2 Corinthians 1:1–11

0:00 Well, friends, it's one of those exciting Sundays here at Third Avenue Baptist Church because we are starting a new book. Yeah, it's still the Bible. It's not a new book in that sense. But we are moving today from 2 Kings, which we've been in for the last seven or eight weeks, to the New Testament, 2 Corinthians. So let me invite you to take a Bible and turn over to 2 Corinthians. If you want to use one of these red pew Bibles right here, you'll find those either in the pew rack in front of you if you're on the floor or if you're sitting in one of the chairs, it'll be probably underneath you or underneath the chair in front of you.

0:36 You can find 2 Corinthians on page 964, which may be slightly confusing because 964 is not printed on the page, but it comes between 963 and 965, if that helps. We're beginning a series today on this book of 2 Corinthians, which is not so much a book as it is a personal letter from the Apostle Paul to a bunch of friends of his who had formed a church in the city of Corinth. This is, I think, one of those New Testament books that we as Christians are kind of weirdly not super familiar with.

1:11 I think most of us anyway. If you're like me, you have probably spent far more time reading and studying and doing your devotionals in books like Romans or John or 1 Corinthians, really any of the gospels. But 2 Corinthians is a little bit mysterious to us. Not exactly sure why that is because it has a lot of good things to say. It may be that it is a little mysterious to us and a little off-putting to us because it has so much good to say about so many different things. It's a bit of a grab bag of things that Paul wants to talk to the Corinthians about.

1:43 He moves from just one topic to another, talking about the collection for a couple of chapters that he wants to give to the church in Jerusalem, then turning to a defense of his own apostleship, then encouraging them to be pure in their spiritual lives. It just moves from one topic to another. But for all of that, 2 Corinthians has its own relevance to us, in particular as Christians here at 3rd Avenue, because it was written by the Apostle Paul to a church that he loved very much but with whom he'd been for several months at this point involved in a good amount of tension.

2:18 So in a profound way, this letter shows us a group of Christians struggling to be Christians together even in the midst of trouble and even in the midst of disagreement. Now, I think in order to understand the book well You've got to understand the history behind it, because if you just come to 2 Corinthians sort of blind, not understanding the story that lies behind it, you're going to be almost completely lost. So you've got to understand some of the history, most of which we put together, not from any one place in the New Testament, but from a little bit in Acts, and then there are little snippets throughout 1 and 2 Corinthians and even Romans, and if you put all of those things together, you can get a really good picture of the story that led up to the writing of 2 Corinthians.

3:04 It's not actually, believe it or not, the second letter that Paul wrote to the church at Corinth. It's called 2 Corinthians, but we can tell from other places in 2 Corinthians, in 1 Corinthians, and in Acts, that it is not the second letter that he wrote to them. It is the fourth that he wrote to them. Wow, I've already surprised you this morning. I can tell from the reaction. You're already learning. This is the fourth letter that Paul wrote to the church in Corinth. The first letter is not 1 Corinthians. The first letter has been lost. We don't know where it is. It's the one that Paul mentioned in 1 Corinthians chapter 5 verse 9 when he said, I wrote to you about these things and now I'm writing to you again to clarify them. That's 1 Corinthians 5 9. The second letter that he wrote to them is 1 Corinthians itself, which he sent with Timothy across the ocean.

3:56 He was in Ephesus when he wrote it, so, you know, if you look at a map, Ephesus is kind of here, Corinth is over here. He sends Timothy from Ephesus over to Corinth with the letter of 1 Corinthians in his hand to try to defuse some tensions that had started to arise in the church in Corinth, both internally and with Paul himself. Well, apparently, Timothy delivered the letter, spent some time there in Corinth, returned to Ephesus, and the news that he brought from Corinth was dire. It was bad news.

4:29 Because apparently, the letter that we call 1 Corinthians had not helped the situation in Corinth at all. The church was in worse shape after they received the first letter, the 1 Corinthians. It was in worse shape than it had been before the letter arrived. And that letter had arguably caused tensions to rise even further, both within the church and between the church and Paul. So Paul had some travel plans. He was about to go on a missionary journey up through the province of Macedonia.

4:59 He abandoned plans to go through Macedonia and immediately boarded a ship in Ephesus and sailed across the ocean directly to Corinth in order to make an emergency visit to try to set things to rest. Well, the emergency visit, like the letter of 1 Corinthians, turned out to be an utter disaster. Paul was apparently openly and directly attacked by some of the church members there. And the whole experience, you can look at it in several places in 2 Corinthians, the whole experience of that emergency visit to Corinth to try to set things right ended up being extremely painful to Paul.

5:39 So deeply wounded, deeply hurt, he returned to Ephesus. And instead of going back and worrying that the trip would be bad again, he decided instead to write a third letter back to Corinth. That third letter, which Paul refers to a couple of times in 2 Corinthians, remember it's not that, it's in between 1 and 2. There's a third letter. Paul refers to it in 2 Corinthians 2, he refers to it in 2 Corinthians 7. That third letter, it hasn't survived, we don't have it, it doesn't exist anywhere.

6:11 But it was evidently a severe dressing down of the Corinthian church, telling them what they had done wrong, exhorting them to get on board with the gospel. It was a severe letter, and Paul sent it with his other sort of partner in the gospel, Titus. Well, when Titus got back, the news from Corinth in the wake of the severe letter was mixed. It wasn't a disaster, but it wasn't a total success either.

6:42 On the one hand, Titus reported that in Corinth there was, in the wake of this severe letter, a genuine desire among most of the church members there to reconcile with Paul, to work out their differences, and for Paul to come and see them again. On the other hand, though, it's really clear from 2 Corinthians that there was still a strong opposition party in Corinth to both Paul and his teaching. They thought he was a shyster. They thought he was a fake. They thought he wasn't becoming of the gospel, and they were still saying that in Corinth.

7:13 That's the report that Titus brought. And it's that report that occasioned Paul's writing of this fourth and final letter to the church at Corinth, what we call 2 Corinthians. So if you kind of look through the book, you'll see it's got 13 chapters to it. And Paul has a number of aims in those 13 chapters. For one thing, just the whole of it, it's kind of got three divisions to it, three aims, three divisions through the whole book, and we're going to unfold these as we make our way through this series.

7:45 In the first seven chapters, basically what Paul is doing is just simply celebrating the repentance and reconciliation of most of the church members. He wants to encourage them in that reconciliation. He wants to tell them how much he loves them, and he wants to encourage them to remain pure and faithful to the gospel. That is almost the entirety of what's going on in chapters 1 through 7. In 8 through 9, though, now that the church is reconciled, he wants to sort of goad them again to get re-involved in this collection of money that he was trying to gather up from Gentile churches in order to send to the church of Jerusalem.

8:18 Now, we'll talk about that in chapters 8 and 9, but the idea that Paul had essentially was that the church in Jerusalem, because it was the founding church, had a special responsibility. It was the biggest church. It was the one that was sending out the most missionaries. People were more prone to come to Jerusalem than to any other church throughout the empire. And so they were constantly under the burden of hospitality. So Paul wanted to help out with all of that. But also Paul knew that the Jew-Gentile divide was something that would threaten over the years to split the church of Jesus Christ in half.

8:51 And he wanted to prevent that by having Gentile believers give to Jewish believers a gift of money. which would suture them together as a united front against the world and the flesh and the devil and in the name of Jesus Christ. So he wanted to re-engage the Corinthian church. Now that they're reconciled, hey guys, can we get back on board with collecting money in order to send it to the church in Jerusalem? That's chapters 8 and 9. In chapters 10 to 13, you've got something else entirely. In 10 to 13, it becomes clear that Paul is aware that not everything is settled in Corinth.

9:28 Most of the church seems to be reconciled with him. Most of the church seems to want him to come back for a visit. Most of the church seems on board. But there are still those in the church who were vocally in opposition to him. And so in chapters 10 to 13, he gives some time there defending his apostleship and his evangelistic ministry, particularly to the Gentiles. So that's kind of what the book is doing. We've mentioned before that there's a lot in that. And you can tell even from that summary that there's a ton going on in 2 Corinthians. In fact, the book is sometimes by scholars and even just, you know, casual Christian readers.

10:02 It's criticized for being confusing, for being disjointed, for making all these abrupt changes in tone and topic. But I don't think that's a problem with the book. I don't think that's a reason not to read it. In fact, I think that's pretty humanizing in the book. I mean, the way, you know, in the ancient world, you couldn't just, like, fire off an email like we can, right, about one topic. It could take months for a letter to be taken to a ship and taken across the ocean. And for them to read it and for them to write back to you, it could take months. And so what you would do in the ancient world is not fire off a short little letter about one topic.

10:35 You would get word from the city and you would write down what you want to write about that particular thing. Then you'd put the letter away for a few weeks or a few months. You'd get more news from that city. You'd pull out the same letter and write some more. Then you'd write about the next thing that you hear about. Then you'd write about the next thing you hear about. But months after you started the thing, you would finally fold it up, stick it in an envelope, and put it on a ship to go. So ancient letters can kind of have that character where they're being written in stages over sometimes months. And that's what 2 Corinthians feels like. Romans doesn't feel like that.

11:06 Romans feels like Paul sat down for an all-nighter and wrote out all 16 chapters of it at once. 2 Corinthians does not feel like that, and so we shouldn't read it like that. Or else we're going to think that Paul is, you know, addled and can't keep his mind on one thing. But that's not the way it works. We can't read it like Romans. We can't read it like Luke's orderly accounts of the lives of Jesus and the apostles. This is not meant to be a treatise. This is a personal letter written in the heat of a very complicated and painful relationship between people who love each other and yet who have been angry with one another for a very long time.

11:45 And so in that sense, it's a vibrant, vibrant, clear look at what it means really for Christians to live life together. So today, we're going to be looking at the first 11 verses of the book. So we're going to spend the entire time in chapter 1 there. If you're not familiar with the Bible, you'll see those big numbers in the middle of 2 Corinthians. Those are what we call chapter numbers. Then down inside those chapters, you'll see smaller numbers that we call verse numbers. It doesn't have anything to do with music. It's just a way to divide it up so that I can say things like, look at verse 6 in chapter 1, and you can find what I'm talking about more easily.

12:20 So you're going to hear me do a lot of that kind of thing today. I probably won't say the chapter number that often. We're just in chapter 1. But if I say, look at verse 11 or look at verse 7, you'll be able to know that we're in chapter 1. Go down in there, find the verse that we're talking about, and you'll see the phrases that I'm talking about. Anyway, in these 11 verses, Paul addresses his letter, and then he praises God, which is a very normal thing for him to do. But even in these verses, which at first glance, you know, you might roll your eyes at them and say, oh, this is the obligatory, you know, here's how Paul addresses his letters sermon.

12:53 And he calls himself an apostle. And, you know, we've heard that every time we hear a letter from Paul. And then he gives thanks to God in the first 11 chapters. Can we please get past this introductory sermon and on to the meat of it? What I want you to see by the end of the sermon today is that the meat starts in chapter 1, verse 1. Because right there, right in the very first sentence, Paul is doing work. He's already laying groundwork for some of the most important things that he wants to wrestle with the Corinthians about. So let's see what he does.

13:25 2 Corinthians 1, verse 1. Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy, our brother, To the church of God that is at Corinth with all the saints who are in the whole of Achaia, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction 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.

14:00 For as we share abundantly in Christ's suffering, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too. If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation. And if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which you experience when you patiently endure the same sufferings that we suffer. Our hope for you is unshaken, for we know that as you share in our sufferings, you will also share in our comfort. For we did not want you to be unaware, brothers, of the affliction we experienced in Asia. For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself.

14:30 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. He delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope, that he will deliver us again. 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. Now, in Paul's typical fashion, this paragraph, these couple of paragraphs, are just twisted up and falling over one another in their phrases and words.

15:07 It is a tightly packed little bomb of truth. And in order to understand it, you do have to do some kind of untangling. You have to pull it out and look at it very carefully. But I want you to know up front that there's nothing super difficult about this text. There's no exegetical troubles that we're going to get into. There are no theological difficulties with it. It's pretty straightforward. And you can see just from that quick reading what goes on here. Paul addresses the letter in 1 and 2. Then from 3 through 11, he praises God. I mean, it's interesting here that it's not so much that he praises God for the Corinthians.

15:41 I mean, that's a very common thing for him to do in his letters. He doesn't do that here. Instead, he praises God for a specific thing. He praises God for giving comfort in the midst of suffering. And there's a very particular reason he does that, a reason that he praises God for comfort in the midst of suffering, and it's probably not what you're thinking, and we'll talk about it later. For now, here's the main idea. Main idea, 2 Corinthians 1, verses 1 through 11, is this. Our suffering as Christians is never without a purpose. Our suffering as Christians is never without a purpose.

16:14 It does two things that are taught in this passage. It equips us to comfort others, and it ignites in us a greater hope of eternity. That's what our suffering does. It does other things taught in other parts of the Bible. But here, Paul says that our suffering, when it comes, equips us to comfort others, and it ignites in us a greater hope of eternity. So those are the two points that I want to make. We're kind of dividing the text 1 through 7 and then 8 through 11. Point number one, suffering equips us to comfort others.

16:47 Point number two, suffering ignites a greater hope of eternity. So let's start looking at the text in some detail. Point number one, suffering equips us to comfort others. That's the point that Paul's going to get to in verses 3 through 7. But first, before we get to that main point, it's worth looking at the address of the letter. Because even in those first couple of lines, first couple of verses, Paul is starting to do work. So he says there in verses 1 and 2, Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, Timothy, our brother, to the church of God that is at Corinth with all the saints who are in the whole of Achaia.

17:19 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Okay, now look at those verses and think in your own head. Do you see any ways there that Paul is already starting to lay groundwork for what he wants to say to the Corinthians and wrestle with them about? Does he lay any groundwork for what he's going to say in the rest of the book? Now, remember the situation. You've got here a church that was in a seriously bad way.

17:50 The church was riven by division. You remember that from 1 Corinthians when the people he accused, Paul says, all of you are putting yourselves in factions. And some of you are saying, I am of Apollos. And others of you are saying, I am of Peter. And others, I am of Christ. And he says, you're putting yourselves into factions. So the church was riven by division. And by this time, it was also being turned by a group of false teachers toward distrusting Paul and even rejecting Paul as an apostle. Okay, now do you see anything in verse 1 that Paul brings up right here at the beginning that he wants to talk to them about?

18:23 He says, right in the first sentence, I am an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God. And this is Timothy, our brother. Now that's interesting that he separates himself from Timothy in that way. He says, I, Paul, am an apostle. This guy, Timothy, is not. It's interesting because there's a pattern, I think, in Paul's letters. In his very early letters, before you start to get this fight with the church in Corinth, in his early letters, Paul doesn't address his letters as an apostle.

18:58 He addresses those letters as a fellow worker with whoever he's with, whether that's Timothy or Titus or Silvanus or Silas, whoever it is. He says, we are writing to you. It's only when the fight with Corinth starts that he begins to address his letters as an apostle. He starts to tell them, I am one who has been specially chosen and appointed by Jesus to take the gospel to the Gentiles. That's why Jesus has chosen me and sent me, which is what the word apostle means.

19:30 It's a Greek word, untranslated. It just means sent one. And Jesus had said to Paul on the road to Damascus, I am sending you to the Gentiles. So Paul understood himself to be an apostle. Look also at the second line of verse 1 there. To the church of God that is at Corinth with all the saints who are in the whole of Achaia. He calls them two things there. Do you see what they are? He calls this church in Corinth two things. What does he call them? First thing he calls them is a church. The second thing he calls them is saints.

20:04 So think about that word church for a second. I mean, we flip the word off, you know, pretty easily off our tongues, right? It rolls off very, very easily. It's not a problem. We just, we say church, church, church, church, church, church, church all the time. And there's a set of connotations that that word has to us that we all at least think we understand pretty well. I mean, to some of us, it means the building that we're sitting in. I'm going to go to the church this afternoon. To others of us, it means more theologically, the people who gather in this place regularly, that's the church. but however you think about it, it's got certain connotations that are religious in nature, right?

20:36 Because a church is either, you know, in common parlance, a building where religious people gather, or more theologically, soundly, it is the religious people who gather in that building for religious purposes. It's got a particularly religious flair to it. Well, the word church, which is in the Greek, ekklesia, had connotations to the Corinthians too, but they weren't necessarily religious. The word church to the Corinthians would have meant a group of people who have gathered together as a body to act.

21:17 So the gathered population in the democracy of Athens was called an ecclesia from ancient times, when the people of Athens gathered together to vote and choose leaders and cast their ballots on whether they were going to go to war. They were known as an ekklesia. This is the gathering that has come together in order to act and make decisions. When the population of a city in the ancient world would gather together for the purpose of electing leaders or doing whatever they did. Any city, really, Athens. But even in Rome in those days, when it gathered together to act as a body, that gathering of people was known as an ekklesia.

21:52 So the word ecclesia, or gathering, or church, was a word that in Corinth carried connotations of honor and dignity and action. Honor and dignity and action. So when Paul calls them a church, what he's saying to them is, look, you are not just a mob. You're not just a random assortment of people. You're not just a social gathering. You're not just a group of friends. You are an ecclesia, a gathering, an assembly that has been called together and organized and mobilized for a purpose.

22:31 Look also there, he calls them saints. That word saints doesn't just refer to the best of them, it refers to all of them. All of them who have been justified and declared holy by the Lord. To all the saints in the whole of Achaia. The word just means holy ones, that's all it means. saints. I don't know why we don't just translate it, but that's what it means. Holy ones. And it's not that they are so good that they are holy. It is that they have been made holy by the holiness of Jesus. That's what that means. It's worth noting there that when he says all the saints in all of Achaia, that's Greece. And what it means is that he's expecting this letter to be read in many churches in the regions. But that word saints is fascinating. It's especially fascinating because these people in Corinth had not been acting very holy, had they? They were susceptible to false teaching. They were divided. They were quarreling. They had all kinds of problems, if you remember back into the book of 1 Corinthians. But that's the whole point. He calls them that, not because

23:36 they've been acting holy, but because they've been made holy in God's sight by Jesus. And that in itself is now a call for them to act like what they already are you see what he's saying you are saints you are holy ones through Jesus now act like it he calls them a church and he calls them saints friends both of those things are instructive for us I think right here and right now at third avenue baptist church and over the last few months last four months this church has been in a difficult season it's not a difficult season that's exactly like the corinthians had been going through for about a year by this time but i think it's not entirely dissimilar either that church was riven by disagreements that church was riven by factions and while i don't think i would describe third avenue as being riven by disagreement and by factions i do think it's

24:38 worth noting that for some, disagreements about the events of the last few months have led to things like hard feelings or even anger. Now, all of that's going to have its place in a church, and all of it's going to run its course. I'm not trying to, you know, hammer anybody and say, just, you know, sit on your feelings. They're illegitimate. They're, you know, not to be had in the church. That's not the point of what I'm saying here. Those things have their place, and they're going to run their course. But in the midst of this kind of season in a church's life, which every church in the history of the world hits at some point, I think if Paul were to write a letter to us, he would probably begin that letter right here, just like he does for the church in Corinth.

25:22 He would remind us that we are a church and we are saints, and that even in the middle of a tough situation, we are therefore called to act like it. Now, just as a parenthesis, you need to understand before I go on, I didn't pick this book to preach starting on the first Sunday of March 2023 because I looked at it and thought, oh, 2 Corinthians will have some themes in it that are really good for this time of Third Avenue's life. I mean, every year I schedule the entire preaching year months in advance of when it's actually going to happen.

25:55 But the fact is the Holy Spirit knows his church. And the Holy Spirit, when I was doing the planning, I trust, planned to bring this church, which, let's be honest, is experiencing more upheaval right now than at any time in the last 20 years, I think. The Holy Spirit decided to bring this church to this book and to put our eyes right here. You are a church and you are saints, even in the midst of suffering, so act like it. So what does that mean for you? I mean, think about you, yourself, and where you sit in the midst of all of this.

26:29 What does that mean for you? I mean, it may be that for the vast majority of the people sitting in this room, you're not affected by all of this much at all. And that's fine. That's okay. If that's you, praise God, your job is verse 11. Pray. But maybe for you, this is closer to home. I mean, maybe some of the things that were buffeting the church in Corinth are buffeting you. Maybe like some in the church in Corinth, anger or resentment exists in your heart that you have not addressed.

27:06 Well, if so, brother, sister, with all respect to you, and I mean every word of that, with all respect to you, but with all the authority of the word of God, you have an obligation to deal with that. You are a member of a church. You are a saint, a holy one. And therefore you have an obligation to address it. It's exactly why Paul is writing this letter. To bring peace, to end division in this local church in Corinth.

27:40 And we here at 3rd Avenue can learn much from that. And maybe for you in the middle of all this, it's not that. Maybe it's not anger and resentment. Maybe for you, like for some of the Corinthians, it's just a spirit of factionalism that's invaded your heart. I am of, and I'll let you fill in the blank. Even if the blank that your heart just filled in was, I am for the elders. But brothers and sisters, regardless of how you fill in that blank, as a member of a church and a saint, you have an obligation to say, no, no, no, no, no.

28:18 I am not of any man. I am not of any woman. I am of Jesus. And I want what's good for his church. Friend, our situation here at 3rd Avenue is not exactly like it was for the church in Corinth when Paul wrote 2 Corinthians. But it's not entirely far off the mark either. So whatever it is for you, let this exhortation, even in these first two verses, do its work? Well, in verse 3, Paul moves on to his main point, really, but also to what in most of his letters is a prayer of thanksgiving for the church that he's writing to. Usually he'll say, I am Paul, an apostle to the church in Ephesus or whatever it is, and then he'll break into a prayer of thanks for that church. I thank my God for you and all my remembrances of you because of your part, you know, all this stuff that he says about them. It's different here, though. He doesn't thank God for the Corinthians at all, which is interesting given the circumstances. But he does praise God for giving comfort in the midst of suffering. He praises God for giving comfort in

29:23 the midst of suffering, all right? Now that's not too surprising. That's something that we hear a lot of. God gives comfort in the midst of suffering. It's an easy thing to say, but it also doesn't encapsulate everything that Paul is doing here. It doesn't grab everything that he's saying. He pushes it a step further now listen because this is critical and really really uh the the center the heart of what paul is saying here he says that god gives comfort in affliction so that we may comfort others there's a purpose in the comfort that god gives you in the midst of affliction and it is not so that you will feel comforted it's so that you may comfort others So that tight little word bomb that we read, maybe knowing that, you'll be able to see it a little more clearly.

30:13 Look with me at verse 3. We're just going to read it. And I want you to not let your eyes glaze over like for many of you they did the last time. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father in mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in our affliction, true, 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 we share abundantly in Christ's sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too. In other words, I got a lot of comfort to give because I've suffered a lot, Paul says.

30:46 So then in verse 6, he says, if we're afflicted, that ends up for your comfort and salvation. Because I get afflicted, God comforts me, and then I comfort you. So my affliction redounds to your comfort in your affliction. And then he says, and, you know, second step, if we are comforted, and we are by God, that too is for your comfort. And you experience that comfort when you patiently endure the same sufferings that we suffer. Our hope for you is unshaken, for we know that as you share in our sufferings, you will also share in our comfort. So once you unpack it, once you understand what he's saying, it gets a little more clear, doesn't it?

31:21 When Paul suffers, which he says is always to be expected of those who follow Jesus, God comforts him, and having received that comfort, he's now in a position to comfort them as they suffer in the same ways. He says that about three different times in there. And in some ways, it's a really straightforward point, but I think the more you think about it, the more surprising and profound it gets. Our sufferings are not ultimately about us. Your sufferings are not ultimately about you.

31:52 They're not even just about you and God. Your sufferings are about you and God and your brothers and sisters. Well, what's the nature of that comfort, though? What's he talking about, that God comforts him? What is that talking about? Well, I mean, without a doubt, there are certainly times when the Holy Spirit just directly comforts his children, right? And there are times when the Holy Spirit just gives his people a sense of calm and assurance and strength.

32:24 and you just have a certain steadiness in the midst of affliction. You may have felt that at some point in your life. But that doesn't seem to be what Paul is talking about here. It's something different. It's not just a feeling that the Holy Spirit gives. It's not just a calmness in affliction that the Holy Spirit gives. But look at the middle of verse 9. Paul there says that his sufferings brought him to the end of relying on himself and taught him to rely on God. Okay, that's easy to understand. My sufferings brought me to the end of myself.

32:54 I stopped relying on myself. I started to rely on God. But the next question is, okay, rely on him for what? What are you relying on God to do or to be? And he tells you in verse 10 there. He says he learns to rely on the fact that God has delivered him in the past and will deliver him in the future and especially will deliver him at the last day. You see that? So that's the comfort that Paul has in suffering. That's the comfort that God gives him in suffering and that he shares with others.

33:25 It's not just a supernatural feeling. It's a rock-solid trust in God that God will keep his promises and deliver us. That's the comfort that we learn in suffering. And it's also the comfort, once we learn it, that we then impart to others as they suffer. Now, if you think about it, that is an absolutely beautiful thing. Because so many people in our congregation in so many different circumstances can look you in the eye and say to you, Yes, I've suffered, but in the midst of that crucible of suffering, I have learned that God is unfailingly faithful.

34:07 There are so many people that have learned that lesson and are ready to share it with you. I mean, have you seen the emails that go out? Have you heard the testimonies? Listen to those people. That's what Paul is talking about. learn comfort in affliction from people who have learned comfort in affliction. I think about Kathy Wilson, I think about Lori Aker, I think about Lindy Robertson Jr. I think about Janet Backman, I think about Kathy McGee, who in the very last days of her life, even in a hospital bed when she became lucid for a few moments, was smiling and looking forward to heaven because even in the midst of affliction, her God was faithful. It's a beautiful thing. We suffer, and God comforts us with the truths of the gospel, and then we comfort others with what we have learned. That's beautiful, isn't it? Okay, well, let me ask you, does it describe you?

35:00 Does it describe how you have experienced and handled and dealt with suffering in the last few months? Has the affliction that many of you have felt over the last few months, the sadness that you've experienced, the suffering that you've felt? Has it caused you to learn more of the truths and trustworthiness of the gospel? And has it caused you then to pass that comfort on to others? Or has your suffering brought out of you something entirely different? Friends, I don't want you to miss the logic here.

35:35 Our tendency in suffering is to become little black holes of care and comfort and concern. I'm suffering. All of you need to care for me. What happens is that we suck in and demand all the care and comfort that we possibly can. My friends, that's exactly the opposite of the picture that Paul paints here. It's exactly the opposite of what we should be as Christians when we are in affliction.

36:06 When suffering comes, the picture that Paul paints here is not that we should become little black holes of comfort sucking in everything we can get. He says, no, instead you ought to become shining stars of truth and comfort, shining the light of the gospel and its truths and its comforts on everybody around you. And so your suffering ought to make Jesus more glorious. You ought to make Jesus more beautiful and more visible to people around you. Is that true of you? If so, praise God. If not, it might be worth something.

36:37 It might be worth thinking about and something to pray about. So suffering equips us to comfort others. That's one purpose of it. That's what Paul teaches in 3 through 7. But there's also another purpose to it. That's point number two. Suffering ignites in us a greater hope of eternity. Suffering ignites in us a greater hope of eternity. If you look at verse 8, there's a bit of a shift in the way Paul speaks. Because in 3 through 7, he's been speaking in generalities. You know, if we suffer, we suffer, you know, in our affliction, in any affliction.

37:09 He's talking in huge generalities. It's just of our suffering in general and then the comfort that we give to each other in that suffering. In verse 8, though, he changes because he turns to speak specifically of the way he himself suffered while in Asia. he says, which probably just means primarily in Ephesus. Ephesus was the main city in Asia Minor, that province of the Roman Empire. Paul spent a lot of time there, and he suffered there in Ephesus. It's not exactly clear what he's talking about when he says that he was afflicted in Ephesus.

37:40 Acts tells the story of that city being thrown into a riot by Paul's teachings and miracles, and he having to flee the city. That may be what he's talking about, but he doesn't specify, which probably means that the Corinthians already knew what he was referring to. But look in those verses at how he describes that affliction and how he describes that hardship. It's not just some little thing. I mean, look at the second half of 8. We were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. Verse 9, we felt that we had received the sentence of death.

38:16 In verse 10, he says that it was a deadly peril. And this is not just some little thing in Paul's life. This was horrific affliction, horrific suffering. And this is different. I mean, Paul describes his sufferings in other places of the New Testament. He'll describe them later in 2 Corinthians 2. But most of the time, when he describes his suffering, it's the physical suffering that he tells us about. That he was involved in this many shipwrecks and got flogged this many times. And there were these riots and there was this thing happening when it got driven out of town or even dropped over the wall of the city in a basket.

38:48 He tells us about all of those things that were happening to him. Do you see the difference here in 8 through 11? It's not just the external stuff that happened to him. He doesn't even detail that stuff. He's talking about the internal effect of all that external stuff. And so heavy were those sufferings. So heavy was his heart that Paul thought he was going to die. He despaired of life. He said that he felt like he was under a sentence of death. I wonder if you feel like that sometimes.

39:25 Like maybe, just maybe, God's already passed a sentence of death on you. And you start to despair of life itself. And that can take lots of forms. It can be depression. It can be a sense of darkness, a sense of sadness. Just a sense of I don't want to do anything for days at a time. Even sometimes suicidal thoughts or compulsion to hurt yourself in other ways. Friend, if you've been there, if you've been in that place where you feel like a sentence of death has been pronounced over you, I want you to hear loud and clear what Paul is saying here.

39:56 Even when you're there, you are not beyond the reach of the gospel of Jesus Christ. You're not beyond the reach of God's grace and comfort. Even there, in the depths, there's light and goodness. Even in the depths, God is there. Look at verse 9. That's where Paul tells us what he learned down in those depths. He says he felt the sentence of death had been passed over him already. And even that, he says, had a purpose.

40:29 And the purpose of it in verse 9 is that it made us rely not on ourselves, but on God who raises the dead. See that? At the end of his rope, when he had nothing else to hold on to, he held on to his faith in a God who loves to bring life out of death. Bring the dead to life. Sometimes we get there, don't we? I mean, sometimes we can be in the circumstances of our life so encompassed by suffering and sadness and affliction and hardship and even death sometimes that nothing less than a God who can resurrect the dead is going to be enough.

41:04 Well, praise God, that's exactly what we've got. We've got a God who loves to bring life out of death. It's like his signature. It's his calling card. Over and over in the Bible, God shows up and says, hey, guess what I can do that nobody else can do? I can bring the dead to life. And guess what he does when he decides to do his greatest work in the history of the planet? He brings the dead guy to life. Brings his son Jesus to life from the dead. Friend, I don't know where you are today.

41:36 I don't know what you're struggling with. I don't know what death is encroaching on your life. But I do know I can tell you this. Whatever it is, God has brought that thing into your life to teach you to rely on him. That's why he's done it. Just like that's why he brought suffering into Paul's life. Does that mean he's always going to take the suffering away? Does that mean he's always going to perform the miracle? Ask Paul. No. He got flogged like 39 times, three times. He got dropped over the side of the city wall in a basket one time when a mob was going to kill him.

42:09 He was shipwrecked. He had some kind of thorn in the flesh. We don't even know what it was. But he tells us very specifically, I asked God three times to take it away from me. And God said, no, no, no. Now be quiet about it. Ask Paul. God does not always take the suffering away. He doesn't always perform the miracle. Sometimes he does that. Other times he just gives you the strength to endure it. But the point that Paul is making here is that there's a reason for your suffering. To bring God glory. That's why you're suffering. You're suffering to bring God glory.

42:41 And that's going to happen no matter what. You know how it's going to happen? It's going to happen. God's going to get glory. He's either going to get glory by taking away the suffering, and he's going to expect you to glorify him for that. Or he's going to get glory by you slogging along through the suffering and pointing everyone who looks at you to the God who is sustaining you. You are suffering so that God will get glory. It's an enormously humbling thought, but it's a good humbling, isn't it? We exist to bring God glory, and that is our only hope and only comfort.

43:18 Look at verse 10 now, because it specifies how exactly our suffering produces trust and hope in God. Verse 10, he delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will deliver us yet again. Now, that's got three horizons. Do you see them? Three horizons. There's one in the past, and he has delivered us. There's one in the kind of near future, he will deliver us. That probably means in this life. And then there's a far future horizon also, that he will deliver us yet again.

43:54 Do you see what Paul is talking about there in a little more detail? He's saying that our present trust in God is rooted in his past faithfulness and his assured future faithfulness. If you trust God, you trust God because of his past faithfulness and his assured future faithfulness. That's why you do it. So do you want to exercise that muscle? Do you want to hope in God more deeply and more strongly in your present circumstances right now?

44:24 You know how to do that? You've got to get to know him. If you want to trust God, you've got to get to know him. You have to become more and more convinced deep down in your heart that he never fails to deliver his people. You've got to get to know him. So how do you do that? Well, you read your Bible. You read books like 2 Kings, where we saw again and again and again, despite all kinds of weird circumstances, God is always faithful to keep his promises. You read your Bible. You listen to stories of believers who have lived through suffering. This church, brothers and sisters, it's a treasure chest of diamonds and rubies and sapphires, trophies of God's grace and kindness.

45:05 Listen to those stories, and as you do, you're going to hear some of those stories where there was release from the suffering, right? You're going to hear some where the suffering went away. You're going to hear other stories where the suffering did not go away, has not gone away, and yet there's faithful endurance in the midst of it. But in all of it, in every single one of those stories, you're going to hear of a God who never, ever fails his people. Look at the last thing Paul says there in verse 11. Paul hopes in God, and he wants the Corinthians in a similar way to hope in God.

45:42 But look at 11. In 11, he calls them to help him in that by prayer. 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. It's kind of a circular thing, but he's saying you pray for us so that we can go about the work of bringing many people to give thanks to God. By that, he means make them Christians. That's what he means. And part of the way they're going to become Christians is by looking at what's brought to us in hope because of your prayers.

46:13 You see kind of how that works? It's a little bit of a circle, but it's pretty easy. And it's fascinating. It's a fascinating little verse. Let me tell you why. If you look at it, the goal, as always, is for more and more people to give thanks to God, more and more people to become Christians. And the means, Paul says, by which that mission is going to be carried about, even through suffering, is through prayer. That's the means. Now, that's not all that fascinating because you've heard a hundred sermons on that, that the mission of the Lord carries on through the world by prayer. And I could say all the normal things that one says in a sermon about prayer, and all of those things are true.

46:46 But I want you to see something more interesting here, too. It's a kind of subtext, a subcurrent in why Paul brings this up in the first place. Remember, this church is a church that is wracked with division. And some of those people in that church are even still angry and doubtful of Paul himself. So what does he do in the face of that? In the face of a church that's angry with each other, angry with him, wracked by division?

47:19 He calls them to pray. He says, help me, join arms with me in this mission by praying for me. And in doing that, what is he doing? What's he doing by saying, pray with me, help me by your prayers to carry on this mission? He's calling them all to lay down their weapons and unite with him to take the gospel to the nations. That's what he's doing. Do you see the point of that? One of the most powerful weapons that God has given to us, his people, churches all over the world, one of the most powerful weapons that we have against disunity, against the wiles of the devil, that we try to crack a church in two, is prayer.

48:02 Now, why is that? Well, just the obvious thing is because when we cry out to God to unify us, he answers those prayers and he does it. But it's also because of what prayer does in us. That's part of what Paul is going for here. Prayer reorients our minds as Christians and church members to who we are and what we are supposed to be about. Friends, when we step into the throne room of God, we simply cannot, standing there in the presence of the Lord, carry on with our pointing fingers and making our savage points against one another.

48:36 In the throne room, it is all about the Savior. It's all about the King, and it's all about his mission in the world. So, brother, sister, do you feel the pressures of disunity? Do you feel the strain of disagreement? Here's the solution. Pray. Pray. Go into the throne room of the King and pray. Pray especially for those that you're angry with. Pray for whoever it is that's hurt you.

49:08 That's exactly what Paul calls this Corinthian church. With all of its fractures and all of its hurts to do, he calls them to pray. Friends, we're going to suffer. As Christians, we're going to suffer. As a church, we're going to suffer. There is no doubt about it. There's no getting away from it. If you're going to be a Christian, you know, a follower of Jesus, guess where Jesus went? He went to the cross. Your king suffered, you're going to suffer.

49:39 You can't get away from that. The question is not if we're going to suffer. The question is what are we going to do with that suffering when it comes? When suffering comes, are we going to rot from the inside out until we collapse into a black hole? Or are we going to let God turn us into little sons of truth and comfort who suffer with our eyes on eternity? That's the question. Let's pray. Our Lord Jesus, we thank you that you have not asked us to suffer alone like you did.

50:20 Lord, you, when you died on the cross, were completely abandoned by your friends, by everyone, except just a few who stood at a distance from your cross. You were alone. And yet, Lord, in your mercy and in your grace, you've not called us to suffer alone. You've called us to suffer together as brothers and sisters in Christ. So, Father, we pray that even as our church goes through difficult weeks and difficult months in this season, God, we ask that you would help us to handle that, to deal with all of that as a church, as holy ones, who have been made righteous by your son Jesus and his gospel.

50:54 Help us to do this well. We pray in Jesus' name, amen.