"Comfort When Affliction Abounds" 2 Corinthians 1:3-7 Sunday Morning Worship Service

Well, I'm impressed you said Nacadochus correctly.

So good morning.

It's a privilege to uh be here at Emmanuel Bible Church.

Um Cindy and I were reflecting on uh this trip and planning to come and just all the memories.

It's an honor to be here.

Our family considers uh Emmanuel, the church that shaped us.

So many of you poured into our lives.

Um those of you that don't know me, uh keep it that way.

Uh we have four children, three of whom are adopted.

One correction, uh we have four grandchildren, and uh three of them are very close by in Nashville.

We've been there 16 years now.

And last Sunday was my last uh Sunday at pastor as pastor at Stonebridge Bible Church.

I'm officially retired from elders, I mean from pastoring.

Some of you will understand that.

But uh so many of you poured into our lives, and it would take more than one service and way past 1010 to thank each individual.

Um, but one person has always stood out, and that's John Weitzman.

John and Bonnie uh were here for many, many years.

They are now on the West Coast, but um, he was the elder chairman uh through a pretty tumultuous time when I first came.

And he taught me more about leadership and about being a good Christian pastor, a good Christian elder, and those things that need to be connected sometimes.

Sorry.

I have a very cynical sense of humor.

You'll figure it out later, but um I was cynical before it was cool, so um we're singing I'd rather have Jesus than anything.

Dr.

John Hanna would say, I just sang another lie.

Anyway, that's sort of my brand of humor, but um.

But John was a very uh direct but patient person in my life.

And again, it would take a long time to show those stories, but we are forever indebted.

Recently I was interviewed on something, and I was talking about two elders, and John Weitzma and a man named Dr.

Alan Hull, still lead the list of elders that got it and understood what it meant to lead, but to shepherd and not make the church a business or not make the church their project.

And uh I am forever grateful to uh, especially here this morning to John.

Father, we thank you for your word that it is true.

We thank you that we have the privilege to open it for a few moments, turn down the noise and distractions, and help us focus on your word.

May my words be forgotten and yours retained.

In Christ's name.

Amen.

Western believers have a very poor understanding of suffering.

Uh, it seems to be more endemic in the West, and when I speak of the West, I mean the Americas, the UK, the idea of a Western Christianity as opposed to European or a Middle Eastern.

Um we we just have a pretty unfortunate view of suffering.

Our objective typically is to uh uh anesthetize it, to take something, to take the pain away.

And for those of you that don't know me, I do live with chronic pain.

I'm not looking for sympathy just as an index for you to understand, and many of you do as well.

And it's not that we have sort of a better understanding of the suffering community, which is helpful, but that you understand suffering is part of God's program.

And all of us suffer in different ways.

And I think because we're in the West and because we've almost deified health care, the moment pain enters, we reach for the ibuprofen or the Tylenol or something similar.

When pain becomes the constant distraction, to the point that you can't function or think or pay attention to your computer screen or engage with people in a normal way when the pain is that loud and the distraction that high, you literally or metaphorically reach for something to take off the edge.

If you've not been there, bless God.

But many of us will be there.

And it can be not just acute, not just chronic, it can be emotional, it can be personal, it can be relational.

It's sometime news for folks to realize that the ancients had the same pains you and I have.

I defy you to read the Psalter and not see the agony and the lamentation and the I'm sick to the point of death imagery.

It doesn't take a Bible scholar to see the book of Job, the oldest book in our Bible, is about suffering and pain.

So with that in mind, I want us to look briefly at 2 Corinthians chapter 1, verses 3 to 7 this morning.

2 Corinthians 1:3–7

And I will read off the screen.

I'm using the New American Standard Bible, so it might be a little different than yours.

I want you to notice the word comfort repeated in this passage so many times.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our afflictions, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.

For just as the sufferings of Christ are ours in abundance, just a quick pause there, not many of us in this room will suffer for Christ's sake in the same way the apostle does.

So also our comfort is abundant through Christ.

But if we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation.

Or if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which is the effective, and which is effective in the patient enduring of the same sufferings which we also suffer.

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.

As you know, because you're a well-taught Bible church, uh 1 and 2 Corinthians are corrective letters.

I encourage people with real Bibles and real pens and real pencils, not these, if you're using your phone or your tablet, shame on you in a Christian sort of way.

You know, real Bible and take notes.

And you should write over 1 and 2 Corinthians the word correction.

Just to keep it in mind, because the apostle is not writing a Philippians letter that we read from this morning in part.

He is writing about abuse and division and immorality and all kinds of egregious sins, and he's correcting the Corinthian believers.

And as the apostle of Jesus Christ, he speaks to them the very word of Christ.

And he begins in 1 Corinthians with the divisions that are among them.

And in this book, it's a little better on the encouragement side, but it's still a corrective letter.

And I find it striking that in this opening chapter, he talks about suffering and comfort in such elaborate and beautiful detail.

His main idea in this section is verse 3: the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort.

For you BSFers, precept, Bible study nerds, that's the principle.

That's the main idea of this passage.

That's the point.

But Paul the Apostle knew, just like anyone knows, no one ever sheds a tear over a propositional truth.

The principle can be true, but I have to explain it to you.

And so that's what he's going to do in the following verses.

What does it mean that the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort?

That sounds great and a principle.

So what?

Shrug our theological shoulders.

Well, he's going to expand that.

It's not a platitude, it's a very deep theological premise with a very practical application.

He is the God of all comfort.

That can sound theological, it can sound ethereal, it can sound nice and trite, but what does he mean by it?

As the God of all comfort, he is the God who comforts in our afflictions.

It's a very simple concept, but I might suggest most of us don't understand this.

David Lowry observes one of the many paradoxes of the Christian life is that the grace of God is most keenly experienced, not in the best, but in what seems to be the worst of times.

However much a Christian longs for joy or delight, it is often in humiliation where he finds grace.

The theme pervades the letter and finds poignant expression in Paul's thanksgiving.

Can I turn up the heat a bit?

You won't learn unless you suffer.

You won't grow until there's pain.

You will not spend more time in the Word trying to find out who this God is and how I am to relate to him until and unless you hurt.

Because in the Western mindset, when the money is okay, the job is okay, the marriage is okay, the kids are okay, the routines are okay, it's a beautiful day like it is outside, when Cindy and I basically like each other.

There's a difference, right?

We've been married 43 years.

We love each other.

We don't like each other all the time.

But when all the boxes are somewhat checked and life is okay, you don't need God.

Touch your marriage, touch your job, touch your checkbook, introduce cancer, introduce Parkinson's, introduce, you name it, a complicated pregnancy, a lost pregnancy.

Then we get real spiritual.

Then we ask God why.

Then we start the prayer chain.

Then we pound, we open the Bible, and people send us verses and flowers and fruit baskets, and we get busy with God.

Does that bother you as much as it bothers me?

If you're not there yet, enjoy your panacea.

Because one day it will knock on your door in a way maybe you don't deserve or you don't understand, and I promise you you won't like it.

But it's the time to learn.

It's the time to grow.

The passage is interesting, and before we get into some of the detail Paul is teaching, I want to talk about this little word blessed in verse 3.

It's one of these Christianese words that means everything, therefore it means nothing.

We live in Middle Tennessee now in College Grove, which is south of Nashville, our 16th year down there, and we love it down there because our kids are all there and grandkids are almost all of them are there, and so it's home.

My wife tells me it's home, so it's home.

And so in the South, they say, bless your heart.

Now, Virginia, as Steve Holly often schooled me, is as far north as you can go and still be south.

So you have a little bit of that vestige, but you're close to the district in Maryland to understand this anymore.

So let me explain it to you.

When you say bless your heart, what you're really saying is, you really are stupid.

So we need some theological foundation on what this word means.

And the broad strokes, bless and all the cognates means an attribution of some kind.

How do we understand words?

And again, you're a well-taught church.

Words and their meanings come from usage.

How a word is used in the Bible is how we understand what it means.

Okay?

So I want to take you back to a passage in 1 Chronicles chapter 29 for a few minutes.

1 Chronicles 29 · chapter mention

I've heard even in recent days, young pastors use the Beatitudes, happy are those, happy are those.

And that is such an unfortunate rendering.

Because it's a happy meal or a happy birthday.

It's not blessing.

And you and I need to understand what blessing is and what it is not.

And I find 1 Chronicles 29, 9, and following give the best primer on this very important Bible word that can mean anything from you really are dumb to whatever you want to call it.

So walk with me, look with me as I read this.

Let me set the context briefly.

David, of course, could not build the temple complex for God.

He wanted to, God said, No, your hands are hands of bloodshed.

Basically, you're a man of war, and so your son will do it.

So David, being the wise king, gets all the building supplies ready because there was a supply chain problem in those days, too.

So he gets all the materials ready.

And the uh, I love these estimates where they look at, okay, this much gold at that time it'd be worth this many billions of dollars today.

It doesn't matter, but it's novel to look at.

Let's just say there was more than enough.

And the materials, the gold, the silver, the stone, the wood that was brought in.

Wood is a very minor part of Middle Eastern construction, by the way.

But when these materials were brought in, David is blown away.

And this is his response.

Then the people rejoiced because they had offered so willingly, for they had made their offering to the Lord with a whole heart, and King David also rejoiced greatly.

So David blessed the Lord.

What do we do when we say bless God?

Is it a Christianese formula?

It's much more.

He blessed God in the sight of all the assembly.

And he said, Blessed are you, Lord God of Israel, our Father, forever and ever.

Now watch the second person pronoun in this passage.

Verse 11.

Yours, O Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty, indeed, everything that is in the heavens and the earth.

Yours is the dominion, O Lord, and you exalt yourself as head over all.

Verse 12 both riches and honor come from you, and you rule over all, and in your hand is power and might, and it lies in your hand to make great and strengthen everyone.

Now, therefore, our God, we thank you and praise your glorious name.

Verse 14.

But who am I?

And who are my people that we should be able to offer as generously as this?

For all things come from you.

And from your hand we have given to you.

Verse 20, then David said to all the assembly, now bless.

There it is, there's the bracket.

Bless the Lord your God.

And all the assembly blessed the Lord, the God of their fathers, and bowed low and did homage to the Lord and to the King.

Let me offer a couple of observations.

One, you have to get your nose in the book.

When you come across anything that you think you know or you're living on your theological aurals of what you studied 10 years ago in precept, get off your theological orals, get your nose back in the book and do a little homework.

This is not hard stuff to do.

You know how to do this.

David is blessing God, he's recognizing God because of what God enabled David's people to accomplish.

When Emmanuel went through building programs and paid off debts, you had celebration services.

And that was a great time to say thank you, God, because from our hands, we're always stewards, never owner.

From our hands, we gave and you used, and those resources made this a reality.

David's blessing God in recognition for who he is, for all he's done through his chosen people.

To bless is to recall who God is and what he's done.

I often use the formula we're fixated in a horizontal I mean my view of the Christian life.

What I want, what's best for me, for my kids, my family, my grandchildren, my job, my retirement account, I mean my.

Where Christianity should be you, your, yours.

And the challenge of Western Christianity is we're too comfortable in the horizontal to be focused in the vertical.

So when discomfort comes, we cry for mercy and blessing and God to take his foot off the pain and make things right again.

A little bit more cumbersome, but it's the best I can do, and you can improve on it.

To bless God is to give him attribution for who he is, for what he's done, and how he's carried us thus far.

To bless God is to give him attribution for who he is, for what he's done, and for how he's carried us thus far.

And I'm struck at the end of that discourse, David bows low.

Kings don't bow.

People bow to the king.

But this king bowed low.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Paul begins.

Why the long discurses?

Because I don't think we understand.

No matter what your circumstance, no matter what your condition, no matter how you feel, no matter what your retirement, your health, your marriage, your children, I won't have you raise hands, but I would say probably every person in this room has a child that has broken your heart, or a grandchild who's breaking your heart.

And the response, I mean my is normal.

You, your, yours is theological.

It's not about me.

Never has been.

It's easy to rush over this blessing.

And I think Paul, in almost a liturgical formula with this principle in verse 3, before he goes into this back and forth, almost lyric that he writes in this section.

When you and I pray and we ask God for things, do you have in your mind what I call if-then theology?

If I do this, then God will do that.

If I live well, if I behave, if I don't like a pornography, if I don't cheat, if I don't lust, lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, the boastful pride of life, if I kind of keep those suppressed and at bay, then God will.

Or when God touches you, or if you prefer, allows pain to enter your existence, then you get busy.

What do I need to do to get rid of the pain?

I'm reaching for the spiritual ibuprofen.

I'm reaching for the pharmaceutical pain reliever.

I think it's natural, I think it's human.

I don't think it's, I'm not trying to shame you or me, but our response to discomfort is not what seems to line up with the scripture.

Now, granted, if your pain is a constant distraction, as mine can be, you have this search for how do I turn down the noise enough.

I don't live with the illusion of having a pain-free life.

I live with the hope of having a manageable life, right?

Because as we get older, things don't work the way they used to work.

Sure, we can say, you know, God have mercy on me, God have pity on me, and he may.

I've heard stories.

Person goes into the hospital, masses in their lungs, they go home, they come back three weeks later, there's no masses in their lungs.

Wonderful! Praise God! Never happened to me.

My back's still my back.

In fact, when I have images, it goes, yeah, it's worse.

Thanks for telling me, Doc.

Thanks for sharing.

Probably 1999, 2000, we were here, and one of the first doctors I saw looked at my MR and goes, You have the back of an 80-year-old.

Thanks for sharing.

And two other doctors told me that subsequently.

I said, was there a number on there?

It says about 80, and you look at the x-ray?

I mean, how do you know this?

Entropy is tough to beat.

But God's mercy and compassion, what do we say, are new every morning.

In Colossians 3.12, Paul speaks of having a heart of compassion on people.

That's different than pity.

You can feel sorry for, sorry with, right?

Many of you know Brian Birdwell.

Brian was here in 9-11, was uh in the Pentagon and suffered terrible burns.

Spent 12, I think, maybe 13 weeks in the Washington Burn Center.

It's a very long story.

But um we have remained friends over the years.

I think Brian's north of 50 surgeries post his burns as a remarkable ministry.

He's also a state senator in Texas now, but he used to go to the uh children's burn units and he would take off his shirts and let the kids feel his skin.

This is what it's gonna be like.

You'll be okay, you'll get there.

That man endured more pain than most people I know.

And I forget what back surgery it was for me, number three or four, whatever it was.

And we were in Chicago at the time, I believe, and he calls me.

He never calls me Michael, he always calls me Pastor.

So I call him, I won't tell you what I call him, I get true.

I have a ped name for him that Mel says you're the only person that could call him that name.

But anyway.

So he says, How you doing, Pastor?

And I whined for a couple of minutes, and there's a pause on the phone.

He says, Buck up.

That was compassion from Colonel Birdwell.

That was his compassion.

It was gonna get, I don't care about you, buddy, you don't know anything about pain.

Let me tell you about pain.

But I knew what he meant.

Sometimes, most times, there's a parent that's more compassionate than another.

There's a parent that's more wired to comfort their child than to correct their child.

And in a stereotypical culture, be mad at me later, it doesn't matter, I leave Monday.

Um women tend to be a little more compassionate toward their children than men.

Men are like buck up, you know, and and women are like, oh honey.

And um that's compassion in the way we measure it.

When we lived here, uh Cindy and I, uh, as was mentioned, we spoke with the Family Life Marriage Conference for many, many years.

And um we would, our kids would be, you know, parceled out to friends.

We watch our kids for the weekend.

And Gwynn and Jim Traffic were always so kind to take our three younger kids and our our two youngest, we we adopted when we lived here, and I think they were maybe four or five, I don't know when this, maybe five or six when this transpired.

But we run a red eye coming back from California, we arrive at the airport, we drive straight to the Trav's house, we pick up the kids and get in the car and say our thanks and goodbyes.

And Devin is in the backseat, it's dark, and he goes, What's the matter, buddy?

He goes, Mrs.

Traffican is the nicest woman in the world.

Twenty-five plus years later, we're still milking that.

Um Mrs.

Edelney's the nicest woman in the world.

Mrs.

Traffigan's the nicest woman in the world.

Now, what did that mean?

That meant that there were no rules.

You eat whatever you want, you watch whatever you want.

You don't want the crust on your bread, no problem, honey.

I'll cut it off.

Gwen embodies compassion.

That's who she is.

That's how God made her.

You see, we need grace because we sinned at the beginning, but we need mercy because we sin every day.

And the God of all comforts is a God of compassion.

And he expects you and me to be compassionate.

The comfort with which they were comforted, they want you to be comforted.

And that transcends far beyond the Corinthian believers.

Ten times in this passage, he's called the God of all comfort.

How much more is God's mercy that we should emulate that we comfort one another?

Most of us know the word paracoleo, the paraclete.

When John talked about Jesus Christ going off to heaven and he says, I have to go to send another helper of the same kind.

It's a fun theological term, but the paracleo, he will walk alongside you.

He'll be with you.

I have to go in order to send him.

That's the way God the Father designed this from eternity past.

He's a helper.

Paul uses the term in a little different way as an encouragement.

In 1 Timothy 4 13, give attention to the public reading of Scripture.

Pay attention to it as the same term.

In Romans 12, 8, he who exhorts in his exhortation, encourage, same term.

The idea is similar to what Jesus would say with the Holy Spirit.

59 times the word group appears in the New Testament, 28 of them belong to, 29 belong to Paul.

What am I saying here?

The God of all is the source of comfort.

The Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort.

And do not forget that Paul suffered four years.

I taught 2 Corinthians 11 not long ago and went through all the things he went through.

It's quite a study.

And you can go back to Acts and you can do a nice little puzzle of, you know, shipwrecked, snake bit, beaten, you know, imprisoned, all the things, you know, smuggled out, all the injustices, indignities he experienced.

But he said he's the God of all comfort.

Um please notice your pain or my pain is not lessened.

It's that we know the God of comfort.

And that's a nuance you won't hear in most churches.

Um we are privileged to be friends with Johnny, Erickson, Tada, Johnny and Ken.

And I don't know a person that suffered more in my experience.

57 years in a wheelchair.

She told Cindy and me six, seven years ago, she didn't know any person that had been a quadriplegic for over 50 years in a wheelchair.

And all it takes is one good round of pneumonia to take her home.

And there's nothing they can do for her.

They cannot comfort her.

And so we have a group around the world that prays for her.

I've never seen one individual used in a way that by all sensibilities is so um less than desirable with such profound influence.

Talk about the least of these.

And I have told her many, many times, if I could take it for a day.

Cindy's told me innumerable times, if I could take your pain for a day, I'd give it to you, baby.

I mean, we're one, right?

I'm happy to share this with you.

You see, your pain is real.

Do not be defined by it.

That's the hard part as a Christian.

In verses 8 to 10, Paul notes he despaired of life.

But God who raises the dead delivered him.

When your experience and mine tell me otherwise about God, what do we believe?

You read these verses and you go, well, Michael, those are platitudes, and the God of all comforts comforts those in affliction, and with our suffering, you know, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And ain't true for my experience, that's the problem.

We're thinking horizontally and not vertically.

And this is the conundrum.

But the God who raises the dead.

Please note, he says the God of all comfort, he never says we'll remove your pain.

I've studied it again and again and again.

It never says he'll remove your pain.

I don't like talking about it, but I think we need to.

I'm 66 years old, I'm officially retired, I have an excellent wife who cares, I have an excellent primary care physician who I call Mother Hen and Abishai in the same breath.

I have friends who are closer than brothers.

I have people that get it.

And they're all solid Christians.

And I tell this story, and if you know me, nothing new I'm saying today.

But sometimes a person needs a dope slap, and sometimes they need encouragement.

And if you don't have that kind of friend, you're not trafficking in the right circle.

How much more is God's comfort in your present condition?

I don't care if it's a hangnail or if it's cancer.

When I talk to Johnny and I want to complain about this or that, I go, Johnny, I feel like I have a hangnail when I talk to you.

My little pinky hurts.

And I tell people the same thing that she would say to me pain is not a competition or a comparison.

Your pain is your pain.

Your pain is real.

Number of people that will be working outside and raking leaves, and they'll say, I pulled my back and I thought about you all weekend long.

I don't know how you do that, Michael.

And I go, buck up.

No, I don't say buck up.

I say, your pain is your pain.

It is real.

It's not a comparison or a contest.

When your pain distracts you from life, it needs attention.

I think it was Lewis, I never found the precise quote.

Pain plants the flag of surrender in the fortress of a rebel heart.

Affliction in the Greek means affliction.

Just wanted to encourage you.

Doesn't take any homework.

To comfort someone in their affliction is a specific purpose, not to alleviate pain.

That's the part we miss.

Verse 4, comfort in our affliction.

With the comfort with which we ourselves have been comforted by God.

I don't know if you've read any of the um Louise Penny's characters.

It's a secular book called Three Pines.

And there's a French inspector, French Canadian inspector who's the main character, Armand Gamar.

And he's talking to a person about grief and pain.

He says, grief sometimes feels like fear.

But actually, grief is love with nowhere to go.

I'd amend that pain is love with nowhere to go, except on that cross.

For love, he endured the pain.

It's impossible to overstate Paul's Christology in this section.

Throughout the whole chapter, it's the big duh.

Your relationship with Jesus Christ is the foundation stone.

It is the foundation of life.

The only way you and I suppress I, me, my is you, your, yours.

Period.

I don't have this figured out, friends.

I don't understand all I know.

I know this is true.

And in my present struggles, I want pain relieved, but I need, I want, but I need the comfort that God offers.

Why?

Because He's the only one that can comfort a broken heart.

Now here's what's interesting.

All the people I've mentioned by name have comforted me.

Did it take my pain away?

Nope.

But my doctor gets it.

My wife gets it.

My two older girls, they get it.

My close friends get it.

And they know when Michael needs a dope slap.

Or Michael needs to be left alone.

Or Michael needs encouragement.

The comfort with which we ourselves were comforted.

He's the God of all comfort.

Barbara Brand, who most of you, well many of you will know, sent me this quote 20 years ago from Phillips Brooks' Candle of the Lord, and I end on this Steve Smart Alec Holly before 1010.

Are you in here?

I should make him stand up and mock him.

He can dish it out, but he can't ever take it.

Love you, Steve.

The reason we are led into and out of trouble is not merely that we may value happiness the more from having lost it once and found it again, but that we may know something which we could not have known except by that teaching.

That we may bear upon our nature some impress which could not have been stamped except on natures so softened to receive it.

Father, I do not understand all I know, but I know you love us.

Not a person in this room that hasn't been hurt or disappointed or facing trouble.

You love them.

Help them understand it in perhaps a way they never have before.

Help them wrap their arms around it in a way they don't understand.

You may never take our pain away, but you will comfort us along the way.

And as always, thank you for your people who are called by your name.

Thank you for this remarkable church you've placed near the nation's capital to be a light and a beacon to a godless world, to hold up the name of Jesus Christ now more than ever needed.

And thank you that you hear this center's prayer in Christ's name.

Amen.

And now, for a parting word for Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thanks for joining us.

If you're in the Washington, D.C.

area, I would love to see you at Emmanuel Bible Church.

For more information on our church or our current service times, go to IBC.church.

For more information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.

location, go to TMS.edu.

I hope this resource has been a blessing to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel with both of us.