Trust in God - 2 Corinthians 1 verses 3-11
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
Some of you may remember that poem from the film 'Four Weddings and a Funeral.' It was penned by W H Auden. It captures the pain of grief in a very powerful way. I am sure many of you can identify with those words. It may not have been a death but at some moment in life you literally wanted 'to stop all the clocks.' Quite literally you did not know how you were going to face, no mind live through, another minute. I am sure many of you can identify with such sentiments. What happens at the moment the devastating news arrives? To whom do you turn when the storms of life literally overflow the bows of your little boat? Where do you find the strength to get up off the floor and put one step in front of another?
Let me say to you I am not speaking from some theoretical. I am speaking as someone who has known deep loss personally. In my time I have known times of so much pain, loss, grief and betrayal that I truly wondered how I would survive as a Christian. It was to passages such as this that I turned to find again the comfort of God as a Father and strength from His Word to continue to walk with Him and trust Him. So I am not speaking to you from a theological ivory tower but as someone who has experienced this for himself.
Let me give you a word of warning as I begin. This blog may be easy to accept in your mind but it will be harder to accept in your heart and in your life's experience. You may listen and agree with all I say from God's Word but do not be surprised when suffering comes that you ask, as many of you have in the past: What have I done wrong? What is God trying to tell me? Some of you may even doubt your relationship with God because of the suffering you are going through. Look to 2 Corinthians 1 verses 3-11.
2 Corinthians was written in the autumn of AD56. Titus has arrived as a pastoral assistant to Paul and brought news of how the Corinthian church had positively received Paul's first 'severe letter' (7.6-16). Titus also brings disturbing fresh news about the Corinthian church. Paul exhorts them in this letter to complete their promised collection for the church in Jerusalem before he arrives. He also wants them to examine and judge themselves before he arrives so that they would be able to distinguish true apostles from false apostles and to spare Paul the need to exercise discipline in the church. The passage before us falls into two main thoughts:
Verses 3-7 Gratitude for Divine Comfort.
Verses 8-11 Deliverance from Death.
Verses 3-7 Gratitude for Divine Comfort
Paul would normally begin his letter with an introduction (which he does here) and follow it with thanks for the divine grace evident in the lives of the believers in the church to which the letter is addressed. This would be followed by a summary prayer request for them. However, in verses 3 and 4 Paul praises God for consoling and encouraging him. This is very unlike Paul. He rarely is concerned with his own sufferings and distress for the sake of the gospel. Ten times in verses 3-7 Paul mentions comfort/consolation or encouragement - which all come from the same root word 'parakelsis' - which is 'praclete' which is the name that Christ calls the Holy Spirit in John 14.16 - the Comforter, the one who walks alongside you and helps you. Verses 3 and 4 are part of the liturgical formula of a Jewish blessing. This blessing began the Shema prayer in the synagogue. Paul offers this prayer of blessing for the comfort, consolation and encouragement that he has recently received. If you look at verse 3 you can see that Paul says God is revealed and known as 'God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.' He goes on to state that God is the Father of all mercies and God of all comfort. God is the all merciful Father as the BCP collect said: "whose nature is always to have mercy ..." He is the God of all comfort - that is He is the source of comfort, consolation and encouragement to the believers in all circumstances. If you look at verses 8-10 for a brief moment you will see that Paul is speaking here from personal experience. This is a theology of suffering and consolation birthed in personal experience of suffering, almost to the point of death. Through trial and tribulation Paul has known God's comfort, consolation and strengthening. God's comfort not only enabled him to endure the suffering but to find blessing in the suffering and from that to comfort others. Here is the ultimate purpose of God's comfort in Paul's life - to enable him to bring comfort to others. There is almost a cyclical process created here by God - God comforts the one in distress and suffering so that they might learn from that situation to be able to bring God's comfort and blessing to others who are suffering distress.
read verses from Lamentations 3, verses 22-24. God's compassion or comfort is new every morning and it never fails. I could have taken you to Psalms 102, 135, 143 or 146 and asked you to read similar verses about God's encouragement to those in distress and suffering.
Verse 5 - What is the purpose of all this suffering and comfort? Is that not the question we always ask ourselves and we hear others asking in times of suffering? Why? Why me? Why now? Etc. Paul begins verse 5 with the little word 'For.' 'For' supplies the reason why suffering equips the Christian to mediate God's comfort. Whenever Christ's suffering were multiplied in Paul's life; God's comfort was also multiplied through the ministry of Christ. 'The sufferings of Christ' - are those which befall every Christian disciple (12.2). If you turn to Acts 14.22 and Colossians 1.24 you will see that these sufferings contribute to the fulfilment of the suffering destined for the body of Christ. Added to which if you turn to Acts 9.4-5 you will see that Christ continues to identify Himself with the suffering of His church. Then if we turn to Matthew 20.23 - these words of Jesus are true in Paul's experience, and no doubt in the experience of many of you here this morning. Paul, and the Corinthians, would not have had to suffer if they were not 'in Christ' but also because they are in Christ they receive divine comfort.
You see, Paul wants them to realise and to understand that the measure of comfort, consolation and encouragement they receive from God is far more than they need or require but is an abundance to be shared with those in need of comfort, consolation and encouragement. They are blessed by God in and through their sufferings so that they might be a blessing to others. They are blessed not in order to store it away for their own future benefit but for the benefits of those in the body of Christ, around them, who are suffering as they are.
Verses 6-7 - can be summarised in the following sentence: Whether we be afflicted, it is for your good: or whether we be comforted, it is for your good. In verse 6 Paul restates verse 4 - that in suffering he becomes a better pastor to the believers at Corinth. Because he has endured, received consolation and encouragement from God he will be able to comfort them and encourage them to keep going in and through their suffering. He makes explicit what he has assumed up to this point in the letter - he argues from his experience of suffering to their experience of comfort and deliverance. Then in verse 7 he explicitly states his unshaken hope (and remember in the NT hope is not some vague wish but something of which the speaker is certain) - namely that they would triumph over suffering because of the comfort brought to them by the experience of Paul, and others, who have been comforted by God through suffering.
Verses 8-11 Deliverance from Death.
Paul now shares with them his own heart and experience of suffering. In verse 8 we have a description of the affliction that Paul had come through. I want you to note that Paul does not go into any great detail as to the nature of the suffering or affliction. He simply but profoundly states that it was overwhelming, leaving him with a feeling that he was going to die under this affliction. This has led many commentators to conclude that it must have been some sort of illness that Paul thought he would not recover from. The affliction, whatever it was, was so heavy on Paul that he despaired of life itself. I am sure many of you can identify with that. I am sure many of you have sat down in a chair and thought 'stop all the clocks...' Here is Paul expressing what Elijah expressed back in 1 Kings 19 when he asks God to let him die. Here is Paul expressing what Jonah expressed as he sat down under the vine - let me die. Can you identify with such feelings? I am sure you can because I know there have been times in my life when I thought it would be a joy if Christ was to come back that night and I did not have to face another day of what I had experienced that day. Yet do not stop at verse 8, read verse 9. What a verse. What a lesson to learn. What a hard lesson to learn. You know I can imagine Paul laying down his pen at this point and pushing his chair back from his desk and sitting back and thinking - do I really mean those words? Is that what I learned in this affliction? Then with confidence borne only from experience of going through the fire of suffering and affliction he lifts up his pen and writes with confidence verses 9-11. Shadrach, Mesach and Abednego - would never know the strength of God that surpassed their strength if they had not stepped into the fiery furnace. Noah would never have known the strength of God if he had not built the ark and brought his family inside. Abraham would never have known the faithful consolation of God if he had never raised his hand to strike Isaac lying on the altar. I could go on in Scripture with countless examples of men and women who trusted God in the midst of suffering and learned that God's strength was sufficient to meet the moment. A man in a garden prays to His Father in heaven - and receives the strength to literally pick up His cross and carry it to a hill called Calvary and there to stretch out His arms in love for the whole world and die for the sins of those who nailed Him and lifted Him between heaven and earth. The Father's comfort, consolation, encouragement and strength was all that the Son needed to go to the cross for you and me.
Paul wanted them to know that the trial he faced had brought him to a point where he despaired of his life. The affliction that he endured had brought him to a point where he was forced to renounce all hope of survival. Paul uses a rare word here - exaporethenai - which implies the total unavailability of an exit from oppressive circumstances. Humanly speaking there was no exit but death for Paul. That is what he writes in verse 9. There then follows what Paul can only call a 'resurrection.' Only divine intervention enabled him to retreat from the portals of death tot he realm of the living. Paul makes it clear there was no human hope in his affliction. He wants the Corinthians to know that he had no strength and had abandoned himself totally to God in this situation - which was part of the purpose of the affliction. Paul had many reasons for self-confidence - you can read them in Romans - but this affliction brought him to the brink of death and he knew that in God alone were comfort, consolation, encouragement, strength and resurrection from the dead. Paul knew that in the providence of God he had been allowed to go through this affliction that he might be brought to a full realisation and recognition of his own utter helplessness and abandoning all self-confidence, learn to trust God...who raises the dead. Verses 10-11 - from this experience Paul can pen these words. In verse 10 he wants the Corinthians to know that God is pre-eminently the God of resurrection. He had raised Christ from the dead and he raises men from the death of sin to the life of righteousness. He will raise mankind on the last day - at the general resurrection. Nothing but the hand of God could have effected such a deliverance from affliction, death, for Paul. Then in verse 11 Paul wants them to understand the power of intercessory prayer. Their prayers for Paul were effective because the God, to whom they prayed, was the God of all mercies and consolation. He alone is the God who raises the dead. When God answers prayer in such dire circumstances all know that it is the work of God and to Him alone belongs the glory and to Him alone should the praise be given.
Application.
As I said at the beginning - you may well find you can agree intellectually with what has been said but in your heart and experience you may, or will, struggle to agree and live by this teaching. Why is that? Well part of it to put it simply is because so many, even Christians, fail to think with a biblical mind and understanding. Partly because we live in a fallen world and sin has affected every area of our lives. Also, and i suspect this is actually the dominant reason, many Christians have unconsciously accepted that God is there to make them healthy, wealthy and happy. So many people, including Christians, see suffering as a bad thing. Dr Paul Brand, who discovered the cause of leprosy, once said that he wished he could give his leprosy sufferers the gift of pain. Not all pain or suffering is bad - it is actually for our benefit and for our good. Paul here clearly teaches that when we suffer we should know that God is there to bring comfort, consolation and encouragement that we might learn to trust totally on Him and from that experience be a source of comfort, consolation and encouragement to others.
There is no greater challenge to trust in God than suffering in our lives. C S Lewis in his book: The Problem of Pain - addresses that issue and I recommend it to you. Our trust in God is not just for when times are good and all is well. Trust in God is most evident in the afflictions of life. It is when all human strength and hope is gone that the pure gold of faith rises to the surface and we know, in a way that we could not without the affliction, the comfort, consolation and encouragement of almighty God. From that experience our trust in God deepens and our ability to comfort others is enabled. Amen.
