His book in Arabic is holding up my Bible here, so. You never know how God's gonna use you, right? I don't need it. I'll knock it over, probably. Ryan Fullerton knew that I was gonna be here this weekend, and he calls me about 6.30 or 7. Say, Mac, I want you to greet the church in Corpus Christi. Send them my warm greetings. So, salute from Ron Fullerton to you. And he's praying for these meetings and for your church. Well, back to 2 Corinthians 1 this morning. We're gonna read verses three through 10. Three through 10. This will not be a long sermon, I don't think. You know, last words of the Apostle Paul, finally, brethren, then he keeps going. But I'm not like Paul in that regard. I've trimmed down the length that I often speak. So we're going to read in a moment beginning with verse three. But I want you to hear my goal this morning and I want you to get this very clearly. And I hope if you're at all a note taker, When I give you the major truths, write them down. I'll try to repeat them twice. But those of you who aren't note takers, and I never was a note taker. My wife's just tremendous note taker, but I never could do it and follow what was being said, you know. So but here is where we're going. Here's what I want you to get from last night and this morning about suffering. Now, some of you all were not here last night. So for you to really benefit from this morning, you ought to listen to part one. And basically, it means this. No matter how strong, macho, successful you think you are, real suffering is coming to your life in the future. Real suffering. And it'll break you to remake you, to drive out pride, and arrogance and self-dependence, which runs in our blood until God changes us. And so we must, number one, view suffering biblically. Because if our minds don't get renewed to the truth of what the Bible teaches about suffering, we will not pass the test. We'll flunk out. We'll blow it, we'll get bitter. We will not learn the lessons from our suffering that God wants us to. So we have to go to school in the school of Jesus Christ and the classes or the degree comes from God's Word. So God wants you and I as Christians to learn to view suffering biblically. Number two, to embrace it willfully and joyfully. Now that's even harder. You can know truth about it. But we have to learn to embrace it because God has brought it. And we have to learn to rejoice in it. The New Testament talks about rejoicing and suffering. And that's harder to do. But you know how we do it. Those songs we sang this morning, just get down a hymnal. Open your phone and sing a hymn. That's how you rejoice and trust. Paul and Silas in the Philippian jail, their backs were bloody from being beaten. At midnight, they're singing songs. Wouldn't you like to hear a recording of that? I wonder if Silas said it or did Paul said it. I wonder who said it first. Brother, why don't we sing? We ain't got anything else to do. Let's sing. And they sang praises to God in their suffering. No excuse. You can embrace your suffering and you can choose to rejoice. And a means is reading a psalm or singing hymns. So viewing suffering biblically. Number two embracing it willfully and joyfully. And number three then go as a comforter to those who are miserable all around you. Those who are suffering and hurting and needy. I tell you know this already. They're next door to you in your neighborhood. They're in your office where you work. They're in school in a class of yours. They're down the street. They're the homeless. You know, I would I step down of being an elder in October after 24 years. And I have five wonderful elders there with me who are now my elders. They always were. But so, you know, it's different days for me. But the Lord, I said, Father, whatever you want me to be doing, I'm ready. And in Denton where I live there's a there's a loop around the city called Loop 288 and there's a large homeless shelter there. And you turn on that loop and you see many walking to and fro on that half mile stretch. And one day the Lord said why don't you prepare two meals a day yourself or buy them. and take two bags with a meal and bottled water and you find two individuals and you feed them and love them and speak kindly to them. The hurting are all around us brethren. So when you view suffering biblically and you embrace yours willfully and joyfully You're going to get a boatload of comfort from God. And you're to go be a missionary. To those that are hurting around you. That's what this message is about this morning. Second Corinthians 1 3 through 10 will read. Blessed be the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ the father of mercies and the God of all comfort. Who comforts us in all our tribulation. that we may be able to comfort those who are in any trouble with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our consolation also abounds through Christ. Now, if we are afflicted, it's for your consolation. Pause. You get afflicted with the trial, suffering. God saying this is for your benefit and for the future comfort of someone else. If we are afflicted verse six it is for your consolation and salvation meaning your continued sanctification and salvation which is effective for enduring the same sufferings which we also suffer. Notice there too we must endure suffering. You're not going to escape it. So why not endure it as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. As you are partakers of the sufferings. So also you will partake of the consolation for we do not want you to be ignorant brethren of our trouble which came to us in Asia. That we were burdened beyond measure above strength so that we despaired even of life. Yes, we had the sentence of death in ourselves that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God who raises the dead, who delivered us from so great a death and does deliver us in whom we trust that he will still deliver us. Father, bless your word now to us. Give us manna from heaven. Give us honey out of the rock. Give us something straight from your heart that we can embrace and that would get deeply rooted in our hearts. and change us. We ask you for your Holy Spirit now to especially minister in Christ's name. Amen. Last night I mentioned that there were about five different words used in this passage about suffering, tribulation, trouble, and there are about five different ones used 10 times. chapter 1 but the word comfort the single word comfort is also used ten times in the passage because for every suffering we go through the Lord has tailor-made specific comfort to give us in that suffering to take us through it in verse 3 he's called the God of all comfort The only used here in the New Testament, the God of all comfort. But it is only as we suffer that we will know in our experience the love and comfort of Christ more and more. When things are going great for you, there's no pressure. You feel as healthy as you've ever felt. More money in the bank than you need right now. No problems. The sky's always sunny. You don't need the Lord then. You don't feel the need. You tend then to live just independent, self-dependent. But it's when the pressure's on, it's when the pain comes. It's when the darkness rolls in. It's when the stress is all over you. You feel your limitation. You feel your your smallness. You feel your weakness. And that's when the Christian is driven to see Christ more. That's why troubles come to drive us to see Christ more that we might know more of his sufficiency and his power. in us. So comfort is always the medicine for suffering, always. Now, we get prescriptions, don't we? Yeah. But you know, you don't need chemo for the flu, do you? No. You don't need a strong antibiotic when you're just dehydrated. What do you need if you're really dehydrated? Duh, not a strong antibiotic. You need water. In other words, whatever your condition is, you need something very specifically that will meet that need to help you be better. Every trial that falls from above to your life, God has with it coming customized grace and comfort for you through that trial. We'll talk more about that shortly. And our Lord Jesus Christ tenderly and wisely knows what we need when we need it. He's never late. Sometimes we wish it comes quicker to help us but he's never late. But we will never know God's comforts without sorrow. I didn't write it but I love the words I walked a mile with pleasure. She chattered all the way but left me none the wiser for all she had to say. I walked a mile with sorrow. Never a word said she. But all the things I learned from her when sorrow walked with me. So. Just some major truths here. Number one. Look at verse eight. Trouble comes. Paul said. spoke about the trouble which came to us in Asia. We don't know what it was, but we know it was major horror, because he says down there, beyond measure, burdened above our strength, we think we're going to die. This is it. We don't know what it was, but it was bad. And Paul wasn't a superman. He was wilting under this. Our Lord Jesus Christ wilted under the weight of the cross, the shadow of the cross that was coming over him in the garden. He wilted so severely he didn't want to drink the cup. And angels had to come and strengthen him in the garden. Paul is wilting here because he says, because of the troubles that came to us. Have you had one come lately to your house and knock on your door? Hello, Mr. Mack. I'm back pain. I'm come to visit you for a while. Hello. I'm the notice that you just lost your job through no fault of your own, and you don't know what the future holds. Trouble comes is what I'm trying to say. It comes when we don't want it to. We never want it to come, but it comes. Trouble comes. And it's so hard sometimes when it comes. That's why if you want to endure it, you have to learn to walk with God through it. And we have to man up, woman up, whatever you want to call it, Christian up. And we have to learn to walk with God in the darkness and in the pain because trouble comes. We have a lady in our church Her name is Sherry. She's about 40, maybe 45. 25, 30 years ago, she had moved to New York City from Fort Worth to pursue a career as an actress. And she was living in one of the boroughs in New York City, and she accidentally, with others in the building, drank some contaminated water that came into the apartments. And she woke up one day violently sick, and she had to go home, move back to Texas. Weeks went by, months went by. She woke up one morning, and every joint in her body was locked, frozen. Not cold frozen, but hard frozen. And for 35 years, she's been in this condition. She can move her head a little. She can, with one hand, use a computer. But her husband, Kevin, of 40 years, he married her after she was in this condition. When they met, they both had been converted through listening to Paul Washer. And they were just on fire for the Lord. And for 35, 40 years, Kevin has picked Sherry up out of the bed, into a chair, out of the chair, into the toilet, onto the toilet, back on the chair, onto the couch, thousands of times. He's our caregiver. That lady has not been paying free in three and a half decades. She lives in constant pain, sometimes very, very worse than other days. But every time we would go see her. She's one of the most joyful Christians I've ever, ever seen, honestly. It's an immense blessing to just be with her. Trouble came to Sherry in a way that it came to Johnny Erickson Tata. To Amy Carmichael, read her life in the 20th century. Trouble comes and we're not shielded from it. And the greatest trouble of all of history came on who? The Lord Jesus. We can't even conceive of what it meant for Him to begin to feel the weight of guilt and the shame and the humiliation. Trouble and the Psalms the Messianic Psalms. Reflect it don't they. My soul is. He said my soul is exceedingly troubled under death. Trouble comes. What kind of trouble all kinds of trouble. How in various forms. When. whenever we don't want it to. It still comes. It comes unexpectedly. It comes when you're doing great. Why does it come? Because our father has purpose to make us like his son. And troubles and suffering are our employees. Paul said they work for us a more exceeding and eternal glorious reality. You would not be like Jesus to the degree that you are this morning if you hadn't gone through hard things. You would love him less if you had gone through less things. He would not be as real to you today if you hadn't gone through hard things where you were pushed and forced and dragged to have to embrace Him and hold on for dear life. Trouble comes. That's truth number one. Second truth, it is God Himself who comforts us. Trouble comes, but it is God Himself who comforts us. Verse 3 says, the God of all comfort who comforts us He is the source of your comfort. Now what kind of things does he use to comfort you? A brother's encouragement? A sister's? Praying with you? A book you might read? A sermon you might hear? He can use anything he wants to. We would better remember who's the source of it. Do not look to man to be your comforter. They'll fail you. most of the time. How many of you ever gone to someone and you wanted to share, and you start sharing, and they actually interrupt you before you're finished, and you leave, you say, they didn't hear a word that I said really. They did not let their heart listen to me. so I could really share it. People will always fail us to be our comforter. We have one comforter. Well, we actually have three in one. How real is God to us in our pain and in our suffering? He better be real. Isaiah 50 talks about who is who is. Let me just turn to it so I don't butcher it. Isaiah. You don't need to turn to it. Just listen to it. You can note it. This is a tremendous verse. Who among you fears the Lord? Who obeys the voice of his servant? Who walks in darkness and has no light? Let him trust in the name of the Lord and rely upon his God. When you're walking in darkness and you have no light and no understanding, You can trust in the Lord and rely upon God. So in your darkness and pain, you tell him, Lord Jesus, I am trusting you in this. This hurts. I don't like it, but be with me now. I'm trusting you. I'm relying on you. That's faith. That is faith. Do you have such faith? It is God who comforts us. Verse four. Paul says he comforts us with comfort that we ourselves are comforted by God. What do you know in your life of the comfort of the Holy Spirit drawing near? What do you know of the presence of Christ coming to you in your sorrows? And he comforts you and you know it's him. And your heart is strengthened. and some encouragement just kind of begins to trickle in like medicine. Verse five says our consolations abound through Christ. It is in a time of suffering that our mind and our heart must recall that our help, our hope and our comfort comes from the Lord alone. The psalmist said, I will lift up my eyes into the hills from which comes my help. My help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth. Cursed is the one who trusts in man. Blessed is the one who has the God of Jacob for his help. The God of all comfort brings us into trials of sorrows and difficulties, and when we are subject to them, they've come to us. We then feel our own weakness, frailty, and nothingness, and we're then meant to roll the whole matter and the issue upon the Lord. Cast thy burdens on the Lord and He will sustain you. Casting all your care upon Him because He cares for you. I grew up on a cotton farm in West Texas, and we used to pick cotton in what's called a tow sack. Who's older than 60 who knows what a tow sack is? It was a burlap sack, right? And we'd go through the rows, and the sack was pretty light, but you get it full, it gets heavy, and then you have to dump it in the trailer. Well... you take... What we do is we stuff our burdens and our griefs in the sack that's on our back. And like Christian, we're carrying this burden. It's a new one. The other one rolled out off at the cross when you were saved. But are you bagging your pains and not vomiting them out upon the Lord Jesus Christ? Casting all your care upon Him because He cares for you. Brethren, learn to cast them. Cast thy burdens on the Lord and He will sustain you. But it is in man's nature to escape from all pain and suffering or to deny it. So then we despise the suffering. Jesus didn't despise it. or we faint under it. He was fainting under it because he was one of us, but he didn't give in to it. He conquered it. For you, he conquered it. But we fall into self-centered discouragement, and our eyes go inward, and our mind goes on ourself, and we're just looking at ourselves, and that's a trap. Always a wrong move when you have pain and sorrow to look inward. or to look outward, we've got to look upward. Self, people, cannot help us ultimately. God, God, I will lift up my eyes to the hills from whence comes my help. My help comes from the Lord. So our suffering is meant to drive us to Christ, to receive the comfort He has waiting for us. You don't come for it, you ain't going to get it. That's not how the Greek says it, but that's how West Texan says it. So, where do we find comfort, brothers and sisters? What will give us consolation? Only Christ Himself. Only the Holy Spirit. The comfort of the Holy Spirit is necessary in our suffering to get us through it in victory. The only... You know what? Some of you... probably earn management maybe in your work. To manage something means what? To deal with it? To have it properly working where the end goal is met? That's a layman's simple, I've never been a manager, nor the son of a manager, but you get my point. The old preachers used to use this word, managing our afflictions. You've got to get on top of them. You've got to view them biblically. You've got to embrace them. You've got to joyfully begin to go through them. And you're responding to the Lord in relation to them. The only proper management of our afflictions and trials by which we become fruitful is by the comforts and consolation of the Holy Spirit directly on our minds and our hearts. This is why you have to have a vital relationship with the Holy Spirit. You have to stay full of the Spirit of God to know His consolations effectively. You know, when Jesus spoke in John 14, 15, and 16, I think chapter 16, He said, in this world you're going to have what? Trials and tribute in this world. You will have tribulation But then what was his next words? But be of good cheer. I've overcome the world his primary answer To prepare them for their trials Was they were gonna overcome? Because of him, but he was gonna send a what? comforter comforter And all that concerns us relative to our suffering, everything about your trials, everything about it. We stand in need of the comfort and consoling presence of the Spirit of God in our minds and in our hearts. Only the Holy Spirit in those times can make us experience the Father's love. No matter what we're going through, Only the Holy Spirit can enable us to rejoice in tribulation. You can't work that up and fake it. But he gives it. Only the Holy Spirit makes as the Thessalonians makes us receive the word in much affliction. Paul said in first Thessalonians. And they received the word in much affliction and with joy. Without the presence and empowering of the Holy Spirit in our sufferings, we will neglect the grace we need to get through the trial. The Holy Spirit is your lifeline to get the grace you need for the trial. On that cotton farm, one of my early jobs as a teenager was moving irrigation pipe. And it was 1966. I was a teenager, scrawny teenager. But you know, it was great money for 1966. $20 in the morning, $20 in the evening, 40 bucks a day in 1966 for a teenager? Wow. So those pipe were about, I don't know, five yards long. They had a spout in the middle. You'd spin the water and you had to carry them across 20 rows in the morning to where it's dry, add water. You'd come back 12 hours later, carry them to the next 20 rows where it's dry. What were those pipe? What were the purpose of those irrigation pipes? To channel the water to where it's needed. The Spirit of God is the one who channels living water to you from Christ to where it's needed. The dry heart, the needy heart, the broken heart, the hurting heart, the bewildered heart, the confused mind. Streams of living water are to come to us by the Holy Spirit. Next point, the extent of God's comfort. Look at verse 4 quickly. The extent of this comfort. How widespread can we expect it in our lives? The big trials we'll get some, but the little trials we don't need it. We don't need His comfort in the little ones. I need His comfort in the little ones. The little ones can throw me off sometimes as much as the big ones. Look at verse 4. He says that God comforts us in all our tribulation, and how much of it? All of it, that we may be able to comfort those who are in any trouble. So the extent of God's comfort to us is in any and every trial and every detail about it. None are excluded. There's no fine print in the contract that says, oh, by the way, you know, this month of the year or under these conditions, you won't get this. No, no fine print. The extent of his comfort is comfort for every trial you go through. Next truth. Verse five shows it to us. It is God's purpose for comfort to abound toward you. It's God's purpose to for his comfort to abound toward you in your suffering. For as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so take note of that. Here's Christians, and Paul says, sufferings abound in us, but also our consolation and comfort can abound also. To the degree you suffer, you can have abounding comfort, if you want it, and if you trust him for it. There's no shortcuts though. It is God's purpose for comfort to abound toward you in your sufferings. As you are partakers of suffering, so you will also partake of the comfort. Next truth. Which number is this? Someone who's a note taker, tell me. Five, this is number five. Thank you. Just as you partake of suffering, just as you partake of suffering, when you do, you will partake of His comfort. Right then it's coming. When the trial comes, you begin looking for the comfort. Lord, what do you have for me in this to strengthen me, to encourage me, to keep me trusting you? Lord, I want to milk this for all it's worth. If I'm going through it, you draw near to me and let me experience joy and your peace. It's medicine for the comfort. Just as you partake of suffering, So you will partake of God's comfort. Number six, verse four. God's comforts are to make us ministers of comfort. God's comforts to us are meant to turn us into a minister of comfort to others. Suffering equips you like nothing else to sympathize with fellow sufferers. to be able to comfort others. When your heart is made tender and humble through your pain and you get grace from Christ in that, you have a new heart of tenderness and comfort toward others that will make you sympathize more than you ever have and feel with them. Your sufferings are to make you a special preacher and messenger and missionary to those who are suffering and hurting all around you. You don't have to go to Jordan or Lebanon to be a missionary. Corpus Christi is full of hurting, suffering people. And your suffering is meant to become fuel for you to be sensitive to those around you that are hurting and to be the voice and love of Christ to those who you find out they just have been through a divorce. And a guy's a hard-drinking guy and he doesn't know why his wife just left him. And he's rocked. His world is rocked. And he has no voice of truth, no reality by which to view this. Can you be his reality? Yes. because he's hurting. Seize the moment of those around you that are in pain and hurting of being a missionary of mercy with the comfort that you have received from God yourself. Otherwise, your suffering, the benefits of your suffering, the good of your suffering will be aborted. It'll be wasted. Is this number seven? I never was good in math. Your sufferings are temporary. I'd like a loud hallelujah on that one. Isn't it great that they're temporary? It's a wrong interpretation, but it's a good application. It will come to pass. Sufferings pass. Normally they're temporary. Sherry Willingham's is going to pass. Hers are even temporary. These lot of afflictions, 2nd Corinthians 4 verse 17 says, these lot of afflictions which are but for a moment. Well man, you see Paul's list Here's what he calls a lot of afflictions for him. In prison, more frequently and near death often, from the Jews I was beaten five times, 39 lashes, three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned, three times I was shipwrecked, a night and day in the deep. In other words, he's floating in the sea, holding onto some board, Three days and three nights. In journeys often, in perils of water, in perils of robbers, in perils of my own countrymen, in perils of the Gentiles, in perils in the city, in the wilderness, in the sea, in perils among false brethren, in weariness and toil, in sleeplessness often, in hunger and thirst, in fasting often, in cold and nakedness. How many of us can match Paul and these afflictions. But he calls his these light afflictions that are temporary. Your sufferings are temporary. There's an old hymn. I know y'all don't know it, so I'm not going to sing it for you. It's called, Jesus is a Rock and a Weary Land. And it says this, The Lord's our rock, in Him we hide. A shelter in the time of storm. Oh Jesus is a rock and a weary land. A weary land, a weary land. Oh Jesus is a rock and a weary land. A refuge in the time of storm. You will either, as a believer, learn to view suffering biblically and embrace it willfully and joyfully and see a glorious experience with Christ come into your life and you'll be you'll look back on it and you'll you'll say, I'm so glad I went through that because Lord, I know you more. I love you more. I can trust you more in the future. Don't waste your sorrows, don't waste your sufferings, but let God have his way in your heart. Let's pray. Father, thank you for Second Corinthians and what the Apostle has taught us here. Lord, only you can make what we've heard this weekend sealed in our hearts where it would bear fruit. So we ask you to do that. Teach us your ways. Let us be taught by God the Holy Spirit and not just a man. Lord, I pray that various truths from yesterday and today as brethren go through things in the days ahead, you just bring to mind, bring to their remembrance to go back and read 2 Corinthians 1 and be helped to receive help from the Lord. Blessed be your name, O Father. In Jesus' name, Amen. We're going to sing.