"Matthew 18 Incarnate" 2 Corinthians 7:5-9 Sunday Evening Worship Service

Second Corinthians 7 verses 5 through 9 is our passage this morning.

2 Corinthians 7:5–9

I just chose that it's a paragraph break in the ESV.

If you have different translations, they all basically every translation does a different paragraph break in this because it's really hard to tell uh where Paul's thought uh stops here, but everything everyone starts in verse 5.

Verse 5 picks up where we 2 Corinthians uh chapter 2, um verse 13 or so leaves off and it picks up again in verse 5.

And then we're gonna go just through verse 9, and then we'll pick up verse 10 uh in a couple couple weeks.

Um next week will be a special reformation time where we'll look at uh uh a doctrine that relates to the Reformation.

Um but for tonight in verses five through nine, it says this.

For even when we came into Macedonia, our bodies had no rest, but we were afflicted at every turn, fighting without in fear within.

But God, who comforts the downcast, comforted us by the coming of Titus, and not only by his coming, but also by the comfort with which he was comforted by you, as he told us of your longing, your mourning, your zeal for me, so that I rejoice still more.

For even if I made you grieve with my letter, I do not regret it, though I did regret it, for I see that that letter grieved you, though only for a while.

As it is, I rejoice, not because you were grieved, but because you were grieved into repenting, for you felt a godly grief, so that you suffered no loss through us.

Paul had spent eighteen months in Corinth.

That is a long time by the standard of Paul's ministry.

Eighteen months is longer than he spent in most places, but he spent a year and a half there.

Corinth is a very, or was a very cosmopolitan city.

It was uh the closest American thing, might be kind of a New Orleans kind of flavor with a New York City kind of flavor.

It was the town of sailors who had the same kind of stereotype then that they may uh have now, present company excluded.

Uh the topography of the land had changed over the years, and so um there's all kinds of stories that abound about how boats had to be even in some places drug over land and through the isthmus there and the different locks they made.

And so it was often a place where people would uh have layovers and they would spend days, weeks, even perhaps months, or in Paul's case 18 months there.

As I said, it was cosmopolitan, people from all over the Roman Empire.

Many languages were spoken there.

There was not a predominant ethnic group, they were loyal to Rome, they were Roman citizens, they of course spoke Greek, but there was uh a large number of Jews there, along with people from Africa and Asia and all over the place.

It was a very mixed crowd of people that were there.

And so Paul spent a year and a half planting this church there.

It is unusual, just by New Testament standards, when you read Paul's letter to the churches, um, they don't read like 1st and 2 Corinthians.

Paul's letters to other churches are overflowing with love and grace and mercy and joy and all of this.

And then Corinthians comes and, you know, he's at the end of his rope, so to speak.

He comes across as exasperated, grieved, and mourned.

And even as you read this paragraph right here, this is probably the most personal of his paragraphs in 1st and 2nd Corinthians about his own heart here.

You see, it's very difficult to make sense of even what he's communicating.

I diagrammed this passage earlier this week, and it is just it's a it's a hot mess.

You know, he's he's gotten here.

I am so glad I didn't write to you, but I am glad that I wrote you.

But only for a little bit, and then I'm not glad anymore, but then I was glad again at the end.

You know, it's it's that kind of flow through this passage because he is revealing his heart.

It's about his heart and his affections and his emotions towards the Corinthians, and so that that comes out.

You know, the heart is, of course, complex.

He has grief mixed with joy, mixed with rejoicing, followed by repenting, and then more grieving again and the loss that they suffered, but it ended up being for their good.

And so you need a little bit of the background of what the letter of 2 Corinthians is doing in the Bible.

I have preached from this uh letter often, but have never really kind of given you the background of the book because each little paragraph in here, I think, stands on its own, the way this book is constructed.

Uh, just the genius and the brilliance of the Holy Spirit and how he inspired 2 Corinthians.

I mean, it's written to every church.

Every believer can read this, every believer can take any paragraph in this book and benefit from it and applies to the life of Emmanuel Bible Church just like it did to First Baptist Corinth.

Uh but you do see some personal, you know, they call the occasion of the letter that is important for particular tonight's passage in particular.

And Paul had spent 18 months there.

He left Corinth for Ephesus, and when he went to the church in Ephesus, of course, he had a wonderful ministry there.

The church grew there, the church in Ephesus became the most mature New Testament church.

Uh, the letters to the seven churches in Revelation are written in geographic order, of course, but also kind of in descending order of um how strong and mature the church was, and that comes across.

You know, the church in Ephesus was probably the strongest and most mature of the churches.

They had Paul as their pastor, Timothy as their pastor, Titus was there for a while, John was their pastor.

I mean, this is like the all-star team uh pastoring this church one after another.

It was incredible.

What a contrast with the train wreck that Corinth had become, and it became that way very quickly after Paul left.

Even though he is there for 18 months, he leaves and he's not in Ephesus long before he gets a letter from the church in Corinth asking him some, let's go ahead and call them unusual questions.

So after Paul had been there for 18 months, they write a letter to him, and you can piece this together from the questions that he raises in 1 Corinthians.

They're asking him questions like, so is it okay that we have women preaching now?

Just curious.

Quick question, Paul.

Uh, is it okay that people are marrying their stepmother?

Is that allowed?

You didn't really cover that.

That wasn't in the FOF class.

Um yeah, there's sexual immorality, and the sexual immorality is actually being celebrated at communion.

Is that okay?

Kind of questions.

So that's what happened to Corinth.

So Paul gets this letter from them, and uh I think doesn't entirely know what to make of it.

Um, there may be some other correspondence we don't really know because the other letters that were sent back and forth aren't given to us in the Bible.

Only these two letters, first and second Corinthians are, but there were others back and forth.

And at some point, uh Paul um sends Timothy there to see what's going on.

And Timothy gets back to Paul and tells Paul, so Paul sends Timothy away from Ephesus, away from the good church, away from the maturing and growing and ministry church, away from everything that's happening that's filling Paul's heart with joy.

He's getting these letters from Corinth that things are on fire, and he's written them back, and so he sends Timothy there, and Timothy gets back to Paul and says, it's worse than we thought.

It's really bad.

Really bad.

Come right now, kind of bad.

And so Paul leaves Ephesus and heads up to Corinth.

And this is what he calls his painful visit in 2 Corinthians 2, verse 1.

2 Corinthians 2:1

He'd already written them 1 Corinthians.

He wrote the first letter to them to help answer the questions, and those questions didn't get answered.

So that's 1 Corinthians is to help answer their questions.

They didn't get answered, and then Timothy gets a hold of Paul and says, it's it's bad.

Come now.

So Paul drops what he's doing, he goes to Corinth, and it is a it's a it's a terrible visit.

We don't get much more information than that.

We don't get the details of who was opposing him, we don't get the details of you know, of what made it such a horrible visit, except that Paul calls it a painful visit.

It grieved him, and he says in 2 Corinthians that it also grieved them.

Nobody was happy.

Uh Paul distanced himself from the church, they distanced themselves from him.

They said that he wasn't qualified for ministry.

Paul said they're not qualified to be a church.

I mean, they went back and forth, and Paul walks away.

I wish we had that letter.

He refers to, as I mentioned earlier, as the severe letter.

Uh we don't have it.

Paul goes back to Ephesus, where he continues his preaching and ministry there.

He's eventually driven out of Ephesus by riots.

That's described in Acts chapter 19.

Acts 19 · chapter mention

He sends Titus as they flee.

He sends Titus up to uh Corinth to get a report on what's happening, and he and Titus agree to meet back in Macedonia.

Remember, there's no cell phones here, uh, there's no, you know, Twitter direct messages, no email, no Facebook groups, you know, rescue Corinth, hashtag rescue Corinth, you know.

Uh everybody wants to rescue Corinth, meet in Macedonia on this day.

No, there's no means of communication here.

There's an actual riot going on.

So get that, first of all.

There's a riot.

Paul is trying to make his, he's remember, he's trying to fight his way back into the Colosseum to talk to the crowd, which is just nuts anyway.

If you can imagine Paul trying to fight his way through a riot to speak to the riot, as if, you know, once they understand that we're not really banishing all of the idols, we're just saying that we're gonna melt them down, but we're not really banishing them.

You know, then they'll have peace, and of course that doesn't go well.

And Paul has ended up being driven out of Ephesus.

He and Titus scatter.

Titus goes up to Corinth to get the report, and they're gonna meet back in Macedonia.

Um, but they're not able to meet in Macedonia.

When Paul gets to Macedonia, the church in Macedonia is severely being persecuted, um, just like it was happening in Ephesus.

The persecution has turned there.

There were uh a lot of officials in Macedonia from Philippi, and Paul had caused a little bit of a disturbance in Philippi, if you remember.

And it's not really fair to blame Paul.

It was God who struck it with an earthquake and destroyed the whole jail, and the Christians got free, and it was a big catastrophe.

It was a literal earthquake.

And so people are upset.

The Roman officials are upset with Paul.

They blame him and his preaching, and those Roman officials are in Macedonia, and Paul arrives in Macedonia and they're there, and Paul's not able to stay there.

You know, he's he shows up in Macedonia, and it's like his picture on the wall at the post office kind of thing.

Be on the lookout for this guy, goes by Paul, may have an alias, Saul.

Don't fall for it.

And so he leaves Macedonia, and he's restless.

He had an open door for the ministry there.

Remember, he had the vision of the man in Macedonia saying, Come help us, and but he can't stay there.

It's just too chaotic.

And that's what the outside world sees.

And nobody accuses Paul of being a wimp or of you know avoiding persecution.

I mean, how many times was he beat almost to death?

You know, so you can't say, Oh, Paul, you should have stuck out in Macedonia.

You know, you had the vision with the guy with the Macedonian hat on or whatever.

I mean, hey, you should have stayed there.

I said the Macedonian hat thing.

I have no idea how Paul knew was you know a guy from Macedonia.

I think it might have been appearance or something.

And so, Paul, you should have stayed there, minister there.

But he didn't.

He left.

But here in 2 Corinthians, you get a hint why he left.

He left because he was so concerned for what was happening in Corinth.

He couldn't stay in Macedonia and endure the persecution without knowing the result of what had happened in Corinth.

He's written them multiple letters, one of which we have in the form of 1 Corinthians, another of which was a severe letter that didn't go well.

He'd visited them, didn't go well.

And so now he's kind of lost, run out of Ephesus, run out of Macedonia, doesn't know where his friends are, doesn't know where Titus is, the one person he wants to see.

And why does he want to see Titus?

Well, it's because Titus has news of Corinth.

That was that was what was happening up there.

Titus went to Corinth to find out what was going on.

And so he's on the run.

He's gonna head down to Troas, and in God's providence, we'll meet back up with Titus.

That's the occasion of writing 2 Corinthians.

And what strikes me as I look at 2 Corinthians chapter 7 is how much of the interaction in this whole chapter, really this whole book, and really all of Paul's interaction with the Corinthians, period, follows the process of Matthew 18.

2 Corinthians 7 · chapter mention

And so that's why I called tonight's message, Matthew 18 Incarnate, because this gives you like a fleshed-out look of what Matthew 18 is in actual practice.

So I started this series a month ago or so with a sermon on Matthew 18, and we walked through the church discipline process.

Um, this is Jesus' second teaching on uh church discipline, his second teaching on church discipline, his first, I mean, on the existence of the church.

His first teaching was Matthew 16.

Matthew 16, he said that he would build his church, the gates of hell won't overcome it.

Matthew 18 now is where he instructs his church on how to act.

And his first instruction on the church was to guard their holiness, to guard their holiness.

Remember, all of Matthew 18 is about this.

The whole chapter is comparing Christians to children.

He says, unless you come to him as a child, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.

Then he says you have to look out for each other as children.

Don't cause each other to sin as children.

If if you cause a believer to sin, you should have a millstone tied around your neck and hurled into the sea.

That's how serious this is.

And we under uh understand that because um you know we recognize crimes against children being severe and horrendous and all this.

That's the analogy Jesus uses uh that to guard and watch out people for each other.

So he says that there's sin in the church.

You confront the person that's sinning.

And if that person, that's the first step.

And if that person doesn't repent, then you bring a friend and you confront them with a friend.

And if that doesn't work, then you tell it to the church, and you put the put the person out of the church, and you're building towards the person's repentance.

At any one of these steps, you want the person to repent.

And when I talked about that a few weeks ago, if you recall, we went through Matthew 18.

It was interesting.

The kind of questions that most people have about Matthew 18 are about process kind of questions.

Like, does the witness have to be a witness to the sin or just a witness to the confrontation?

Uh, can you change the witness between the second and third step?

What if the elders aren't unanimous?

What if it's like 90% of the elders want to put the person out, but one doesn't?

Those are the kind of the questions that most people have.

People have process questions when it comes to church discipline.

Uh, they want the minutes, so to speak.

And Peter had his own questions about church discipline process.

And if you remember, Peter's question wasn't like ours, but it was also a ridiculous question.

You remember Peter's question?

Wait a minute.

You're saying we have to forgive people?

That's where Peter was like, pull the car over.

Wait, you said we forgive them if they repent?

You know, we got ramped up in everything.

You know, we told the church, what do you mean forgive them?

Certainly you wouldn't want us to forgive them twice or seven times.

That was Peter's question, remember?

But it's interesting, when you see Matthew 18 lived out, when you see it lived out, it's much more person-oriented and much less process-oriented.

It's much more about the affections and the heart, it's about the people involved rather than the rules that are involved.

And so that's where we pick up tonight.

Let me walk you through the four steps of Matthew 18.

The first is that you confront the person in sin.

And we're gonna see with all four of these, I'm gonna show you the pastor's response to this, that the pastor is afflicted.

That's the word Paul uses.

In confrontation over sin, the pastor is afflicted.

Now, I say pastor in the outline, 2 Corinthians really is a pastoral epistle.

It's about the heart of the pastor, uh, the one who pastored the both the Ephesus church and the church in Corinth.

And so I have pastor in these points here, because it is very much a pastoral epistle.

But these points are apply to any believer that is confronting somebody else about sin.

I'm sure you would feel these same affections in your own heart.

I chose to keep it with pastor because this is probably Paul's most personal interaction here.

And it's very hard to tell how much of his affections for the time in Corinth flow from him being a pastor versus him just being a Christian.

And I don't think that's a distinction Paul Paul would even make himself.

If you were to ask Paul how much of your affections and how much of your grief for the Corinthians is because you were their pastor versus because you were their friend, I don't think he would understand the question.

They're so conflated in his mind.

Uh, I don't think they're it's divisible to him.

And I think that's healthy.

I think he views his church as his friends and his friends as his church.

And I don't think Paul would really have a grid for you know a friend who wasn't part of his ministry experience.

Uh, you know, when he and John Mark split ways, you get that, you get that experience, don't you?

You get that impression in the book of Acts.

Like he and John Mark split up.

Paul went one way, John Mark went another.

He's not saying John Mark wasn't a Christian anymore, but he just wasn't going to minister with them anymore.

It's kind of like that friendship got broken.

And you could picture telling Paul, you know, you got to maintain your relationship with him.

He didn't, you know, just because he, you know, whatever.

But no, he went a different way.

And that's the way Paul functions.

You know, he was so into his ministry and so into his life in his ministry that his relationships that he had were in that context.

And that's why when there's sin in that context, there's such grief in that context, such affliction.

Because Paul poured out his life in Corinth.

These were his people.

He he named some of them, he baptized a handful of them and then denied it earlier.

That's one of my favorite lines, and he tells the Corinthians, I'm glad I didn't baptize any of you except the ones of you I did baptize, but let's move along.

I mean, these were his people.

He loved them, baptized them, taught them, raised up elders, sent missionaries to them, and sent missionaries from them.

He had poured out his life to them, and he felt like because of that shared context of ministry, they were friendly.

But then there's sin in the camp.

And they're tolerating sin.

And of course, it's not on your list, but the first step when you see another believer sinning, the first step is to see if love can cover the sin.

I mean, is it something obscure?

Is it something trifling?

Is it something non-important?

And then you just let love cover it.

You let love cover it.

And that's it can be hard for some people to understand, but if you have multiple children in your house, you get the importance of letting love cover sin.

You know, you can't have sisters or brothers confronting each other on every sin.

You're like, yeah, but they sinned, yes, but that's the kind of sin you have to let love cover.

Our whole life can't be Matthew 18 in our family.

We also have to eat, for example, and go to bed.

And so there's some sin that love can cover.

And of course, there's some sin that it's unloving to cover.

There's some sin that's gonna damage your integrity and damage your relationship with the Lord and damage your relationship with others, and it's going to be a burden on the church.

It's gonna cause division, it's gonna end up being spiritually toxic for you.

Uh not sins necessarily of, you know, a single-time thing, but patterns of sin, it becomes important that they get confronted.

And so you let love cover as much sin as you can.

And you can tell almost that was Paul's first response with what was going on in Corinth was, you know, let me answer your, it's 1 Corinthians.

You know, let me try to answer your questions.

But I don't want to blow things up.

You got a couple sexually immoral people, you should put them out of the church and move on.

But then he has interaction with Timothy, and Timothy is like, no, it's on fire up here.

And things get get ramped up, and the confrontation has to become more extreme.

But that's the first step.

When you see somebody in sin, if love can't cover it, you have to confront it.

And you have to say, This is sin.

This is wrong.

This is not appropriate.

You confront the sin.

And it's very hard for people to do.

Very hard for people to do.

Um in fact, I I think it's almost harder to start at the first step than it is the second, third, or fourth step.

In a sense, at least in my own heart and my own experience in pastoral ministry, in a sense, the first confrontation is the hardest one.

Once you get the ball rolling with the first one, the others kind of kind of roll into place.

But the first one is hard to tell somebody, like, listen, I see this pattern of sin in your life.

I see this is sin in your life.

It's not just pastors that do that, of course.

It's friends, it's uh spouses, it's you know, it's it's people that love you, know you, those you spend the most time with are probably the ones that are gonna see your sin the most.

And so it's very difficult to confront sin in someone's life.

We see this in counseling uh often in in church, where a couple comes in counseling, and at some point in counseling, the person in counseling has to kind of pull the car over and say, hey, this is sin.

What we're seeing here is sin.

And it's very hard for counselors to do that.

There's an aversion in a lot of counselors to to do that because there's this kind of, I think, a secular idea that has made its way into the church that the counselor's job is easy to be supportive or to be an advocate of the person and to, you know, just you know, be, hey, the the counselee, I'm on that person's side, and so I want to support them in what they're they're doing.

But that's not Christian counseling.

Christian counseling isn't being an advocate or a support for whoever's in front of you, because the person who's in front of you, I don't know much about the situation, but I'll tell you this the person in front of you is a sinner.

Amen.

And so the whole point of it is that you're gonna have a confrontation, you're gonna confront, you say, this is where I'm seeing sin.

It's not that everything in your marriage or everything in your relationship is your fault, but certainly some of it is, and this is where it's sin.

And it needs to be confronted, and that's what I'm doing now.

I'm confronting you.

Why don't people want to confront others in their sin?

Well, because it's hard.

You know, what makes it hard?

One reason it's hard is because you also have sin, right?

You see this in your your own marriage.

I mean, y your your wife or your husband confronts you in sin, and how quick is it to say, oh, well, I've got my own list.

I've seen you sin too.

In fact, I have color-collated tabs right now.

Let's start with green.

So it's hard because you feel exposed.

But the other reason it's hard is because you don't like it.

It causes turmoil inside of you to confront somebody in sin.

Because if you love the person, it's going to affect you.

What if the person doesn't repent?

You know, it's so easy if you confront somebody in sin and they repent.

It's so easy if I say, hey, you sinned against me and it was wrong, and the person says, I'm so sorry, will you forgive me?

Ah, glory.

It's like the weight is lifted off the one doing the confrontation, the weight is lifted off the one who's in sin, and there's fellowship and harmony, and that's just that's just cool.

That's great.

But in many cases, that's not how it plays out.

In many cases, you confront the person in sin, the person denies it, the person lies about it, the person comes up with an excuse.

It wasn't me, it was my brother, uh, it was the other brother, it was, you know, you come up with excuse after excuse after excuse.

Or you just lie or you deny it or you hurl accusations back, and that causes turmoil in the person doing the confrontation.

In fact, the word Paul uses here is affliction.

You see it in verse 5.

When we came to Macedonia, our bodies had no rest, but, and that word, but is a contrast word.

Not and we were afflicted.

You would expect to see and, but he gives a contrast word.

We came to Macedonia, but we were afflicted.

Well, Macedonia is on fire with persecution when Paul comes there.

So it wouldn't be surprising that he would feel turmoil in Macedonia.

Uh, Christians are being persecuted.

But Paul is distinguishing in his mind here, a very important distinguishing feature.

He's going to reiterate that Christians are being persecuted, but that is not what was hurting him.

His body had no rest.

That's the phrase he used back in chapter 2, verse 12.

He said his spirit had no rest back in chapter 2.

He's not making a distinction between spirit and body here.

He's just saying, me, like I wasn't settled when I confronted you in your sin and you didn't repent.

And now he's picking that back up again in verse 5.

The Greek word is, I think, Sarks here, his flesh, just his human body, had no rest.

He wasn't sleeping, his spirit wasn't settled back from chapter 2.

He had no rest.

Why wasn't he rested?

Why wasn't he settled?

To use the kind of English idiom.

Why didn't he have a peace about him here?

Because he was afflicted at every turn.

That word afflicted is pressure.

It's the word for like a being condensed, being friction that comes from heat that comes from being friction, being pressed down on.

It's sometimes translated in 2 Corinthians even as friction or as hard-pressed.

Chapter 1, verse 6 is translated as affliction.

If we are afflicted, Paul says, it's for your comfort and salvation.

Chapter 4, verse 8, if we are hard-pressed in every way, the New King James is hard-pressed.

The ESV says, we are afflicted in every way.

But the New King James Nav even renders it hard-pressed, but not crushed, Paul says.

So notice that's the word.

He's picking it back up again.

It's kind of a motif in 2 Corinthians.

Because I confronted you in my sin.

I don't know how you handled it.

I don't know if you repented.

I am afflicted.

I'm hard-pressed at every turn.

So remember, his turns here.

He turned out of Ephesus.

He's turning out of Macedonia.

He turned out of Corinth originally.

He's bounced to three places now.

And it's not the persecution that is keeping him up at night.

It's the fact he doesn't know if the Corinthians repented.

He confronted them and he doesn't know what they did.

And so he feels afflicted.

Notice he finishes off the verse, fighting without and fear within.

There's conflict outside of him, and that's the kind of word for swords.

There's strife, there's sword rattling outside of him.

And there is a fear, a turmoil, an anxiety inside of him.

Which one do you think scares Paul more?

It's not the swords.

Paul is not concerned with the external tension.

No, he's filled with affliction because of what's happening in his heart, and it's inside, and it's this play on words here.

It's inside of him because it's inside of the church.

Remember what he said in chapter six?

My mouth stands open to you.

Come on in.

He's telling the Corinthians, come on in.

My heart, chapter seven, stands open to you.

Verse 2.

So make room in your heart, saying, I want to go in your heart, you need to come in my heart.

My mouth is open, chapter 6.

So come, let's join.

It says inside.

Because they won't repent.

He feels afflicted in his heart.

He does not have peace.

He feels anxious.

He feels hard-pressed inside of him.

But there's no hope for growth without that kind of confrontation.

I mean, some people determine from this, you know what?

That's it.

I'm not confronting people in their sin because I don't like what happens afterwards.

Well, there's no confrontation, there's no growth.

Let's lead to the second step of Matthew 18.

You bring a witness.

You bring a witness.

So they don't repent from Paul reaching out to them.

So what does Paul do?

Sends them Timothy.

Now he sent them Titus, round two.

He's repeating the second step again, the first time he sent Timothy, and that whole thing crash and burned, the severe visit, the severe letter.

Now he sent Titus to confront them.

He's anxious for his friend to get back.

He wants to know what happened, and anxious is not even a good word here.

It says here that he is depressed, is the word.

ESV renders it downcast, but God who comforts the downcast.

New American Standard and other translations use the word depressed.

Fascinating word.

It's the word for lowly, it's the word for the bottom rung of society.

It's sometimes rendered humility or humble.

But it's a low, low word.

Back in chapter 2, verse 13, he said, My spirit was at rest because I couldn't find my brother Titus.

Remember, that's how he broke off that narrative.

He said, My spirit wasn't at rest because I don't know where Titus is.

Oh, why was he after Titus?

Well, Titus knew the Corinthians repented.

So in our text tonight, he's bouncing everywhere looking for Titus.

He goes from Macedonia over to Troas, looking for Titus there.

He's hoping to intercept him on the road up to Corinth.

He starts making his way back towards Corinth and he hopes to run into Titus on the road there, maybe.

I read this kind of stuff and I think, how crazy is traveling back then.

I mean, how insane is it?

You remember the, some of you might remember the era before cell phones.

You know, you got to call somebody from a payphone and you know they're circling the in the park.

You know, they leave their house to pick you up at the airport, and they can't know, they don't know what's happening.

It was the world.

I can't believe my parents let me out of the house by myself.

It's crazy.

You know, and tell you, hey, if we're not home when you get home, you know, we'll be back, you know, in a couple hours, kind of thing.

It's like, okay.

That was life.

It seems such like a totally different world right now.

You don't know where your kids are for five minutes, you hit the fire alarm right now, kind of thing.

Think about Paul traveling.

I don't know what city in Europe Titus is in, so I'm gonna walk to another one and look for him.

Wow.

And on his way, he's just so despondent, would be another way to translate the word.

He's so cast down.

You know, things are bad for him.

Why were things bad for him there?

Well, intense persecution, of course, in Troas.

Also, Eutychus fell out the window while he's preaching and died.

So that made him a little bit despondent.

But Eudecus resurrected, you know, that happened there also.

So that just put him back to worrying about the Corinthians.

He's downcast.

Romans 12, verse 16 says, Don't be haughty, but associate with the lowly.

Romans 12:16

This is the same word.

There's translated lowly.

That's where Paul says, My spirit is down, it is low.

And when you start to study this word, you realize there's a little bit of a contradiction in the Bible about this word, like a healthy spiritual contradiction, where Romans 12, 16 says you want to associate with people who are lowly.

1 Peter 5, verse 5 uses the same word.

1 Peter 5:5

It's translated humility there.

There, Peter says, clothe yourselves with humility.

James 4, verse 6, God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the same word.

James 4:6

Humble is how it's translated in English.

That's the same word in all those places.

You want to associate with the low.

Here it's translated depressed.

Paul's spirits are so low, it's called depression.

And here we use, Americans use the word depression differently, like a chemical imbalance kind of thing, low serotonin.

That's not how Paul's using this word.

It's not about serotonin.

It's about I don't know if the Corinthians are repenting and I am despondent and I don't want to do ministry here anymore.

But God gives grace to people who are in that situation.

When you understand that Peter's or Paul says associate with those kind of people, you start to get a picture of what God's after in the church.

What Paul desires in the church is a humility.

But what causes that humility?

You're aware of your own sin.

That's what causes the humility, not a you know, a faux humility, not a super spiritual humility, like, oh, you know, I know that we're all sinners and I'm pretty cool though, but I'm cool enough to be humble.

Not like a Moses kind of humility, you know, I'm the humblest person who's ever lived, kind of humility.

But a spiritual humility that comes from actually being low in your heart, from realizing your sin in your heart.

That causes you to be low.

That causes you to go down.

That is not an attitude esteemed in the world, is it?

I mean, that's the kind of thing.

When you're doing the questionnaire for your security clearance, if you put that, you would get denied.

You know, do you feel depressed often?

Yes.

But this is an attitude the Bible esteems.

That you go down, down, down, down.

That word, by the way, is used in one other place in the New Testament.

Fascinating use.

Matthew 11, verse 29, where Jesus says, Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and the SV goes with lowly there.

Matthew 11:29

Jesus identifies him with that word, himself with that word.

Take your low, his yoke upon you, Jesus says, because he is gentle and lowly in.

And Jesus has a modifier after it.

Jesus is gentle and lowly in heart, he says.

In other words, Jesus' own heart is down.

Jesus is sinless, so he's not down because of sin, but he is descended from heaven to earth.

He was rich, to use the language of 2 Corinthians 8.

He was rich and became poor.

So much so that he says, Come to him because he's gentle and lowly in heart, and he will find rest, you will find rest for your souls.

So when you are down, you come to Jesus, who himself is low.

Jesus goes low to reach you.

He goes down to find you.

Jesus is not with the high and mighty.

That's the marvelous thing about the Savior.

He's not with the high and mighty.

He's not with the CEO executive style leadership.

I think, you know, decades from now, we'll look back at the 90s period of church growth and American evangelicalism with like a look of insanity on our face.

Like, what in the world were churches thinking?

You read like those church growth books from the 90s, and I've read several of them, and they esteem like the pastor is CEO kind of model, and you know, wear the business suit and have an executive staff and like all the like filling out like your because that's what the world wants.

The world wants a business leader who is in charge, and all the boomer church growth books are like, you know, the boomers respond to a business leader with a suit and has his life together, and you know, two and a half kids and one and a half dogs kind of thing, and that's what you want to demonstrate to your church, and they'll all be drawn to your success.

What a contrast with the biblical model of leadership, huh?

Where it goes down, down, down, low, low, low.

Slap Paul in the face and say, hey man, put on a CEO attitude here, Paul.

You're the executive here.

And Paul's like, I am just so low.

Now, why would it be a virtue to go low?

In the world, it's, of course, silliness.

Why would it be a virtue to go low?

Because when you go low is where Jesus meets you.

When you're humble, the Lord finds you.

And that is not just a random cross-reference from Matthew 11.

That's what you see here.

Notice what Paul says about Jesus here.

God who comforts the downcast.

That's how Paul reveals it.

He says, I was down, but God is the one who comforts the downcast.

So the reason humility is a virtue is because that's where you find the Lord.

The reason being spiritually low or depressed is the word is a virtue is because that is where you encounter the Lord.

And the Lord gives you grace.

We'll talk more about how the Lord gives grace in a minute.

So first, you come, you confront sin, you confront sin, and that makes you feel afflicted.

Second, you bring a witness, that makes you feel depressed.

You don't know what's going to happen.

Third, and third step here is you remove the sinner from the church.

The unrepentant sinner gets removed from the church.

And that certainly happened with Paul and the Corinthians.

He wrote them a letter, the severe letter, saying, You need to remove these people, or I am done with you.

And you know that's what he said because he alludes to it in 2 Corinthians, in the passage we read earlier in chapter 2.

You have to remove the person from the church.

The name gets read, the person gets put out of the church.

That's what Paul wants happening to them.

And when that happens, Paul says he has regret.

Regret.

Verse 8, even if I made you grieve with my letter, I don't regret it.

Hmm.

I did regret it.

For I see that letter grieved you.

But only for a while.

And the way the ESV puts the commas there, it seems like the grieved goes with the letter grieved them.

I mean, the only for a little while goes with the letter grieved them.

But the way I understand the Greek of the sentence, I put though for a little while, it goes with the regret it.

Paul says, I do not regret it, though I did regret it, but only for a little while, because the letter grieved you.

The little while here modifies how long Paul was regretting it.

Yeah, and the literal Greek here is Paul says, but I did regret it for an hour.

Which is a great idiom, isn't it?

I don't regret it at all.

Okay, for an hour, I totally regretted it.

For an hour.

Not more than an hour, though.

It's just an idiom.

It means a short period of time.

It's used elsewhere in the Bible.

I won't take you to the other New Testament uses of it.

It's used a few other places.

Just means a short period of time.

And that's what Paul uses it here.

I did regret it, but for a short period of time.

Now, what brought an end to the hour?

Why did Paul only have regret for an hour?

Well, because he eventually learned of their repentance.

So do you understand when Paul put them out of the church, he was filled with regret.

And then they repented from their sin.

It worked.

And Paul's regret went away.

So do you see here that the end of Paul's regret, the hour time limit on Paul's regret, it only lasted an hour because they did in fact repent.

But that's not a guarantee.

They don't always repent.

Sometimes your friends live in sin.

Sometimes they reject your rebuke.

Sometimes they reject the witness to the rebuke.

Sometimes they reject being put out of the church.

And they just live in sin.

And you distance yourself from them.

And then what?

Do you regret the friendship?

Do you regret that you were friends with them even though now they're out of the church?

Do you regret the time you spent with them?

But they don't always repent.

And so the emphasis here, I think, or the implication here is that the regret goes on and on and on for the rest of your life until they repent.

And they do not always repent.

But sometimes they do, which is, of course, the fourth step of church discipline is restoration.

Yay.

Sometimes they do repent.

And when the person does come around, sometimes after the first confrontation, sometimes after the witness is involved, sometimes after being put out of church, when the person does finally come around, there is joy and there's rejoicing.

That's what Paul experienced here.

Now notice how God comforted Paul back in verse 6.

He comforts the depressed or the downcast.

He comforted us by the coming of Titus.

So Paul does run into Titus.

He makes it to Troas, he runs into Titus, and he is comforted by Titus.

But remember why he was looking for Titus, it wasn't just because he missed Titus's pretty face.

He was looking for Titus because he wanted news to the Corinthians, and Titus brought good news.

That's what he says in verse 7.

Not only by his coming, but also with the comfort with which he comforted by you.

He told us of how you received him.

So in other words, Titus says they repented, they received your severe letter well, and and they they are they received me coming well, and they want to be restored to you, and they love you, and that's the news that Titus brings.

Man, a phone call would have been so much easier.

But Titus brings great news, and everything is worthwhile now.

When Paul hears they repented, he no longer regrets the letter.

When he hears they repented, he no longer regrets his own regret.

Because it's all worthwhile.

They repented.

And now their repentance comforts Paul.

Do you see the reverse of how the order normally works?

Normally it's the pastor who comforts the afflicted sheep.

Note normally it's the shepherd who comforts the sheep.

But in this instance, it's the pastor who's depressed about a lost sheep, it's the pastor who's sad about a biting sheep.

And those are the sheep that come up to the pastor to comfort him and say, We're back.

We're not biting anymore.

We're back in the fold, we're not lost anymore.

And so now it's the sheep that are comforting the pastor.

But it's only because the pastor locked the gate.

That they had to repent, they had to get back inside.

Is the pastor sad?

He locks the herding sheep and the biting sheep out.

Yeah, he's sad.

But he needed to do it to protect the flock.

But yeah, he's sad, and yeah, he regrets it.

But then when the sheep repent and come back in, they can bring comfort to the pastor.

And the pastor says, you know what?

I don't regret it anymore.

And that's why that changes what's behind all this back and forth in verses eight and nine, back and forth.

I made you grieve, but I don't regret it.

I did regret it.

It grieved you, but only grieved you for a while.

I'm rejoicing now, but not because of your grief, verse nine, because you were grieved into repenting.

We'll pick up that theme next week, by the way, what it means to be grieved into repenting.

That's the focus of verse 10.

So we'll save that for our next time in 2 Corinthians 7 a few weeks from now.

So we'll get back to that.

But notice Paul has no regrets because it actually produced repentance.

Now you see the repentance, very interesting observation that Paul or Titus, I don't know who makes it first.

I think Titus reflected it first to Paul in verse 7.

How do you know the Corinthian repentance was genuine?

It was genuine because they're expressing loyalty to Paul.

Loyalty to Paul.

They want to be reconciled to him.

Notice these three kind of participles here: longing, mourning, and zeal.

Zealousy, if that's a word here, for me.

It's for Paul.

So Titus is communicating this to Paul.

Paul, they repented.

Let me tell you how much they repented.

They long to see you.

They're jealous for you.

They're mourning over their sin against you.

These are fascinating words.

First of all, they're longing and they're longing not for Jesus here.

They're longing for Paul.

They're longing for Paul because they recognize they sent him away.

Their sin separated them from their pastor and they want him back.

So they long for him.

Secondly, they're mourning.

They're mourning over their own sin, of course, but they're mourning.

The object of that verb here is Paul.

They're mourning over what they did to Paul.

Of course, they repented in a relationship with the Lord, of course.

But one of the markers that their repentance is genuine is they want to be reconciled to their pastor.

They want to be reconciled back to Paul.

They're mourning over their severed relationship to him.

Sometimes you hear people say, I repent for my sin.

But I'm not coming back to Emmanuel.

See you later.

See you in heaven.

That's not what the Corinthians did.

They didn't.

Say, hey, we repent.

Can you send Timothy back?

Hey, we repent.

What about Eudicus?

I heard he resurrected.

I say, we repent.

We want you, Paul.

We want to see you again.

We want to be reconciled to you.

What an indication of genuine repentance.

And then zeal.

Did a little word study on zeal, and it's this is what's fascinating about this list that Titus has.

He had a long walk to come up with it, so I like Titus's three-point sermon here.

Zeal is a fascinating word.

It's like half love and half hate.

That's what one Greek dictionary I looked at said.

Half love and half hate.

You mix love and hate, you get zeal.

That's what Jesus has.

He hates how the temple was being defiled because he loves God, mixes it up, throws over the tables, and everybody says, Wow, zeal for your father's house will consume you.

That's what they was prophesied about him.

That's the word they have for Paul.

They love Paul and they hate what their sin did to him.

They're zealous for him.

So they want him back.

This is loyalty.

2 Samuel 2, verse 5, David rewarded the men who rescued Saul's body because they, quote, showed loyalty to Saul.

2 Samuel 2:5

Fascinating verse.

You know, Saul was David's enemy, but there were Israelites that showed loyalty to Saul, and David esteemed them because of their loyalty.

Proverbs 20, verse 6, there are many people who proclaim their own covenant love.

Proverbs 20:6

Many people say, Hey, I'm a covenant keeper.

I'm an oathmaker, I'm an oath keeper.

Many people say that about themselves.

Proverbs 20, verse 6 says, A faithful friend is hard to find.

Proverbs 20:6

And not that a loyalty means you cover over sin left and right.

Of course not.

Proverbs 27, verse 6, Faithful are the wounds of a friend.

Proverbs 27:6

Loyalty produces confrontation of sin.

If you love someone, you confront their sin, of course.

I parked the car on this point just for a little while because I think loyalty is a lost virtue today.

Loyalty is considered clouded judgment today.

You're not supposed to be loyal to anyone today.

Loyalty is, you know, I think our world disdains loyalty, but it very much is a Christian virtue.

Very much a Christian virtue.

And behind Christian loyalty is a holiness, it is a confession of sin.

It is a longing for relations and relationships.

And you see this in the church.

I think people have such a deep and profound relationship with those that shepherd them and those that teach the word of God to them.

You know, the your small group leaders, your pastors in your fellowship group, the pastors of the church.

You develop a spiritual and deep and a loyal relationship with them.

That's the way God designed it.

He designed it that way.

And that's what makes sin in the church so hard, is that God designed relationships between pastors and elders and the congregation to be rich and deep and like friends.

And Emmanuel is such a strong church because we have this so well here.

But it's it's such a way God designed the church.

And that when sin enters into it, it tears at that, it severs it.

It puts the pastor in an awkward situation where he feels grief, he feels depressed, he feels downcast because people aren't repenting from their sin.

That when there is repentance, it brings joy.

And this is why Paul rejoices.

They did, in fact, repent.

It says down in verse 9, they were grieved into repenting.

But I'm telling you, this was one commentator says I came across the line in a commentator commentary this week that said, This was not a predictable ending.

It's no guarantee.

You confront someone to sin that's not guaranteed they'll repent.

Not every story ends with the grief terminating after an hour.

And Paul even knows that.

And he throws in this last phrase here in verse 9.

It's translated in the ESV, but you felt a godly grief.

But the literal translation would be, you felt a grief according to God.

I like that phrase better because it's it's as much grief as God allotted.

God gave you the grief and he gave it to you to bring you back to repentance.

If you're here tonight and you're living in sin, I would plead with you to repent from your sin, to confess your sin to the Lord.

Confess your sin to the persons you've sinned against and be made right before the Lord.

If you hold on to sin in your heart, you sever relationships and you spread grief in the church body.

You spread sin in the church body, you spread hostility, you spread division in the church body by harboring sin in your life.

Because, as Paul says in chapter 6, just a few verses earlier, light doesn't have fellowship with darkness.

So if you're harboring sin in your life, you cannot have real, rich fellowship in the church.

It won't happen.

Instead, wherever you go, it brings division.

So confess your sin to the Lord.

Confess your sin to those you sinned against.

Receive the forgiveness that is offered through the gospel, and that brings joy then to those that had the courage to confront you.

Lord, we're thankful that you are a God who is quick to forgive, that you draw near to the low.

You don't draw near to the proud, you don't draw near to the exalted, you don't draw near to the CEOs, but you draw near to the beggars, those who are begging for your grace.

This is exactly how you began your ministry.

Proclaiming that blessed are the bankrupt, blessed are the poor, blessed are the hungry, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, those who recognize their own impoverished spirit, those who are destitute and needy and mourning over their own sin, they are the ones who are blessed.

We're thankful that you are a God who comforts the downcast.

You come near to those who are low.

Come near to them because you yourself were made low from heaven to earth so that we might have our sins forgiven.

We're thankful for the good news of Christ and the forgiveness that comes with him.

We give you thanks for it in Jesus' name.

Amen.

And now for a parting word from Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thank you for joining us today.

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

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

Our service times and church information are on our website at 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 of Jesus Christ with boldness.

May the Lord bless you.