Second Corinthians chapter one is our text this morning. And just, I felt led to revisit a universal theme that really applies to all Christians. If I asked for a show of hands today and just said, hold your hand up if you're going through something that's difficult, probably majority of hands would go up. Small things are difficult for many people, and then they go, the difficulty escalates, you know, off the charts. So 2 Corinthians, I want to speak on the theology of Christian suffering and God's comforts to us in our suffering. Our sufferings and God's comforts to us. We would feel hopeless if we suffered without hope of comfort coming and God helping us. But it's not just one side of the coin. Both sides of the coin are true that when believers suffer, there's comfort coming from God to them. This epistle is really an underappreciated and I think neglected book in the New Testament. For instance, if someone asked you to to tell them what was true of the church at Corinth? What would you base your answer on? What do you even know about 2 Corinthians? We got a lot of information about 1 Corinthians, so we would base our description of the church at Corinth on the first epistle, but we would be leaving out some things that were later true, right? So it's a neglected epistle. How familiar are we with it? Well, really, I think it's the most autobiographical book that Paul wrote. He's very transparent. He's brutally honest. He's real in this epistle about his sufferings. There were many multifaceted and often came just blow after blow after blow. He often didn't really get a respite from suffering until he was back in it. So, and I just want, I just want you to think this morning of some of the great standalone texts in 2 Corinthians. Some of the great New Testament texts come out of 2 Corinthians. I'll just give you a smattering, and I'm giving you this by way of introduction so you will have a new appreciation for 2 Corinthians in your mind. Paul says in one place, the testimony of our conscience is that we lived in this world with simplicity and godly sincerity. What a way to live. Simplicity, godly sincerity. Or another one, for all the promises of God in Christ are yea and amen. Or here's another one. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image, that is the image of Christ, by the Spirit of the Lord. Paul says, we preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus as Lord. Well, that ought to be a preacher's mantra. He says, God who commanded light to shine out of darkness has shined into our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. Phenomenal text in 2 Corinthians. Therefore, he says, we do not lose heart. For even though our outward man is decaying, our inner man is being renewed day by day. We walk by faith and not by sight. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he's a new creation. All things are passed away. Behold, all has become new. I could give you more, but here's a couple more. And he said to me, my grace is sufficient for you, for my strength is made perfect. in your weakness. And the last verse in the whole epistle, the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Many other great texts in this epistle. What a glorious book it is. And chapter one, in my opinion, is almost the highlight of the entire epistle. Now there are marvelous chapters in 2 Corinthians, entire chapters as you get into it that are meaty, that are rich, that are phenomenal. But chapter one stands out as marvelous in opening the epistle. What does it deal with, this chapter? It deals with the glories and the sufferings of the Christian life. Both come together. It deals with the glories and sufferings of the gospel ministry. Both come together. More than in any other book Paul wrote, he mentions his own trials and sufferings here. And in doing so, he makes himself a pattern, an example to the church at Corinth and to us this morning. of learning a proper theology of suffering. Now, why do I say it that way? Because you know and I know that all of life involves suffering, doesn't it? In some way. Life's hard. And if you and I don't have a proper theology of suffering worked out in our view, that it's real, it's gonna come, I can't avoid it, I can't escape it, and I've gotta learn to respond rightly to it, that's a theology of suffering. And if we don't have that, we will be a miserable Christian in the earth. So this is vitally important. And Paul gives the Corinthians a proper theology of suffering here, and he encourages them then about God's comforts that come with our suffering. So let's read chapter one, verses three. We'll just read through 10, because it ends in glorious hope. 2 Corinthians chapter one, verses three through 10. I'm reading from the Revised Standard Version. Verse three, 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 affliction, so that we may be equipped or able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For as we share abundantly in Christ's sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort Two, if we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation. If we're comforted, it's for your comfort, which you experience when you patiently endure the same sufferings 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 do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, of the affliction we experienced in Asia. For we were so utterly unbearably crushed that we despaired of life itself. While we felt that we had received the sentence of death, but that was to make us rely not on ourselves, but upon 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, but he will yet deliver us. May God bless his word to our hearts this morning. Let's pray. Father, thank you for Paul's life and ministry. And thank you for this epistle that's come to us as holy inspired scripture, the perfect word of the Lord that endures forever. So bless the truth from Paul by your Holy Spirit to us this morning for our help and our strengthening and our being equipped to be comforters to others. In Christ's name, amen. So to have, before we kind of get into the text, to have a correct biblical theology about suffering, to view it rightly and respond rightly to it, our thoughts must go from the micro to the macro. Meaning, when we have sufferings, we just, We double down on thinking about ourselves and looking in our sufferings and we're just in our own little world. And we've got to look at the bigger picture, the macro picture of why suffering entered the world and why since the very first moment of suffering to the present, why has the world been in such suffering since the Garden of Eden? Right, it started, life under the sun involves suffering. To Eve, after they sinned, God said, in childbearing you will have pain, suffering, hardship, I'm paraphrasing. And then he said, Adam, you will now, work with ground that is cursed. And from it are going to come thorns and thistles. The sweat of your brow is going to be difficult, difficult. Man is born. Babies, when they come out of the womb, they're not laughing and giggling, they're crying. Life begins with crying and life ends often in pain and fear and crying at death. Why? Because all of life involves the cause of man's sin, suffering. It's woven into the fabric of our existence as humans now, both individually and family relationships and church relationships and state governmental relationships and national relationships and nations with nations. Sin and therefore pain and sorrow and mistrust and suspicion and greed and judgment and pride is all woven into the fabric that brings suffering all the time in life. You know, someone dies when they're 40 and people are sad and they say, just way too early in their sadness. Someone dies when they're 80 And their final years, Solomon said, will be if, with three scorned ten and by reason of strength more, it comes with sorrow and trouble and sadness. So my point is all of life for everyone involves suffering. Discouragement, doubt that just bothers you, feeling isolated, feeling purposelessness, and you're suffering mentally, emotionally. Change-bringing, you lose friendships, and on and on and on. All of it, all of life involves periodic suffering because this is life under the sun because of sin. I mean, what's the world population right now? 8.1 billion sinners, 8 billion sinners, And you got 8 billion cases every hour of evil and greed and hatred and murder and darkness and disease and death on the earth. It's all a basket called suffering. I think it took me a while to realize I needed to face times of suffering and not be afraid of them and deny it and try to avoid and get out of it. Because we're going to suffer genuinely through life as long as we live. So we must learn to manage our sufferings. We try to manage our home, our cars, our health. We ought to manage our sufferings. better. So this message has two points, our sufferings and God's comforts. So the first, our suffering. Major point, the Christian life is a life of tribulation. It's pure and simple. That's what God said about the Apostle Paul. I will show him, right upon his conversion, I'm going to show him what he must suffer for my name's sake. The Lord Jesus Christ is called to come into this world of darkness and his entire life from early on involved suffering. And he was the man of sorrows, the ultimate maximum quantitative and qualitative suffering in human experience, our Lord Jesus Christ experienced in our behalf. So the Christian life is a life of tribulation. Now getting to the text, look beginning at verse four and just follow here. Paul mentions trials or sufferings 10 times. from verses three to verse eight. Various translations will use the word tribulation, or suffering, or affliction, or trouble, or being crushed. or despair or burdened, all of it has to do with the same basket of suffering. Verse four, he says, he mentions all of our afflictions, any affliction. So you go on to verse five and he says, we share abundantly in Christ's sufferings. The believer is organically and inextricably linked in your life of suffering with the Lord Jesus Christ in his suffering. You're going through things as a believer that Christ as a man went through, and you're sharing and experiencing the same sufferings that he went through, not to the same degree, but the same kind and the same experiences. Verse six. Paul says, if we are afflicted. Well, he's not implying we won't be, but when we are afflicted, so all of us have these. What are yours? What's the most real one to you in your life right now? It may be a long one. It may be a brief one. It might be a brand new one that started this past week. If we are afflicted, well, indeed we are as Christians. In verse seven, he says that we are partakers of the sufferings. Look at verse seven. Our hope for you is unshaken, for we know that as you share in, or you are partakers in our sufferings. So Paul kind of sums it up with two words in verse eight, this reality. He says, for we do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, of the affliction we experienced in Asia. Now, I think the new King James says, we don't want you to be ignorant of the troubles that came to us in Asia. So here's how you summarize it. For the Christian, troubles come. They show up, and they're not going anywhere till God removes them. They surprise you, they grieve you, they scare you, and you're not ready for them. You don't, I don't want this, it's not time for, why this? No, troubles come. Paul says the troubles that came to us in Asia. Another translation says the afflictions we experienced in Asia. We don't know what those were, but you know what? They were so bad and hard that Paul here says we were almost utterly crushed. In verse eight, he says that. We were so, for we were so utterly unbearably crushed that we despaired even of life. Utterly crushed, Paul is saying in his mind and heart, I'm fixing to die, life's over, I'm gone, it's over, I'm a dead man. That's how severe this was, though we don't know the nature of it fully. There's theories. But troubles and sufferings come to all of us. Paul didn't escape it because he was an inspired apostle. No one escapes this stuff. He says to the Philippians, it has been granted to you for the sake of Christ, that you should not only believe on him, but that you suffer for his namesake. So two gifts of grace there from the get-go, faith in Christ and suffering starts. Faith in the Lord Jesus and tribulation begins. Why? Because unlike all those other blind salmon or fish that are going one way, you're swimming upstream now with Christ against the current, against the tide, and everybody else that you knew is going the other way, and you're on a different path now, and it produces hardship and suffering of all kinds. There is no Christian life, there is no Christian service or experience or ministry or church that does not have suffering mixed into it and written into it. Everything in the Christian experience does involve suffering. Why? Because we are connected to the great one who suffered for us. The Lord Jesus Christ suffered in order to reign for us. And every believer, therefore, the Bible says, suffers to become like Him in order that we might what? Reign with Him. No suffering, no reigning with Him. So here's why it's so important for us to view this properly. And I'm going to let one of the experts, Johnny Erickson Tada. She's known a little bit about suffering. Here's what she said. This is wonderful. Quote, without a doubt, what helps us most in accepting and dealing with suffering is an adequate and proper view of God. Learning who he truly is and what he's like and knowing that he's in control and you learn to trust him. Let me repeat that. Without a doubt, what helps us most in accepting and dealing with suffering is an adequate and proper view of God. Learning who He truly is, what He's truly like, and knowing He's in control, and learning to trust Him through anything and everything. Now, we have a problem. Houston, we have a problem. We don't want to accept suffering. But she says, in accepting and then dealing with suffering. But we don't want to accept it. We just want it to stop. And it's a very shallow view of God in the Christian life, if we view it that way, to think and to be have shallow praying, it's always just asking God to prevent sufferings, to stop hardships, always heal everybody, always make things easy, make the pain go away. And it's like he's become an Uber driver or a problem fixer for us. We just want him to handle all things and let life be easy. And so we pray that way oftentimes. Lord, just help them and please, please heal them quickly and let things get better quickly. Brethren, that's a shallow way to pray. It's an emotional way to pray. It's kind of a loving way to pray, but it's not biblical. God doesn't always heal. He doesn't keep babies that are dying from dying. He doesn't always rescue. He doesn't bring healing when you long for it. He doesn't change situations near as quickly as you want him to. No, he does not. So we cannot be narcissist and self-centered in viewing our suffering. We have to accept it often and embrace it. And there's nothing dangerous about doing that because you know the one who brought it to you. How much scripture has beauty and power in it, which we would never see, the sweetness of which we would never taste were it not for trials and suffering. When everything's great with us, the Bible isn't as sweet. If I'd like to meet the person that that's true of them and find out how they made that happen. But it's when things are hard, and you get into God's word, he will speak like never before into your need and comfort will come. Only suffering drives us to real prayer. Only suffering drives us into the Bible more deeply, deeply, deeply. not to get your theology improved, but to get your heart and your mind straight and healed and healthy. Only suffering brings us to deeper, more desperate dependence on Christ, because it drives us and it draws us to find peace and rest and comfort in the Lord Jesus. And that's why, Paul, goes from suffering to comforts. But first, just think about the bigger picture of the Christian suffering. Discouragements of all kinds. Sickness. Consequences from sin's choices. That brings suffering all the time. Sadness, pain, children's needs and sorrows that we can't quickly make go away. Rejection in this world as a believer, disregarded by this world because you're a Christian, persecution, fractured relationships, a loss of friendships that were special to you, hated by some, mistreated by others, slander, loss of reputation, many other things. Multifaceted trials and sufferings. that are unique to you when you're going through it? Well, our sufferings. But then secondly, second point, our comforts, God's comforts in our suffering in the same text. Now, before we just look at these briefly, five different words are used by Paul about our suffering. But here in this chapter, He mentions comfort 10 times. And it's the idea of comforting a child who needs comforting, bringing consolation, tenderness and encouragement and peace and settling down. You know, a doctor recently had to stick me four times to draw blood. And every time I wanted to tell him, hey, why don't you get a nurse? And the pain was coming every time. And finally, when it was in, I felt relief, right? I felt consolation come. That's over. Well, that's what God does. He brings consolation to us. In verse three, in fact, there's a phrase here used only in the New Testament here, the God of all comfort. That's how he's described, that's your father. He's the God of all comfort. That means he's the one primary and only source of any true comfort, it comes from him. It is only as we suffer that we will know in our experience the love and comfort of Christ more dearly. Comfort is always the medicine for suffering. And our Lord Jesus tenderly and wisely knows what we need in every trial and affliction. Brethren, if we really just believe that what I'm going through, whatever it might be, however you'd fill in the blank, if you can train yourself to say to yourself and to Him, Lord Jesus, you have the perfect, medicine and remedy to help me through this with joy. And he does. The comfort that's awaiting you is as real as the trial you're going through. Sufferings, yes, but comfort's on the way, because God has promised it. Comfort is always the medicine. Now think about it, if you have the flu and you go and see a doctor and say, I think I need to put you on chemo, then you're in your car pretty quick. You don't need chemo for the flu, right? You don't need a strong antibiotic when you're just dehydrated. The Lord Jesus Christ knows exactly the perfect prescription for you. that will tenderly begin to comfort you in your sorrows and bring the hardness and the heat down to a cooler level where you're kind of, okay, God's ending this. Lord, you're helping me now and I'm experiencing this. But we will never know those comforts. We will never know the preciousness of Christ more deeply. We will never experience the gentle and lowly one who comes and gives us rest unless we need rest, unless we need to come into a season where his sufficiency is made real to us. The glorious brightness of his person shines brightest in the darkness. I was in the Sinai Desert back in the 70s, and we were way down south of Tel Aviv, 10 hours from any city, and the stars were bright. I mean, exceedingly bright. And you know, I think I was up in Paris, Texas a couple of months ago preaching. You know, it's more rural. And early one morning, the stars were so incredibly beautiful because they shine only, but they shine best in the darkness. An hour later, I couldn't see any of them because light had dawned. Christ's presence and His promises and His comfort only comes to us and becomes sweet in our darkness and in our suffering. So back to the text, there's major truths here about comfort, and I'm just gonna hit on them. And you can fill in the blanks, you could study it later. But major truths about our comforts in our suffering, number one, It is God himself who comforts us. Verse three, blessed be the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the father of mercies and the God of all comfort, who comforts us. It is God himself who comforts us. Why? Because you are his child and he is your father. It's God himself who comforts us. How? Many ways. A brother comes alongside, strengthens you. Somebody picks you up at the hospital after a week, and they say, what can I do for you? How about a peach milkshake? And we get one, and we're driving, and I'm so glad to be out of the hospital. I could just shout out the window. Comforts come. God comforts us, but in different ways through different people. But primarily, more than any other way, He comforts us by the ministry of the Holy Spirit to us. Uniquely, especially directly by the Holy Spirit. Verse four says, we're comforted with the comfort that we ourselves have been comforted by God. We're able to comfort others with the comfort that we ourselves have been comforted directly by God himself. Verse five, our consolations abound through Christ. Always through Christ, only through Christ. Consolations come in and through him. It is in a time of suffering that our mind and heart must recall that our help and comfort comes from the Lord alone. Blessed is he who has the God of Jacob for his help, whose hope is in the Lord his God. I will lift up my eyes unto the hills from whence comes my help. My help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth. So first point, it's God himself who comforts us. Number two, verse four, Paul speaks about the extent of God's comfort. The extent of his comfort says, For those who are in any affliction, God has comfort. So the extent of his comfort is for every trial, nothing you go through is exempt from God having comfort for you if you will avail yourself of it. The extent of his comfort is in every affliction, in all afflictions and trials, none are excluded. All right, truth number three, verse five has it for us. It is God's purpose for comfort to abound toward you in your suffering, not just trickle. It is God's purpose for comfort to abound toward you in your suffering. Verse five, for as we share abundantly in Christ's sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too. Some of you have been through things so hard, you don't feel the abundant comfort yet. You feel any? Yeah, guess what's coming? Abundant comfort, more comfort, healing comfort, where you're really over it, where you're really healthy again, where you're really trusting again, and your vitality comes, and you can live vibrantly for Christ and joyfully for Christ, and then you become a missionary of comfort to others. with the comfort that you've received. All right, let me hurry on. 1 Peter 4 talks about this, about don't be surprised when you're persecuted, for it's then that the spirit of grace and glory rest on you. In verse seven, Paul says, for as you are partakers of the suffering, so you will also partake of the comfort. All right, truth number four is found in verse seven. And it's that which I just said. Just as you partake of suffering, you will partake of his comforts. So they go right side by side together. You're suffering through something, there's comfort available by God's grace in that situation. Every situation, they parallel one another, partaking of suffering, partaking of his comforts. The Christian profits and benefits from every trial we go through, every one of them, none of them are wasted. Every heartache we have, every tear we shed, every darkness we're in, benefits us. They are our employees. And they're gathering and they're gaining for us a great harvest for eternal future glory. J. I. Packer said this, the weaker we feel, the harder we lean. And the harder we lean, the stronger we grow. I agree with Packer on that. The weaker we feel, the harder we lean, and the harder we lean, the stronger we grow. There is nothing we suffer from that doesn't deepen us and benefit us. But see, you gotta accept the suffering. It's your friend, not your enemy. because it's going to be a sanctifying tool to make you more like the Lord Jesus than ever before. So don't reject suffering, don't fear it, embrace it, accept it, and go through the school of Christ and that affliction. and he's walking with you in the fire, and the Holy Spirit is your teacher and your comforter, and you come out the other end, transform. I think I said to Nicholas earlier, I said, man, you're gonna be as tall as me soon. Change comes, change comes, right? I mean, not that that's tall, I'm not saying that, but change comes, change comes, brethren. And some change is only going to come through what you suffer from and no other way. Point number five, God comforts us to make us ministers of comfort. Verse five. It's a glorious truth. Verse four says, He comforts us in all our affliction in order that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction. With what comfort are you going to comfort them with? Only with the comfort you got from God when you were hurting. Suffering equips you to minister to fellow sufferers. It makes you man, woman, boy or girl, a special preacher and messenger and missionary to a particular kind of people. Who are those? Those right around you that are hurting. Neighbors, you have neighbors that are hurting right now. Colleagues at work, friends, extended family. Everybody we see is hurting somehow. and you are to be a missionary of hope and comfort to those who are suffering, because you have what they don't have, in many cases, for those who are suffering and hurting. So to summarize the believers' comforts, they far outweigh our sufferings. The suffering Christian is still a child of God and has peace with God, that's a comfort. We have forgiveness of sins even when we're crying and weeping. That's a comfort. Our church has a true family. That's a comfort. real eternal purpose in life, even when you're suffering. You have a Bible that's true and trustworthy. You have answered prayers and deliverances and healings when God does do it. And that's a comfort and makes you keep praying. But brethren, we ought to persevere in prayer, no matter what we see. We don't have to see it. We're to never cease praying. We're to pray without ceasing. We're to pray and not give up, not faint. We have God as our Father, that's a comfort. And Christ as our Lord. And the Holy Spirit is our empowering presence and comforter. We have the promises of God and the love of the brethren. We have eternal life. And we have a glorious, unimaginable future that is before us that we're all heading to in Christ. where it's all gonna be over, and sin's mouth will be stopped forever, the Bible says, and Christ will be reigning, and then He's gonna gather it all up, and He's gonna deliver it to the Father, that God will be glorified in all. And we will forever be with the Lord, and forever reign with Him, heirs of God, and joint heirs but Jesus Christ, if we suffer with Him, so that we will be glorified with Him. Brethren, our sufferings are so temporal, but the glories and the comforts are lasting and eternal. So take heart and press on, trusting in this great Savior, who's going to bring you through anything you will ever face, and you'll come out refined, you'll come out as pure gold, you'll come out more like him, you'll come out more humble and more grateful and more useful to the glory of Christ. Amen, let's pray. Father, thank you for the blessedness of this truth. What a wonder it is. I just think of that great hymn. When you lead us to the valley of vision, we can see you in the heights. Though our being humbled, we wouldn't want it to be our experience, but it's there in the valley that your glory shines so bright. So we pray that you would equip us to suffer well and to learn in those times to appropriate and experience the comforts because when you comfort the suffering Christian, they have joy and they have peace in the midst of that trial. Lord, teach us to live in such a way that what Paul says in 2 Corinthians 1 is true in our lives to the glory of Christ. We pray in his name, amen. We'll have a break before we worship.