Please pray with me. Lord, we thank you for your word, which is a rock beneath our feet, and we pray that through opening it now, our feet, feeble, Lord, and slippery would feel that rock. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. If you have a Bible with you, please do turn to 2nd Corinthians. We're going to be in 2nd Corinthians chapter one, verses three through 11. We continue today in our winter sermon series, which is titled thy very heart, my heart healed by his. We're simply trying to put our little weary, tired hearts before his great, tireless and majestic heart, and we're asking that his heart would not just heal ours, but it would reshape it and renew it.
Last week, we saw that Jesus, his heart, when we put our heart before his, it had first moved. Jesus' heart we saw is gentle and is lowly and therefore we can run to him. This week, we see that Jesus' father's heart is full of comfort. It's compassionate and it longs and it moves to comfort. I want to jump right into our passage and show you how this unfolds. So in verse three of 2nd Corinthians chapter one, Paul uses this title or this way of describing the Lord. He says, "The father of mercies and God of all comfort." The father of mercies and the God of all comfort. Some translations render this the father of compassion or the compassionate father and the God of all comfort.
There are two ideas here that are interrelated. God's heart or the person of God is filled with mercy and compassion deep down. This is his deep disposition. He is merciful. He is compassionate. Comfort is when that deep disposition is moved towards a specific object, one of his children, and it's moved in such a way that it acts in order to comfort. This is what God's heart does Paul is saying. This is who he is. Comfort is when God's heart acts towards his people to assuage fear and instill confidence.
So you can see this movement. Mercy and compassion is a general disposition. That's who he is. We'll return to that in a later sermon. Comfort is when that compassionate nature lays its gaze on a specific object, maybe you, and it's moved specifically to articulate or express its mercifulness through an act of comfort, whereby the aim is to assuage fear and instill confidence.
I remember freshman year of college, my friends and I found out that there was a friend on our floor who had brought her blankie to school with her. Now, we thought this was silly. She's a college student. She's 19. Shouldn't she have outgrown her need for pacifiers and blankies and stuffed animals? Well, if we were a little wiser, perhaps we would have seen a great parable in front of us. Although we may outgrow our childhood pacifiers and blankies, we never outgrow our need for comfort. We may outgrow our childhood fears dark, but these just morph into grownup fears of loneliness, of failure, of regret.
We are a people who need often and need deeply to be comforted. That's why what Paul's saying here matters. He's saying of the things you need to know about God, he is the God of all comfort, and Paul will not leave this theme alone. From verses seven through 11, our passage today, he uses this term, he renders comfort no less than 10 times. This is the most concentrated passage in the Bible about comfort and it's written for grownups, kids too. Along with using the word comfort 10 times, he uses words that we render as trouble or affliction or suffering or burden or despair eight times, lest you should think he's going to talk about comfort in a vacuum.
Paul leads us through this topic of experiencing discomfort or affliction or trouble and needing to find comfort. He leads us through it in this passage in a unique focus. Now, the first thing we need to point out is that Paul is well qualified to speak on this topic. You know how it is when someone's going to speak to you about handling suffering and they haven't really suffered? You think, "Their life's been easy. They have nothing they could teach me." But when a person begins to weigh in, who's been through something and they've made it through that something, you lean in and you listen. This is our posture when we hear Paul talk about comfort.
So Paul says in verse four, "God comforts us in all our afflictions." Now, Paul's using a plural pronoun, all our afflictions, but at this point he's referring to himself. He's talking about personal experience. Now, does he have a good enough resume to offer you comfort? Does he understand affliction? Let's just consider for a moment what he's been through. Men have died as a result of only a small fraction of the punishments and afflictions Paul suffered. He endured cold, nakedness, beatings, beatings with whips by the Jews, beatings with rods by the Romans, imprisonments, abandonment, sleeplessness, hunger.
The beatings and weapons he endured, and the stonings, were often meant to kill him. Three times he experienced the terror of shipwreck and he spent at least one night clinging to a piece of wood in the sea. But along with these external terrors, there was an inward suffering for Paul. He speaks of fighting without, but he also speaks of fear within. On one of his missions into Macedonia, he talks about the fact that he was absolutely terrified. He goes on to say that along with all these external afflictions that he says he knew daily the anxiety of worrying about his churches, the way a parent may worry about a child off at school who's prone towards bad choices, Paul felt that way daily, he says, about the Christians he knew.
He also, in dealing with this church, Corinth, Paul had to deal with this complex form of affliction that came in the form of hearing reports that the Corinthians were drifting away from biblical teaching. You see, Paul had planted this church. He knew these people and his relationship with them was anything but simple. Not only were they drifting away from him, but other teachers had come in that were questioning Paul's authority as an apostle. So here's a man on sabbatical, away from his church, finding out that his church is imbibing false teaching and making fun of him. There is a world beneath what he says in the middle of this letter when he writes, "We have spoken freely to you Corinthians our heart is wide open. You are restricted, not by us, but you're restricted in your own affections."
Paul says, "Make room in your hearts for us. We have wronged to no one. We have corrupted no one. We have taken advantage of no one." There's a world to be read in between those lines. They've closed their hearts to Paul. So he knows the abandonment. He knows even the potential failure of his ministry. But these physical and emotional ailments, I think, coalesce into a type of spiritual darkness at times for Paul. Times when I think he has to wonder, has it all been in vain, all that work for God, the seeming faith of the Corinthians and the apparent fruit. Has it amounted to nothing? Have all these years of faithfulness led to this?
You see, Paul understood eventually that it wasn't just the external world or interpersonal relationships he was fighting with, but spiritual forces. The dark powers had, and he write, explains, "The dark powers had ways of striking back at someone who dared to encroach on their territory with the message of the one true God." Paul was a man who lived on the very edge of that battleground. So yes, when Paul writes at the end of our passage, "For we do 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."
When the man who wrote that and has this resume opens a passage by saying, "He's the God of all comfort who's comfort me in all my afflictions, every beating, every shipwreck, every broken relationship, in all my afflictions, everyone, this being has comforted me." When we hear that, we should pull up a chair. If there's something hard, you should want to grab Paul by his shirt and say, "Well, tell me how does this work?" Because he says, it's right here in verse four, "God who comforts us in all our afflictions." All of them, anything you're going through. I picture Paul not just being beaten with rods, but the two weeks afterward when he can hardly move. Maybe there are broken bones, wounds are healing. He had no home. Who knows where he was staying. He didn't have any money to carry with them except offerings for the churches. I picture him day after day after day somehow finding comfort and I'd like to know how that works.
So now let's ask the apostle. Wouldn't it be something if he could be here, and you say, "Paul, just tell us now. What happened?" Because comfort has to be something that involves the emotions, right? It can't just be a platitude. What happened to you, Paul, in these situations that you could then look at a group of Christians who also are going to suffer and say, "He's the God of all comfort who comforts you every and any affliction." Paul would probably tell us a lot of things. I want to focus on two. I think Paul would say, and I'll explain these, that the comfort I'm talking about is comfort that comes from the presence of God, which number two, is often mediated through the presence of a brother or a brother or sister.
Let's unpack these. Comfort for Paul comes to the presence of God. Now, many things offer comfort in degrees. When we're suffering or anxious, a familiar song may soothe us. The presence of a friend or a friend's invitation to go out for a drink may distract us. Even things like positive thinking about the future. You may say, "Well, my job's not going well, but the odds are I'll find a better one." Maybe the embrace or the voice of a spouse. These are not bad things. They're gifts from God to comfort us. It's just that Paul's not talking about these things. He's not after comfort in degrees. He's after comfort that's ultimate and absolute.
There's also false forms of comfort. We can try to drink away our sorrow, just distract ourselves. But even worse are platitudes about God that aren't true. So sometimes when you're suffering, you hear people say, "God will never give you more than you can handle." Have you heard that? Well, let me just read verse eight for you again. Let's see if that statement about God is true. Paul says, "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," beyond our strength is the opposite of that which I can handle. Does that make sense?
The fact that God would give you not more than you can handle is not true. He may give you more than you can handle. As I'll show you in a moment, there's a reason for it. It does something for Paul. Or people may say, "Surely, God's going to heal you of this." He might, he might not. These are false forms of comfort. They're like putting quick sand beneath a person and telling them it will hold them. There are moments in our lives, and you may know this from experience, when the lesser, the wonderful, but the lesser forms of comfort, they just won't do anymore. The voice of a spouse, a friend's invitation to go out to dinner, the song, the familiar melody, they just feel dead. They fall to the ground and you just want to scream out.
Do you even understand what I'm dealing right now? This is where Paul is at when he tells us he's burdened beyond his strength to the point, in his words, that he felt that he had received the sentence of death. So this is where we see where Paul takes our feet or our hands off lesser forms of comfort and brings us to a rock. We see this if we return to verse eight and nine. Remember in verse eight, Paul says, "I was burdened beyond my own strength." Picking up there, he goes, "Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death." Now he gives the reason for what happened, "But that was to make us rely, not on ourselves, but on God who raises the dead."
There is a point in the apostle's sorrow, where every other prop is stripped away and he stares into the black abyss and suddenly a face appears and it's the face of Jesus Christ and he grabs him by the shoulders and he said, "God raises the dead, Paul, and you are his man." That's the apostle's comfort. It is the presence of God, which is why he says, "All this happened to make us rely on God." "On him," Paul goes on to say in this passage, "we have set our hope." Now, let me unpack this a little bit. What does it mean to say that it is the presence of God that is our ultimate comfort? Well, the Greek verb that we render to comfort is really a compound word and it's a compound of a prefix and a verb.
The prefix literally means around or near, it's the word para, the word para-church, not a church, but something around a church, it's para. The second word is the word that means to call someone to themselves. It's the word kalo. You can hear the word call in it. Essentially, it's to come near and call someone to yourself. That's kind of a literal meaning of the word. So what Paul is imagining is a form of comfort where one comes, not an idea, not a theory about the future, but one comes and not to merely just explain why this is happening or when it's going to end, but the first thing is he calls Paul to himself. This is the presence of the heart of God drawing near to Paul.
Now, I think Paul had a landscape in his brain that lit up when this was happening. He had two images of God that were dear to Israel that spoke this very thing. The Israelites imagine God sometimes as a shepherd and sometimes as a mother. So Psalm 23, David is walking through the valley of the shadow of death. I want you to hear this. I want you to hear the word of comfort. He says, "The Lord is my shepherd. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil for you are with me. Your rod and your staff, they comfort me." It's the same word, they comfort me. Then again, we read the passage Evan's read for us this morning from Isaiah. God says, "As one whom his mother comforts, so I will comfort you." That's the same word twice.
Now, what's significant about a shepherd comforting a sheep or a mother comforting a child? When the comforting is happening, the shepherd isn't explaining to the sheep the intricacies and the philosophy for why this sorrow happened and specifically how it's going to work out. The mother can't tell the child here's exactly when it's going to get better and sometimes the child seems almost inconsolable. The shepherd simply pulls the sheep to himself, sometimes puts them on his back. The mother holds the child and soothes him. It's not an explanation nor is it immediate alleviation of circumstances. It's the presence of a loving strong one who loves you and knows you and is utterly committed to you. That's the place where Paul says, "If you have your feet on that, you will know comfort always and everywhere."
I remember, this is kind of embarrassing to share, but I can remember, I was thinking about this this week. I went through a period when I was very young. I think I watched a show that had something about like a home break-in on it. I remember I had this season where I was terrified that someone was going to break into our house at night. It was totally illogical based on where we lived and the doors being locked. But I would lie in bed and I don't know if kids or [inaudible 00:19:56] remember every noise, I freeze. I would then start to toss and turn. At some point, I would hear the thud of my dad's feet hitting the ground and then I would hear his steps and he'd come into my room.
As soon as he came into my room, in fact, as soon as I heard his feet, I was fine. That's all I needed. That's all I needed. Now, he didn't sit down and say, "Sam, let me tell you the odds of someone breaking in the house. Sam, let me tell you what kind of locks we have. Sam, let me tell you about how this night's going to go and it would only be this long and we're going to get through it." He didn't explain everything, nor did he remove me from the darkness. He didn't say, "Well, let's fly you somewhere where it's daytime. Let's put the lights on." He just sat with me. He just sat with me on the edge of my bed and I was okay.
If that's what Paul's talking about, the comfort is the comfort of God. It's his presence and it's the presence of the one who alone hold your life in his hands and who alone is powerful to deliver and save. Now, I want to say one more thing about this. Paul says that it is the presence of God that is the ultimate foundation of comfort, but he suggests another very concrete way through which God mediates his presence. That is through the presence of a brother and sister in Christ. I'm intentionally not using the term friend, but rather brother and sister in Christ. I'm going to explain why in a moment. But I want you to see where this unfolds.
So in verse four, going back to verse four, Paul says, "God comforts us in all our affliction." But then he goes on to unpack this corollary reason. He says, "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." Can you see a spilling over of comfort here? Can you see comfort kind of coming full circle? Paul is comforted and that's very good for Paul, but he's saying, "This is happening so that I can then turn to you and I can comfort you, not just in any way, but I can comfort you with," Paul says, "with the very comfort with which God has comforted me."
What's really interesting about 2nd Corinthians is Paul later on gives us a window into a time when this happened specifically to him. It's in chapter seven. Paul's gone down into Macedonia. We don't know what exactly is going on. It's an excursion in ministry and we read the following. This is second Corinthians seven, picking up at verse five. Paul says, "For when we came into Macedonia, our bodies had no rest, but we were afflicted at every turn, fighting without and fear within. But God who comforts the downcast comforted us by the coming of Titus." Isn't that amazing? He gives us the way. Paul doesn't say, "God comforted us." He said, "He comforted us by the coming of Titus."
Now, a little background on what's going on here. It's kind of a drama. I can't get into the whole thing. But Paul had had some serious complexity with the church in Corinth. He heard some bad reports about them and he had to write a pretty stern letter to them and he told Titus who was his dear friend and colleague in missions, "Titus take the letter to Corinth." Then Paul's traveling about doing ministry and he's wondering, "What are the Corinthians going to make this? I already think they don't like me. I think they're drifting into a bad doctrine and I've just sent them a bit of a reproof. I've scolded them in this letter." We don't have this letter. We just know it happened because Paul refers to it.
Paul is also wondering how they're going to treat Titus. He had to sail across the seas wondering did he die? It's a perilous thing to travel in the ancient world. Here, Paul is lonely down in Macedonia ministering and of all things he meets up with Titus. What is Titus' presence convey to Paul? Well, we know from this letter, Titus actually brings Paul a good report. Paul says, "Titus," listen to this, "told us of your," that's the Corinthians, "told us of your longing, your mourning, your zeal for me so that I rejoiced all the more." So here's what's happening with Paul. He has just met his dear friend, which is certainly a reminder that he's not alone. He's just heard a report that God has been answering his prayers in Corinth and that the Corinthians treated Titus kindly and while they're still warmly disposed towards Paul.
All these things are meeting Paul through the presence of Titus. We don't know all the things Titus said to Paul, but we know that this comfort is conveyed through the presence of Titus. Paul was not alone. He had not been abandoned. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, many of you familiar with him. He was a pastor and theologian who stands against Nazism, which led to much affliction, isolation, imprisonment, and even execution. In his life, particularly when he got isolated, he reflected a lot on Christian community. He wrote a book called Life Together. In that book, he reflects on the importance of the presence of another for comfort. He writes, "The physical presence of other Christians is a source of in comparable joy and strength to the believer. The prisoner, the sick person, the Christian in exile sees in the companionship of a fellow Christian a physical sign of the gracious presence of the triune God. Visitor and visited in loneliness recognize each other in each other the Christ who is present in the body. They receive and meet each other as one meets the Lord in reverence, humility, and joy."
The presence of God is often and strategically manifested through the presence of a brother or sister in Christ. I say brother or sister in Christ instead of friend because we're talking about someone who can bring to you the presence of God. Your friends who don't know Jesus are wonderful people, and I'm sure they can encourage you. They do not bring you the presence of God. They can not bring to you the word of God. They cannot share with you faith in God. You need someone to draw near you, who literally carries about with them the aroma of God. It's like being hungry and someone coming outside to find you who smells like the kitchen. This smell immediately does something to your insides. You need it to be a brother or sister in Christ in whom the spirit of God dwells because they carry about with them the person of Jesus.
Friends, this means that our community, our church is not merely to be a place where we receive comfort, where we feel this heart of God that wants to move towards us and comfort us with his presence. But where that comfort creates a culture of comfort. So I want to conclude with just a few implications for us in our life together as a local church. What does it mean that the heart of God moves not just to comfort you, but it moves to comfort you so that you then have a medicine to administer to those around you? Well, this means that we need to take our presence towards other Christians and that presence could be physical. It could be over Zoom. It could be through a phone call. It could be through a letter. It could be through a text. Physical presence is always ideal, but it comes in many ways.
It means that what your presence conveys, and I don't want you to take this seriously, what your presence conveys to a person suffering is first, you are not alone. God is with you. How do you know God's with you? Because he's in me and I came to see you. He's right here. God is right here. The Bible says the spirit of God dwells in us and I am standing right next to you. You are not alone. You also in this, you say, "Listen, I represent that other people have lived upon God through storms and survived. I am a living witness to the sanity of your faith because I know you feel insane right now."
Second, our presence says this is not meaningless. The double edge of suffering is when it's not only hard, but you start to think it's pointless. Absolutely haphazard chaos. This passage tells us two things, at least in verse six, Paul says, "We're afflicted for the sake of your comfort." Meaning whatever you have gone through or are going through is forming in a medicine cabinet so that you can look around at the battlefield that is following Jesus today and you can specifically go find people and you could say depression, losing a child, a miscarriage, failed dreams, I have a balm for that. No, it's not easy, but I'm here to tell you you can get through this. God is building a medicine cabinet in you. Paul also tells us in verse six that this sorrow and comfort is producing in you patience and endurance. It's making you strong and you're not in this alone.
The third thing our presence says to another is that this sorrow or suffering is not final. This will not have the final word, which is why Paul says to them, "If we are being afflicted, it is for your comfort and for your salvation." The Christian represents to the friend, to the brother or sister in Christ suffering that this is not how your story will end. Your story ends in salvation and it ends in deliverance, either now or in the life to come. But the time is fast approaching and it will be glorious and you will be okay.
Your church leadership has been thinking a lot over the last month or two about the state of our church's heart. We've wondered in how much we've been displaced because of COVID and the myriad of other things that press down on us, we've been wondering how we're doing at comforting one another. We want to lean into this part of God's heart, that he not only comforts us, but he wants to cultivate in his hearts that comfort others. So I'd like to just first ask you if you would lean into this, if you would think about the ways God has brought you through trials, even if it's been messy, not simple, and you would begin to ask yourself in the morning, rather than just saying, "Lord, comfort me," say, "Lord, is there anybody that you want me to comfort today and bring to them the comfort of God?"
Also you'll see that we're sending out a survey to the whole church, a survey where we're checking on our church's heart. I want to encourage you to fill this out. It remains anonymous unless you choose to include your name, but it just walks through a couple areas of life and ask how you're doing, finances, relationships, spirituality, emotions, and it offers some places where you can give us some feedback. We're a big church, we're spread out, but we want to get more strategic and we want to press in to this promise that he wants to comfort us. We want to know you better so we can do that better. So remember this, friends, Jesus is gentle and lowly and his father is the father of mercies and he is the God of all comfort.
Lord, thank you for your word. I do pray Lord that this would move from our heads into our hearts and we would feel your comforting presence anew. Amen.