Second Corinthians 1:8-11 Sentence of Death

Good morning. Okay. You know, that's kind of a chartreuse-y color you see up there. The answers of the fill in the blank on the handouts are all done in that same color, just so you don't get confused, okay? And I'll point it out to you when we get to it.

So, we can say it's true It's true that we can only share the comfort of God with others so far as we ourselves have realized that same comfort in our own lives. And that was really the secret to Paul's teaching of tactful tenderness. I love that term, tactful tenderness with suffering souls. He understood that he was being fitted by his afflictions to minister to others. I think if I could put in our brains that the whole reason for suffering for a believer is to fit us to minister to others.

Whether we're afflicted, it is for your comfort, he writes, Whether we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which works in us, which works in the patient enduring of the same suffering which we also suffer. So, oops, I wanna go ahead of myself. So back in verse six that we looked at last week a little bit, we talked about, but if we are afflicted, It is for your comfort and for your salvation. Or if we are being comforted, It is for your comfort, which is effective in the patient enduring of the same suffering which we also suffer. So there's a principle here. The principle in operation is whether now we are being afflicted.

It's indicative of mood. It means it's a mood of reality. It's present tense going on right now. but it's passive, means the action's being done to me. So I am being afflicted, action being done to me, right now, and it's real. Or if we are comforted, it's also indicative mood, present tense, going on right now, passive voice being done to me. So only a believer understands this, that I can be in a trial that's really tough, going on right now, it's real. At the same time, going on right now that's real is the comfort of God.

J.C. Bellet said, in every direction, this strange principle operates. for it may be doubted whether there be any possessions that we have worth holding, whether they be material, political, or 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. So it's a good thing, I think, to look at the operation of grace in a man of like emotions.

And not only in the fullness and perfection of all, even in Christ himself. Certainly Paul, who was remarkable for the energy of loving labor beyond every other disciple, every other apostle. He was yet more so for the variety and greatness of what he suffered in Christ's name.

I read some things this week about, and I'd never thought of this, that no apostle suffered like Paul did. They did suffer, they did pay the ultimate price by being martyred, except for John. But we don't read about the kind of suffering in their life. Peter, James, and John, like Paul went through, hounded all the time.

So he's qualified to speak of what he just proved. The sufferings of Christ abounded towards us. And then he adds, so through him did our comfort. His faith, got a hold of the Lord's way and the Lord's end and applied it to his own circumstances. The working of grace in the face of all troubles. We can say as love never fails, so all things work together for good and Paul knew that. So we are being afflicted for your comfort or your salvation, and this word salvation here just means continual safety. We are right now being comforted for the sake of your comfort.

What does that produce? Producing in you endurance of suffering, of the same suffering that we suffer. One of those hungry hearts I read that struck me was that if I'm suffering and the Lord sends somebody to comfort me, my thought is, boy, they must have been down the same road that I'm going down. They know exactly what's happening to me.

So Paul says in verse seven, and our hope for you is firmly grounded, knowing that as you are sharers of our sufferings, So also you are sharers of our comfort. Our hope for you is firm, solid. It isn't wishy-washy. It's steadfast. And it anticipates, with pleasure, the outcome. Knowing this, that you are sharers, this is the first fill in the blank. So check out the color. Whoops, I missed a spot. Knowing that you are sharers of sufferings, you are sharers of comfort. I don't wanna give you a minute to write. You can just do it.

So this chart that we looked at last week that Roger put together, 2004, something like that, that God comforts us. in every affliction that I have. Why? So that through me, through you, you can comfort others in every affliction that they have. It's interesting how involved in the work of the Lord we all are.

Like I said last week, if you think in your mind that you don't have a ministry, I would ask you, do you have suffering in your life? Everybody in this room would say, yeah, in some form or another, well, you have a ministry then. And your ministry is, as God comforts you in your suffering, it's qualifying you to comfort somebody else. So you all have a ministry.

Every single one of us do. Don't need a special spiritual gift for that. All you need is to suffer. Well, you all qualify. The Hungry Heart says, one of the Hungry Hearts says, there's a divine mystery in suffering, a strange and supernatural power in it, which has never been fathomed by human reason. Non-believers don't get this.

I went to a funeral this week, Catholic funeral, very depressing. And the funeral was for the son of a college friend who died of COVID at 51. So it was a particularly tough time. And then a few days later, I had lunch with this man, who I don't think he's a believer, but I told him about this principle. I said, you know, this is, from my perspective as a Christian, You're going through a trial here with the death of your older son. God is fitting you out to comfort somebody else in the same circumstance. And he looked at me like, you're crazy. And then he said, I gotta go. I'm hoping someday that he does realize that God doesn't do anything haphazardly.

There has never 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 in its blessed ministry, then patience has its perfect work, then the crucifixion begins to weave itself into a crown. There's no place for learning the tender sympathy of the Lord Jesus and the blessings of the Father's love and patience and care as in the trials of the wilderness journey. Every one of our trials, every one of our sufferings is only there to lead us to know the Father and the Lord Jesus as we could not know them any other way.

Affliction and suffering are the lot of all men, but the privilege of all believers. When you see that color, privilege, that's the fill in. I'm gonna say that again. Affliction and suffering are the lot of all men, but the privilege of all believers.

Our sufferings bring forth need, and our need brings forth His comfort and consolation. We thank God for our needs. In verse seven it says, as you are partakers of His suffering, so shall you also be of His consolation. What a promise that is. There are blessings which we cannot obtain if we can't 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 with which flow only after the plowshare has done its work. That's a quote from Charles Coates. Comfort does not come to the lighthearted and merry. That's what the world sells. Be lighthearted, be merry. It doesn't come to the seminary graduate. It doesn't come to the theologian.

We must go down into the depths if we would experience the most precious of God's gifts, comfort. and therefore be prepared to be co-workers together with him in comforting others. 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 when I am consciously weak, I'm really strong.

So in verse six and seven, Paul links the Corinthians with himself in a very beautiful way. What he's gonna do, he just laid out the principle, now he's gonna start to talk about application in his own life. Carnal though they had been, the Corinthians and feeble in many things, the Corinthian had tasted in the sufferings just like Paul had. And then it's certain that in due time they would be participants also in all the encouragement that God gave Paul.

So he makes a reference to the afflictions that he had in Asia into which God had been pleased to bring him in order more deeply to teach not merely him but the Corinthians also and actually all of us too of God's own ways, how he does things. The process is painful, but the profit is immense, not only to us, but to others, as well as to Paul and for God's glory. How good, how good is the God we adore?

Now, verse eight. So Paul says, we don't want you to be unaware, brethren, of our affliction which came to us in Asia, that we were, and now he describes it, burdened excessively, beyond our strength, that we were desperate even of life. Burdened excessively, Chester McAuley says, this word is hyperbola, is to state something excessive, like an example, we say, oh, I'm starving to death. Well, I'm really not starving to death, but I'm making the point by saying I'm starving to death. We use excessive statements to show intensity. It shows the intensity of the burden and the sufferings. It was so intense that I used hyperbole to explain it, and it's preached the word kata, which means down, And Paul says that the whole world had come down on him.

That's what it felt like. And then he says, beyond our strength, beyond human endurance, if God doesn't intervene here, we are lost. So that we despaired even of life, The word poros means a passage or a way. There was absolutely no way out for Paul. That's how he describes his affliction in Asia.

And you can go read about it, I think it's Acts 9, about the riots in Ephesus and other things, and we'll look at some of that. As he said, burdened excessively beyond strength, we are despaired even of life. Constable said, well, he made a comment that, well, a lot of guys, some expositors say, well, it was this incident or that incident. And I like what Constable did here.

He said, perhaps Paul's referring to the fighting of wild beasts at Ephesus or the uproar at Ephesus. instigated by Demetrius. Demetrius was a jewelry maker who made all the jewels for the temple. And his business, when Paul showed up, started to go really bad. And so he rallies all the merchants, and they're after Paul. They've got to get rid of him to get their business back. or a later outbreak of hostility against Paul at Ephesus at a later date, or it may have been, he may have had in mind various unspecified trials and plots against his life.

I wonder if Paul ever got a decent night's sleep. A succession of persecutions in Asia, or an attempt to lynch Paul, Perhaps he referred to shipwreck followed by a night and a day in the sea, or anxiety over the state of the Corinthian church, a deadly sickness that he had, or just his simple thorn in the flesh. Could have been all of those things. What we can say certainly about Paul's affliction is that the Corinthians failed to appreciate the intensity with which Paul was being afflicted.

So Paul writes to tell him not what it was, but how it had oppressed him beyond endurance. That's the point he's trying to make. It occurred in the Roman province of Asia, which is the western part of Turkey. It would have been fatal to him had God not intervened. Furthermore, he was suffering, it was the sufferings of Christ. connected with Paul's ministry to the Corinthians.

We don't really, we avoid, I think, as contemporary believers, what the Bible calls the sufferings of Christ. We're not gonna open up our mouth and talk about anything about Christ if we know we're in an audience that isn't gonna like, not only not like it, but really go after us because of it.

So he says in Romans 7.24, O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me out of this body of death? Answer, I thank God through Jesus Christ. So what I wanna talk about here in the next couple of slides is deliverance from inward pressure. Paul's talking a lot about external pressure. But inward pressure is just as important. If we have inward deliverance, it will really fortify us for enduring the time when we have to wait for external or outward deliverance.

In Romans 7.24, what's Paul talking about? One who is in captivity to the power of evil within. Every believer knows what that's like. God, I would just love to stop doing a sin or sins, and I can't. I just can't. Romans 7 talks about that all the way down. Method, how do I do it? What can I do? And it comes down to one question. Who will deliver me? It's a who question.

Well, you don't need deliverance if you don't know you're in captivity. Internally, we have all kinds of issues. that capture us, keep us in bondage. And that's what Romans 7 is really all about. Paul is brought to hopeless despair. And he cries, oh wretched man that I am. People with anxiety problems, with any kind of problems internally. Who shall deliver me from this body of death?

I want to be delivered. And then the answer is simple. I thank God through Jesus Christ. The answer is the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. The power of inward deliverance comes through the Lord Jesus via his cross. God has directed or will direct us to someone outside of us. The answer isn't in us. The answer is outside of us and his work, the Lord Jesus Christ. We see in the gospel that Christ is our Lord and he's the one that paid the price. And then you bring into this equation the whole understanding of co-crucifixion with Christ. There's the freedom. I've been crucified with Christ. I've been separated from all that oppresses me internally.

The gospel shows his power to effect deliverance for everyone who comes in contact with him. If you read the four gospels, it's like no one ever went to the Lord Jesus with a problem that he didn't fix it. He didn't perform a miracle, whether it was internal or external. Whatever moral disease or infirmity, psychological addiction, psychological or addiction, or just plain sin, I may be subject to, there is an adequate power in the Lord Jesus Christ to meet every single issue, and it's his cross.

So therefore, there must be a lack of earnestness on my part if I continue in captivity to the principle of sin. I have the door out, I have the freedom, As we avail ourselves of the virtue that is in Christ and His cross, we pass into a new kind of life altogether, where I'm free. He, the Lord Jesus, would have us completely delivered from the principle of sin by the new life which is in Himself. and not once for us to be delivered, but as looking to him continuously as the one by whom God's delivering power sets us free. We can be free permanently. The life that is in him abides to be drawn upon as is needed instantly.

So he says in verse nine, indeed we had the sentence of death within us, within ourselves, so that we would not trust in ourselves but in God who raises the dead. The sentence of death. It was the assurance Paul had that he was gonna die, physically, as a result of the afflictions that he was involved with.

Paul is going to show how this Pressure, then comfort, qualification process is developed in us. In other words, pressure, comfort, it is a process that God puts us through, and he develops us through it. He does it internally, and he does it externally. And you know what?

It's not based on education. It's not based on memorization. It's not based on a theory. Paul's just gonna say, this is my experience. This is what I went through. And I didn't have to go to seminary to learn about it. All I had to do was live in Asia.

So he speaks quite simply about it, making no attempt to hide the fact that he felt the pressure intensely. I think it's a mark of spiritual shallowness not to feel the pressure that comes on us. Paul didn't assume that to be above the feeling, the pressure, but he met it by taking the ground that he had the sentence of death in himself. He was already, as to his own mind, as good as dead. The greatest pressure of all is death, by the way. That's the big fear everybody has outside of Christ. We could even describe it as so great a death.

But Paul trusted not in himself. The sentence of death was there, but in God who raises the dead. That's what he trusted in. And when you learn Identification truth, what do you find out? Oh, I already died. I was crucified with Christ. Nevertheless, I'm living in this body. With the life I now live, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. That's why Paul always refers to believers in his epistles as not dying.

He refers to them as going to sleep. Why? They already died. And that's where the fear and the sting of death goes. Once you understand, oh wait a minute, my physical death has nothing to do with fear, it has everything to do with the joy of going home.

So in verse nine he says, so what's the purpose? Indeed we have the sentence of death in ourselves so that we would not trust in ourselves but in God who raised the dead. The purpose is not to trust in ourselves, That's the purpose. But to trust in the God who raises the dead.

The example is Abraham. God says to Abraham, after 40 years of spiritual growth, take Isaac up to the mountains and sacrifice him to me. Did Abraham hesitate? No, he didn't. If God would have said to him 10 years earlier, do this, would he have hesitated? Yeah, he would have. because he learned this principle, God who raises the dead. What a principle. The God who raised the dead.

Paul met every situation with the sentence of death in himself. In that way, he was brought to nothing as to any hope to trust in himself or any powers that he possessed. He was shut up to God and His power. The God whom he trusted is the God who raises the dead and who therefore would undo all that the mob might have done had they been permitted to do their worst. Had they been permitted to kill Paul? Paul knew that God, he trusted in the God who raised the dead.

So who delivered us from so great a peril and will deliver us. He on whom we have set our hope and he will yet deliver us. You notice I put a line through some of the translations that the New American Standard says, so great a peril of, that's not in the Greek. So it should read, who delivered us from so great a death.

So, because he had regarded himself as a dead man, Some translations render it delivered, does deliver, or will deliver. In other words, this verse says, well, he did deliver me, he's gonna deliver me, and he will deliver me in the future. I think a better translation is that I am delivered right now. I will be delivered in the future. And oh, in the far future, I will yet be delivered.

In either case, it's clear God intervened, and God delivered Paul from his past afflictions. God would continue to deliver him from the same or similar afflictions in the future, and God would always deliver him no matter what. God did it in the past, and he will do it in the future. God delivered Paul in Asia, and he will in the future.

He on whom we have set our hope, which is an indicative perfect active, which means it's reality, happened in the past, abiding results in the future, and it's going on right now at the same time. He'll yet deliver us. So we can say that Christianity, maybe in the true sense, is Christ glorified in those whom he has delivered. I'm glorified in them.

As the healed persons of the gospel took their place in the assemblies later. Think about this. If you were alive, at the, right before Christ was crucified, and you had an infirmity, and Christ healed it, and you go through the death, burial, and resurrection, and ascension of Christ, in the span of about a couple of months, here the church starts to form, and you start going to the meetings. And what's your testimony in the meetings?

Oh, I knew the Lord Jesus, and I had X, Y, Z infirmity, and he healed me. And the guy sitting over here says, oh yeah, same thing happened to me. And yeah, that happened to me too. Really interesting at the beginning of the church in Jerusalem, I can imagine what those church services had been like. Everybody talking around, oh yeah, you know.

And the guy sitting next to him, well I don't remember any of that, I'm new around here. What a testimony those people must have been. When God puts his children into the furnace, he keeps his hand on the thermostat and his eye on a thermometer. From Warren Wiersbe.

First Peter 1, 6 and 7 says, in this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be, you have been grieved by various trials. but the genuineness of your faith, the genuineness of your faith being much more precious than gold that perishes though it be tested by fire may be found to praise, honor, and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

So Paul teaches us then that affliction does four things for us. It makes us more sympathetic. It gives us a greater appreciation for God's superabounding comfort. and encouragement that he brings to us with the affliction. It causes us to trust in him more, to trust in God more. And fourth, it gives us greater confidence in God's power and greater hope for the future.

Comes from Constable. From another hungry heart, the believer has an all-engaging responsibility of continuing in an attitude of reliance by means of the Spirit be walking upon the Holy Spirit. This is the believer's divinely appointed task and place of cooperation with the mighty undertakings of God. Thus and only thus can the Holy Spirit possess and vitalize every human faculty, emotion, and choice. From Louis Sperry Chaffer. If we are living in the Spirit's power, let our conduct also be governed by the Spirit's power.

And then in verse 11, he said, and you and also joining and helping us through your prayers so that thanks may be given to many persons on our behalf for the favor bestowed on us through the prayers of many. God's gracious answers would call forth a larger volume of thanksgiving. If many be joined in the quest, many would join in giving thanks.

This joining and helping means, this is really the challenge today is for someone to pronounce this word. It consists of three words that mean with, under, and work. Laborers bowed down under some heavy burden that they are working together to lift it up. That's what this word means, through your prayers. So what's Paul saying? You've been praying for us, for me, and all of us together, with this word, I'm being lifted up. It shows that why do we pray for people as Christians? Why do we pray for like Bob Eccles gonna have back surgery tomorrow?

Well, I can tell you from personal experience, when I was having open heart surgery, I knew in the prep room at UC Health that you were all there with me. I just knew it. And I was totally aware of it. And I was calm about it. The doc came in, kind of a cocky guy. He said, well, let's do this thing. I said, let's go. No fear at all.

And a lot of it is because you're lifted up by prayer. So the human part for us believers is also joining and helping us through your prayers. That's why we pray for people. Believers the word persons There's a lot of faces turned upwards. That's what this means There were many persons praying for us So what Paul does here it's kind of interesting if you took Macaulay did this if you take verse 10 out and go verse 9 and 11 read them together They sound like this Indeed, we have the sentence of death within ourselves so that we would not trust in ourselves, but in God who raises the dead. You also, joining and helping us through your prayers so that thanks may be given to many persons on our behalf for the favor bestowed on us through prayers of many. See how that fits together? What prayer is is an expression of trust. I wouldn't go pray if I didn't think God could do it or would do it. I trust him.

So let's sum up. The end of affliction or stress is consolation, comfort of ourselves, number one. Number two, the end of the consolation is the consolation of others. Three, we cannot help others until we learn how to obtain help for ourselves. We're in a situation, difficult, God encomforts us, we learn. Now we're qualified. You can't get equipped in a school. You must learn how the word of God is applied to ourselves. We must learn how the word of God is applied to ourselves before we can apply it to someone else. Paul's qualification was the despairing of death, the sentence of death. That's what qualified him. He did not contemplate the danger ceasing. It was gonna always be there. He knew that it would continue throughout his life.

So he anticipates that he yet would be delivered. that the Corinthians would have the privilege of helping to this end with their prayers. In this beautiful introduction, Paul found occasion to be thankful in the most trying circumstances, even suffering has its benefits. It provides the occasion to experience God's comfort, to watch him answer prayers, to observe how believers can be strengthened in their Christian walk and witnessed by others in other circumstances.

A quote from Homer Kemp. John Darby said the gift bestowed in verse 11 was his life spared. Though I do not doubt, I do not doubt it was all that he had as an apostle was included. It wasn't only his life, it was everything that he was. William Kelly says, nor is this all, but he had to do, and we too, with the one who knows how to order the tribulation so that its fruit in divine consolation should come out just at the right moment for the saints that needed relief and comfort. and I'll close with a hungry heart again. This one's from October 2nd, Afflicted in Comfort.

Affliction provides the 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 to go through. Many saints have been happy to assert that they would not have missed for anything the exercise of prolonged illness or suffering. They have thereby learned the grace and sympathy of the Lord Jesus. They have been subjects of so much tender interest and consideration flowing from the spiritual affections of his saints that they have been conscious of infinite gain and enrichment. And surely, The development and exercise of such affections as these, eternal in their nature, though called into activity by circumstances connected with conditions of weakness and trial, is a greater triumph of divine love and power than restoring the 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 the moral result of those dealings, to be concerned upon the thought of bodily healing and self-centered experiences. That's from Charles Coates. So, to learn the Father in his mercy, as well as providing a deeper understanding of what others may be called to go through is what God's up to. Amen? Amen.