learning exactly how God's gonna comfort you, and as soon as that trial kind of reaches a conclusion, look around, because here comes somebody down the road, exactly the same road, or pretty close to the same road you were just on. And you know how to do it. You know how to come beside them and walk with them. But if you're spending all your time complaining or rallying, you know, if you have 10 Christians praying for your problem and you can get 100, 100 is better than 10, right? I mean, God really likes a crowd. The point being is that if you're the only one praying, he's listening, but he's got a purpose, and you have to come to the understanding, wait a minute, there's something going on here that's beyond my complaining, and something that's going on is that I'm being prepared for the next person that's coming down the road, or at some point, and I'll be able to understand and come beside them.

Now, imagine. A whole body of believers that have that understanding, that realize what God's sufferings are all about and how they interact with each other. Sufferings that never go away, but look how the endurance would change. We would be able to walk and live and function and people would notice. There's something different about those Christian characters. They really do care about one another and they seem to have an instinct to how to walk and comfort one another. Well, where'd you get the instinct? Because you suffered. That's the qualifier. That's the qualifier.

So, verse seven, so comforts us in our tribulation that we may be able to comfort them who are in any trouble. With what? By the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted of God. That's how we do it. We find out that as a general use of the Greek word in verse four, encouragement is better than comfort. If I'm gonna use a word that fits better, I think, instead of comfort, I would use the word encouragement. But it's a word for exhort. It means to stir up a heart. Stir up a heart. If you went through suffering, your heart got stirred.

God's comfort is never absent from any one of our afflictions, never. God's comfort is present in every one of our afflictions all the time. And God's comfort or setting our hearts at rest is not only for us, our personal relief, but for us to identify and minister to others. If you think about it, and you ought to make a sign for this, put it above your door.

Your affliction may be God's preparation for you to minister to others. That's why you have it, because you're being prepared. How does God do it? How does he prepare you? If you jump over to Romans 15, four, it's really interesting. He says, for whatever was written in earlier times was written for your instruction. So that through perseverance, and here it is, the encouragement of the scriptures, we might have hope. It's the word of God that comforts us. It's his word personally administered to us that comforts us.

Charles Coates in A Hungry Heart says, but surely the development and exercise of such affections as those eternal in nature, though called into activity by the circumstances connected with the conditions of weakness and trial, is a greater triumph of divine love and power than restoring sick ones to health. It is a real loss for the attention of believers to be turned from spiritual dealings of the Lord Jesus with his own and from all that is moral, that the moral result of those dealings to be concentrated upon the thought of bodily healing and self-centered experiences. It's a really good way to say it. So there's a great difference between going to the Lord Jesus in our troubles as to the best physician and friend, knowing him as the one who loves me best, the bridegroom. In the former, we turn to him when anything is a matter. Anytime we have a problem, we dial up the Lord and complain. But if we're true to it, we will never leave him. We will never leave his side. We will stay there.

All of us are gonna have sorrow, and none of us should miss its spiritual benefits. Godly sorrow, I can't say that word, sorrow, works repentance or a change of mind, while the sorrow of the world works death. If you understand that God's purpose is to conform us to the image of Christ, God had one son, and that son was without sin, but he wasn't without sorrow. Sorrow reveals unknown depths in your soul, unknown capabilities of experience and service. God never uses anybody to a large degree until after he breaks that one and it takes sorrow to widen the soul.

I'm convinced that we can't do good to others save at the cost of ourselves. And our afflictions are the price we pay for our ability to sympathize. He who would be a helper must first be a sufferer. We cannot have the highest happiness of life in helping others without tasting the cup which our Lord Jesus drank. The Hungry Heart says the school of suffering graduates rare scholars. Verse five says, and for just as the sufferings of Christ are ours in abundance, so also comfort is abundant through Christ.

So suffering in Christ abounds in us. This word can be any kind, physical, mental, any kind of distress. But we're not talking about Christ's sufferings for the atonement of sins. We're not talking about that kind of suffering. This is our suffering for his sake and his glory. It's the fellowship of his sufferings.

In Philippians 3.10 it says that I may know him and the power of his resurrection. and the fellowship of his sufferings. Most believers wanna stop after the power of his resurrection. We don't wanna have anything to do with the fellowship of his sufferings. When we suffer, Christ suffers with us because of our identification with him.

God's principle of abundance is to have more than enough. It's never just enough. We can have abounding sufferings. God's comfort super abounds because just like His grace, it super abounds. Where the sin nature abounds, God's grace super abounds over that.

That's from Molloy, Romans 5.20. So the sufferings of Christ abound in us, verse five, means the suffering of the same character.

In Galatians 6.12, we read that those who desire to make a good showing in the flesh, tried to compel you to be circumcised, simply so that they would not be persecuted for the cross of Christ. How many of us understand what it means to be persecuted for the cross of Christ?

Romans 8.17 says, and if children and heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, If indeed we suffer with him, that we may also be glorified together.

Another hungry heart. The term profit and loss is reversed in the Christian life to loss and profit. The principle never varies. Our losses are all in the realm of the old man and never the new man. Every loss in life of self brings greater gain and profit in the new life in the Lord Jesus. And conversely, every gain in the self life is a loss of our growth in his glory.

Philippians 3.7, but what things were gained to me, those I counted lost for Christ. It is not the design of God to deprive his children of happiness. but to only pour the cup of bitterness into the happiness which the believer has in anything outside of Christ. Anything outside of Christ.

Philippians 1.29 says to us, For to you it has been granted on behalf of Christ not only to believe in him, but to suffer for his namesake, for his sake.

So we are prepared. We are prepared by the Father in his sufferings, by the means of those sufferings. The gracious gift of suffering By the way, notice the kind of weird color for suffering and sufferings. If you look at your handout, you'll find that every time you see that color, that's the blank you're supposed to fill in. Just saying, I should have told you that at the beginning.

The gracious gift of suffering is a distinct and specific gift as any other of God's gifts. But this gift transforms the blessed recipient more surely perhaps than all the others into resemblance to himself and is for this fellowship the highest and greatest noble of them all. You know what's interesting about the Corinthians Church in the first epistle? They were the most blessed spiritual gift church in the New Testament, yet they were the spiritually weakest It's because they avoided suffering like the plague. They didn't want anything to do with suffering. So verse six says, but if we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation. Or if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which is effective in the patient enduring of the same sufferings which we also suffer.

Principle of operation here. The principle of operation, whether now we are being afflicted is present, indicative, present, active, passive. It means that, indicative means that this is reality, this is going on right now. We are being afflicted right now, present tense. But it's being done to us, it's passive. The same thing with comfort. It's an indicative mood, it's a mood of reality, it's happening right now, present tense. Passive voice, it's being done to us, it's going on right now. In every direction this strange principle operates.

For it may be doubted whether there be a possession that we have worth holding onto, material, political, religious, which is not the result of toil. tears, and blood of sages, prophets, and martyrs, most of whom have died in shame and apparent failure, bequeathing gifts in exchange for blows and benedictions for imprecations.

It is well to look at the operation of grace in a man of like passions. and not only in the fullness and perfection of all, even in Christ himself. And certainly, if Paul was remarkable for the energy of loving labor beyond every other apostle, he was yet more so with the variety and greatness of what he suffered for Christ's name's sake. So right here we can speak of what he had just proved. The sufferings of Christ abounded towards us, as he says, so through him did our comforts, he adds. His faith laid hold of the Lord's way and the end, and applied it to his own circumstances, and the working of grace in the face of it all.

We can say as love never fails, so all things work together for good. And whether we are in any tribulation, it is for your comfort and salvation. The word salvation here means safety. So we are being afflicted for the sake of your comfort. So understand, the next time you're being afflicted, it's happening so that you can comfort somebody else. And it's also for your safety. If you're being comforted, it's for the sake of your comfort. How do you learn it? Unless you get on a trial and God comforts you, you don't know. You don't learn this in seminary. You don't learn it in psychiatry. You only learn it by walking with the Lord with trials and suffering and comfort.

The producing in us an endurance of suffering and the same suffering that we suffer. This principle works all the time with the Lord, all the time. And our hope for you is firmly grounded knowing that as you are sharers of suffering, you also are sharers of comfort.

Hope is firmly grounded. It means to be secure. It's a force, it's a power, steadfast, sure, solid. Paul's hope for the Corinthians was firmly settled. What did he know? that if you're a sharer of the sufferings, you will be a sharer of the comfort. This is not speculative. This is absolutely certain, and I am absolutely certain about it.

So I tried to duplicate this little chart that was in one of Roger's, and I couldn't do it as well, but I think it gets the point across. God comforts us. in every affliction. Why? God comforts them through you in every affliction they have. So no believer can look at God and say, look, Father, I don't have a ministry. Yeah, you do. If you suffer, you have a ministry. And your ministry is to comfort others. If you desire to be able to be a son of consolation, this is what's gonna happen.

A couple of more passages from The Hungry Hearts. There's a universal misapprehension that godliness means immunity from suffering. It is so often expected by believers that they will not go through the sufferings as other men. This is far from the truth. It's a part of the calling of the saints to show men how to suffer.

How even in the midst of the hard and bitter experience of life, the Lord Jesus is sufficient to give joy and comfort. There is a divine mystery in suffering, a strange and supernatural power in it, which has never been fathomed by human reason. There never has been known great saintliness of soul which did not pass through great suffering. When the suffering soul reaches a calm, sweet carelessness, when it can inwardly smile at its own suffering and does not even ask the Father to deliver it from the suffering, then it has wrought its blessed ministry. Then patience has its perfect work. Then the crucifixion begins to weave itself into a crown.

There is no place for learning the tender mercies of the Lord Jesus and the blessings of the Father's love and patience and care as in the trials of the wilderness journey. All of our trials and service only serve to lead us to know the Father as we could not know Him otherwise. Affliction and suffering are the lot of all men, but it's a privilege for believers. Our sufferings bring forth need. Our need brings forth His comfort and consolation. Blessed need. If you are partakers of his comfort, of his sufferings, you shall also be of his consolation. So back to the slide.

If you aspire to be a son of consolation, if you would partake of the priestly gift of sympathy, if you would pour something beyond the commonplace consolation into a tempted heart, If you would pass through the inner course of daily life with a delicate tact that never inflicts pain, you must be consent to pay the price of a costly education. Like him, you must suffer.

In closing, there are blessings which we cannot obtain if we cannot accept and endure suffering. There are joys that can come to us only through sorrow. There are revealings of divine truth which we can get only when earth's lights have gone out. There are harvests which can flow only after the plowshares has done its work. Comfort does not come to the lighthearted and the merry.

We must go down into the depths if we would experience the most precious of God's gifts, comfort. And thus be prepared for the coworkers, to be a coworker together with him. In 2 Corinthians 12, 10, Paul says, I take pleasure in weakness. insults, distresses, persecution, and difficulties, which I endure for Christ's sake. For it is when I am consciously weak that I'm really strong. Let's close.

Dear Father, how thankful we are that we learn this principle of suffering and consolation from you. We recognize that This is the methodology that you use to conform us to your son and to make us ready to be used of him for any ministry he would call us to. We're thankful for that, Father. We pray in your son's precious name, amen.