II Corinthians 1:1-11

Well, good morning, everyone.

Thank you for joining us on this January morning as we begin our new series, a series that we're going to be in for uh for the next few months in uh the book of 2 Corinthians.

Thank you, Satan, for uh uh for reading for us and for wishing us all a good morning.

Um, and so do keep that open on your phone or if you've got a Bible uh with you and uh let's pray together as we come to God's word uh together but apart.

Uh our Father, we do ask that uh your spirit would be at work uh in our hearts individually, and uh and as a uh a body of uh believers, uh those separated from one another, uh we ask that you would uh teach us, show us more of yourself and help us uh in this season uh to follow Jesus closely and uh to love him and to know uh the the comfort of God.

We ask these things in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Uh I have I have one aim this morning.

My one aim this morning is to help you process the suffering and hardship that you were going through or have gone through over this past year.

That's my one aim, to help you to think Christianly about what it is that we all have experienced.

Because the reality is uh that there are many voices that want to help us or want to tell us what to think and how to think and how to feel, and not all of those are necessarily gospel-driven or even vaguely uh Christian voices or wisdom.

I want us to think Christianly and to grow in gospel ways in this season.

That's my one aim.

We've all been expect affected, haven't we?

We've all been generally affected by the the lockdown of this last year.

Gosh, I can't even believe that I nearly it is nearly a year.

And all of the upheaval and uncertainty and anxiety that that has caused, to say nothing of this the specific hurts that have befallen some of you in our church family during this time, whether it is the grief that you are at this moment carrying at the loss of a loved one, or the uncertainty about the future, whether job or study or housing, or the uh the stress of online exams and all that that means, the stresses in our families.

We have all got many layers of complexity and difficulty going on, and so it is important to think about those events that have happened and to process those emotions in a Christian way, because God's word is not silent on that, our God understands that we move through this world and feel different feelings, experience different things, have waves of emotion crashing over us because of various things and at various times, and so he wants us to be informed and so that we think and feel the way he has made us to think and feel because that's good for us.

That's my aim.

The letter that we are beginning uh today is Paul's second letter to the Corinthians, and we're going to be in it for the rest of this academic year.

We'll finish it around about uh early to mid-June.

And chiefly what this book lays out, what this letter lays out for us is the paradox of the Christian life, that strength is found in weakness.

That being followers of Jesus isn't about being enduringly strong, experiencing victory after victory.

No, it is a book that celebrates the lowly things.

It is a book that shows the glory of weakness, because it is in weakness that the power of God is displayed in our lives.

Weakness is the way for the Christian life, not pride or arrogance, not looking impressive, sounding impressive, putting on a brave face, but a humble confidence in who God is and that he is with us in our weakness and in our grief, and that he uses those things to show the beauty of the gospel of Jesus to the world around us.

About 18 months ago, we studied Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, and I didn't expect that we would so quickly come to 2 Corinthians, but as some of you may have seen my uh my post on Facebook, I've laid out just a couple of reasons why I think it's important for us to go there.

Just by way of reminder, uh, Corinthians, uh, this is a letter written to the people in the in the ancient city of Corinth, which is uh in Greece.

It was a uh a vibrant city, a uh a commercial and trading hub, lots of uh of trade routes kind of crisscrossed and intersected there.

It was a place of uh of art and culture and life.

But more than that, culturally, the Corinthians loved to put on a good show.

They loved to look okay, to look perfect.

They were uh the the social media influencers uh of the of the ancient world.

And here comes Paul, this Christian pastor, sent by Jesus, and he doesn't look particularly impressive, he isn't the greatest uh speaker, and yet God works to uh to save people through through his message, and uh and a church is formed.

But that church is dysfunctional in lots of different ways because well, old habits die hard, don't they?

And when he leaves, uh the church falls back into its kind of uh influencer tribalism.

No, I really you know uh I really like this person, I really follow this person.

I'm a Jake Paul guy, a Logan Paul guy.

That's what that sort of thing.

They fall back into this tribalism and they split apart and they they they fracture not only that, but they begin to permit uh sinful lifestyles and licentiousness uh in their in their midst and question the legitimacy of Paul's ministry.

You know, well, he wasn't particularly impressive, you know, he didn't have very many followers, he didn't have very many likes on his uh on his last post.

Why would we listen to him?

This letter uh is a follow-up, it is Paul's uh defense in part, but not so much a defense of himself, but a defense of his gospel.

If you want to be a follower of Jesus, this letter contends.

It's not about being flashy or impressive or cool.

You will gain little credit from the world if you become a follower of Jesus.

Some of you have realized this.

What you will gain, however, is of surpassing and enduring value.

And this morning, the surpassing and enduring value of the gospel is shown in how God uses our suffering and our grief.

I know that all of you watching this need to process what has happened or is happening to you.

My invitation to you this morning is to process, not simply as one who listens to the influential voices around you, but who has the ears of faith and an open heart to be taught by God?

So from this passage, what is God doing in your suffering?

How can you process the season that we have found ourselves in these last months?

I have six points and no subpoints.

What is God doing in your suffering?

The first thing that he is doing is he is showing you more of who he is.

He's showing you more of who he is.

Paul writes in verse three, after his greeting, he says, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and God of all comfort.

We can take one aspect of who God is and kind of absolutize it over uh over his entire being, and then we get a kind of uh a truncated or uh less than uh biblically faithful or true uh view of who God is.

Sometimes what we do is we rely uh sometimes on our uh on our experiences of what we see in the world and think, well, God must be like that, or God mustn't be like that.

And so we we look at the world and we project upwards.

Or what we do is we take our own preferences, what we would what we would like God to be like, and we project that upwards and make that perfect and kind of deify that.

If you if you do that, essentially what you do is you uh your God becomes essentially a perfect version of yourself.

Uh, if you just take what you hear people say this, you know, I like to think of God as dot dot dot.

What they're doing is they're taking their own preferences, what they would like, and they're uh they're expanding that and making that God.

Uh really what they're doing is just deifying their their their own personality.

The good thing uh about that is that your God, if you do that, it never did never disagrees with you.

Um, but if your God never disagrees with you, is it really God?

No, God is showing more of himself a more rounded view of himself when we experience seasons of suffering.

He is using it as an opportunity to show you more of his character, to reveal to you more of who he is, that you might know him more fully, that you might know him better, that you might experience different aspects of who he is.

That he is not just he is not just Lord or Savior or God.

He is as revealed here.

I mean, not to say that he's not any of those things, he is all of those things.

Uh, but here he shows himself to be who?

The father of mercies and the god of all comfort.

Only the Christian can know God as Father.

We do that through Jesus.

Jesus is the perfect son who knows his father perfectly, and we through faith are united to that son, and so know God as our father.

But how is he qualified?

How is that uh name qualified here?

The father of mercies.

Don't we need that?

Far too often, one of the things that Christian Christians lack, sadly, uh one of the things that Christian leaders sometimes lack is mercy.

Our God is the father of mercy.

One of the things that he is showing you in this season is his mercifulness to you.

Some people like to say things like God won't give you more than you can handle.

Might have uh seen that, you might have even shared it on Facebook or something.

Yo, God won't give you more than you can handle.

That's a nice idea, but it's not true.

The truth is he will, and he does.

Not that you might sink into despair, but rather that you might sink into his fatherly embrace.

Paul's going to address that a little bit later.

Paul gets brought absolutely to the end of himself so that he might find God there.

If God is bringing you to the end of yourself, it is because that is precisely where he is.

In this season, God is revealing himself to you as the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort.

And that brings me to my second point.

God's purpose in our suffering, our grief, and our hardship is that he allows us, or that suffering allows us, to experience God's comfort.

Verse three uh describes God as the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort.

And what does that what does that God of all comfort do in verse four?

He comforts us.

And when does he comfort us?

He comforts us in all our affliction, that is, our our suffering, the things that we're going through.

Just know how much of our affliction, how many afflictions, all of them, every time.

What does the God of comfort do in your suffering?

He comforts you.

The season that you are going through, the season that we are processing from 2020, that is bleeding on into 2021, is so that we might know the comfort of God.

What is this comfort?

How does God comfort?

Well, uh, you might even uh use this a particular brand of washing detergent, and so uh it evokes ideas in your mind of uh soft duvets and warm cuddles, and and think that that's what the comfort of God is like.

It's like a uh it's like a like a big godly hug.

But the comfort from God is a comfort that doesn't simply tranquilize pain.

It is a god that it is a comfort that uh encourages you to keep going.

Imagine uh just for a moment that uh you got up uh with some friends, or you got up with your father, and you got up to go on a hike.

Your dad was taking you on a hike, and you got up just before dawn because the idea that your father had is that you're going to get to the summit just as the sun rises, and so you set off, and it's cold and it's dark, and you wind your way up and you get closer, and as you get closer, the climb gets steeper, and you experience the discouragements of of false summits.

Don't you hate those?

You think that you're at the top, and you you get over the the brow of this uh of this little ledge and you look up and there's another steeper summit straight ahead of you.

How does a good father comfort you in those moments?

A good father says, Keep going.

I'm here, we're in this together.

He says, keep going.

Look how far you've come.

We've been we've been walking for hours.

Look down the valley, look how far you've come.

Don't give up now.

Keep going.

What does he say?

He says, keep going.

I have been up at this summit before.

I have seen the sunrise from this summit.

I promise that it's worth it.

Keep going.

Keep going.

Remember uh how a little while back uh you you slipped, your your foot slipped.

Where was I then?

I was there, I caught your hand, I lifted you back up.

Keep going.

We're nearly there, we're nearly at the summit.

Don't give up now, don't turn back now.

The sunrise is just over the horizon, it's on its way.

Keep climbing, keep pressing forward.

I am here with you.

That is the comfort that Paul experiences.

That is the comfort that comes to us as a Christian, is the comfort that says, Don't give up now.

I am right there with you.

I haven't left, I haven't forsaken you.

I told you that I wouldn't, and I'm still here.

That is biblical comfort.

It is back straighteningly knee-strengthening comfort.

And Paul experiences that comfort as it comes from where?

Look at verse four again.

Uh sorry, verse five says, for we share abundantly in Christ's sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort to.

The comfort of God comes to you through Jesus.

It comes through Christ.

That's what Paul's saying, and what an amazing statement it is.

That the comfort of God flows to you through the nail pierced hands of the Lord Jesus, through the one who knows your frame, who knows your weakness, who has walked our road of thirst and exhaustion, of loneliness and isolation, of grief.

Who's wandered through this veil of tears?

It comes through the one who, when he was speaking to his disciples in the depth of their despair the night before his death, and promised them a what?

A comforter.

That's how he describes the Holy Spirit.

He says, I'm going to send the comforter to you.

So the Holy Spirit comes to the believer and he comforts us.

Jesus promised on that night that he would turn the morning of their disciples, of his disciples, to joy.

It is the Holy Spirit in our life that does that.

That is the comfort of God that God wants you to know in this season of suffering and grief.

Have you come to Jesus in this season and sought from him the knee strengthening comfort of the Holy Spirit?

Have you come and said, I am clinging with feeble fingers to the ledge of your great grace, and I need your help.

Give me your soul stirring, soul preserving comfort.

That is what is on offer right now.

Third.

So God wants to show you more of who he is.

He wants you to experience his comfort.

That's what he was doing for Paul in Paul's afflictions.

But Paul, thirdly, he didn't keep it for himself.

God comforts us in order that he might make us a comfort to others.

Look again at verse 4.

Who comforts us in all our affliction so that, there's the connection, 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.

So as God in a sense reminds Paul of who he is, does that keep-going uh conversation to Paul that I here's the future sunrise that there is before you, look how far you've come, I am here with you now.

As God says that to Paul, so Paul then turns to everyone else in affliction and suffering and turns to the Corinthian Christians in their affliction and suffering and says, This is what God has told me.

This is how God has comforted me.

Let me comfort you with that.

Let me not stir your soul and strengthen your back and strengthen your knees that you might keep going with me as I journey with God all to the summit till we behold that sunrise together.

He comforts us so that we can be a comfort to others.

To look at the strain and stress in your family and think, what is God doing here?

How will anything good come from this experience?

Very often we go years, we even maybe go a whole lifetime with never really comprehending why he has done those things.

But every once in a while, just every once in a while, we sit in a room with someone who is in that moment where we were those years ago, and they're going through the same thing, and you can see on their face all of the same emotions that you experienced some years ago, and something clicks, and you realize that while you didn't know it or appreciate it then, that part of what God was doing in your suffering now is so that when you sit some years hence in front of that person, you are able to speak insightfully and precisely and with gospel saturated precision into their life because you know the pit that they're in.

You have been there before, and you know the promises of God that were like hand holes to you that allowed you to climb out, and how God raised you and how he endured with you through it all, and you think, I don't know all of the reasons, but I know that this is one of them.

I don't know all of the purposes of why God did that in my life, but I know that bringing me to this point so that I can comfort you, that I can comfort this person is one of the purposes.

And that will give you hope.

That'll give you hope that while you cannot see all of the other ends, that maybe they are good after all.

Nothing in this Christian life is simply for our own private enjoyment.

To be a follower of Jesus and to know the goodness of his grace to us is to be one who shares that grace.

Paul understands this, he knows that the encouragement that he has received from God that he is to pass on.

The insight into God's merciful character, he is to share the things that you learn about God and the experiences that he is leading you through will find a new depth of meaning and significance when you see that God is equipping you to be a blessing to others.

And maybe you don't have to wait some years hence.

Maybe you can be a blessing to others by testifying to your what would you say?

Testify to your enduring trust in his goodness, even in the midst of the suffering.

That would be a blessing and encouragement to others.

Others would remember that.

You're mad if you think that nobody is watching your life.

I know that we're locked away, but someone somewhere is always watching our life and they watch how we suffer.

I remember um when I used to um act from time to time, join drama groups and things like that.

That one of the things that I remember being told is that if you were an extra, if you were just kind of in in the back of the stage, you know, you weren't a protagonist, you weren't didn't have lines at that moment, you weren't up front.

That if you were just in the background, you couldn't then just do whatever you liked.

You still had to be in character, you still had to be in the moment, you couldn't just think, okay, well, I don't have lines now, so I'll just stand around.

Why?

Because someone is always watching, someone's always watching your life.

So maybe you can suffer now with hope in a way that will be a blessing that people will come to you and say, you know, when you were in that season, when you experienced that grief, I watched how God worked through you.

And that's given me hope now as I face this.

This uh sharing with others and being a blessing to others, it points to our interconnectedness, doesn't it?

It points to our unity as a as a body that we're supposed to be sharing this with one another, we're supposed to know one another and know what each other is going through, in order that we might speak those words of comfort, in order that we that we might know those things.

And so, can I encourage you that while we are physically distanced from one another, that we're not socially isolated from one another.

So still in 2021, be involved with us as a family.

Join a community group if you're watching this and you haven't yet.

Fill out, go to the connect page on the website.

We'll get you connected up.

And if you're in a community, excuse me, if you're in a community group and you're struggling, share with us.

Share with someone in it, share with the leader that we might be able to bear your burdens and comfort you in your difficulty.

Fourth.

Suffering is used by God to bring about repentance.

Suffering is used by God to bring about repentance.

Cast your eye down to verses eight and nine.

For we do not want you to be ignorant, brothers, of the affliction we experienced in Asia.

For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself.

Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death, but that was to make us rely not on ourselves, but on God who raises the dead.

Why?

The explanation is in verse nine.

So that he might turn from self-reliance and depend rather on God to rely on him.

This is one of the things that suffering does.

It's one of the more painful things about suffering, is that it exposes what our hearts really love, what our hearts truly value, where our hope is set, because sometimes the thing that we are truly hoping in gets taken away from us.

Self-reliance, uh being a huge contender for the uh love and value of our heart, especially if you grew up in the West.

We love to be self-reliant, independent people.

There are other idols, whether it's self-reliance or success or comfort or the perfect or perfectly looking family life.

What the Bible contends elsewhere is that they're all ultimately uh quicksand.

If you want to think about those handholds again, uh they are they're not bolted into the rock, they they come away as you put weight on them.

And God uses suffering to wing you off them, to take them away from you, not so that he might punish you, but so that he might show you that he is the only reliable foothold handhold prop.

That everything else is sinking sand.

What is that?

On Christ the solid rock I stand, all other grind is sinking sand.

God uses suffering to show you the sinking sand nature perhaps of what you've been relying on so that he might bring you to the solid ground of Christ.

That is repentance.

Repentance is saying, I am not going to rely on this, I'm not gonna rely on myself and my own strength, I'm not gonna build my life here on this quicksand.

I'm gonna rely rather on Jesus and what he has done.

I'm gonna build my life on that solid rock.

Have you come to God in repentance, turning from that self-reliance and turning to relying on God?

God takes you from those things, so you might rely on the one who raises the dead.

So what sinful attitudes, what ungodly thoughts or action patterns is God weaning you from and encouraging you to turn aside from in this season?

Fifth.

So where have we come from?

God is showing you more of who he is, that he is a merciful father, God of all comfort.

He is actively comforting you and encouraging you, and then he is encouraging you to share and to be a comfort to others.

He is exposing, okay, master of heart surgeon, uh, some of those uh wrong reliances, some of those idols in our hearts, and turning us to himself.

And then, fifth, God is using our current suffering to embed our lives in a future hope.

He is using current suffering to embed us in future hope.

Notice that when he says uh in verse 9, at the end of verse 9, we rely not on ourselves, but on God who raises the dead.

Notice that he actually doesn't say here uh that who raised Jesus from the dead.

Now uh he has that language uh elsewhere, but there is a uh there is a future sense here.

I'm sure the line behind it, Paul is uh uh has in his mind the resurrection of Jesus as that down payment of more.

But what that does is that propels him forward, that makes him look beyond the horizon of this world, makes it look beyond the the sufferings of his of his current state, and helps him to look to the future hope, the future resurrection at the end, that every believer in Jesus will experience on that last day, that we will all be raised to newness of life, incorruptible, perfect life, that all of the the things that have befallen are all before are befalling us, that the grief and mourning and painning, the pain that'll all be counted among the former things on that last day.

He's relying on the God who will raise the dead in the future, God who will bring us to new life.

He goes on in verse 10 uh to say that this suffering has helped him to set his hope on God.

He delivered us from such a deadly peril and will deliver us, and on him we have set our hope that he will deliver us again.

This is the promise of the gospel.

That the follower of Jesus has a hope that no circumstance can take away.

Whatever suffering you are enduring, whatever grief, they are hammer blows, driving you like a nail deeper into that hope, deeper into the love of God.

And until that hope is realized on that last day when you are raised and standing before the Lord Jesus, until that day, until that hope becomes sight, Paul lays out the pattern of the Christian life in verse 10a.

Look at it again.

He delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us.

God will deliver you from every season of suffering that you find yourself in until he brings you home and into the fullness of that hope.

That is true.

God will deliver you again and again and again until he brings you to himself.

God will save you until you die.

And when you die, you will pass beyond the tears of this world and enter that far green country and know the hope of the God who raises the dead.

So in this season, are you grasping the future hope of the gospel?

Are you lifting your weary head from the circumstances around you and looking to what God is doing on that grander scale?

Are you seeking to know more of that hope?

Are you filling your mind and your head and your phone with the voices that speak gospel hope or vain platitudes?

Or worse, more fear and doubt.

Finally, number six, suffering reminds us that we need one another.

That's where Paul goes as he concludes this uh this introductory section, verse 11.

He's been talking about his experiences, and then he invites them in, verse 11.

You also must help us by prayer so that many will give thanks on our behalf for the blessing granted us through the prayers of many.

He said, He said, Come and battle with us, join with us in this gospel endeavor, and do so by praying with us and for us.

It reminds us, our suffering reminds us, that we need one another.

Paul is drawing them in, he needs them with him, he needs their prayers.

The Christian life is a life that is united to Christ.

And because we are united to Christ, we are united to all believers.

That we are united together as a church family at City Church.

We might be socially distant, but we should not be socially isolated from one another.

We bless each other when we share our need for prayer.

We bless each other when we lift one another up.

We might not be able to be together this morning.

But prayer is a way that we can express our connection to one another and our encouragement to one another.

Can I encourage you in this new year?

As I'm sure some of you watching this are thinking, gosh, I like I really need to get into my Bible more.

I really need to uh be thinking about you're praying more and my My devotional life has not been where I want it to be, and I'm a bit frustrated with that.

One of the proactive steps you might do is seek out one or two other people to pray with on a regular basis.

Very briefly.

Do it on WhatsApp.

You have three other people in a WhatsApp uh video call.

You could say to two or three other people, uh, we're gonna send a request ahead of time, and then we're going to uh to jump on a call and we're gonna pray for one another just for 20 minutes, just in my lunch hour.

And then that helps to solidify those bonds of love that we need to maintain in this season, and it encourages and stirs your heart.

Because I know that some of you feel alone in your grief or in your anxiety.

Lots of you students have exams coming up, and you think that's a stressful time at the best of times, but here you are doing it in lockdown, sometimes doing it with family who uh aren't particularly amenable to doing exams in that context.

Our suffering reminds us that we need one another, that we need to be lifting one another up.

I want you to see just very finally that God is at work in this season.

That's what these six things from this passage show us.

That God is at work in our suffering and in our hardship.

He is at work in your life right now, whatever it is that you are going through.

He is using your suffering to um, as Paul says elsewhere, to create an eternal weight of glory, to transform you from one degree of glory to another.

And so if I could be that big brother, if I could be that father walking up that mountainside, if I could say anything to you now, I would look you all in the eyes and say, the sunrise is worth it.

That gospel sunrise that we're all going to, it is worth it.

Keep going, find ways to strengthen yourself spiritually speaking, connect with other people, look at what God is doing, ask him to reveal to you the purposes, uh, why he is doing for you what he is doing, and keep going and persevere and encourage one another both until we see one another again face to face, and until we see the Lord Jesus face to face.

I love you, my heart is full for you.

I can't wait until we're back together.

Keep going.

Let's pray.

Our Father, thank you for the reminder this morning that you are at work in our suffering.

May we know the the merciful, the abundantly merciful nature of who you are to us.

Help us to persevere.

Help us to be a blessing to others, help us to forge new bonds of faith and of encouragement and of love as we spur one another on.

Thank you that you are at work, and we pray all of these things in the name of Jesus.

Amen.

Amen.

Just wanted to say, folks, that uh there is tea and coffee.

I think it got uh missed off the um the video at the end, but there will be tea and coffee time, and I'm gonna share a link in the chat uh just now.

Have a great day, everybody.

Take care of the