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Comfort, Encouragement and Hope

COMFORT, ENCOURAGEMENT AND HOPE
Mike Cunningham
September 7, 2014

In today’s sermon I want to elaborate on a couple of scripture verses that I mentioned in my recent devotional: “If You Were God.” Then we will have a better understanding of the reason all Christians must go through seasons of pain and suffering. In his second letter to the church at Corinth, the Apostle Paul wrote:

3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort,
4 who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God. 2 Corinthians 1:3-4 (NIV)

William Barclay offers the following comments on verses 1-7. He says, “Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus through God’s will, and Timothy, the brother you all know, send this letter to the Church of God which is at Corinth, together with all God’s dedicated people who are in the whole of Achaea. Grace be to you and peace from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father who is ever compassionate and the God who sends all comfort, he who comforts us in all our affliction,so that we are able to comfort those who are in any kind of affliction ,through that comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For, even as the things that Christ had to suffer have overflowed to us, so the comfort that we can bring you also overflowed through Christ. If we are undergoing affliction it is that we may be the better able to comfort you and bring you salvation. If we are comforted, it is that we may be the better able to bring to you that comfort whose effectiveness is demonstrated by your ability triumphantly to endure the hard experiences which we also are going through. So our hope concerning you is well grounded, for we know that just as you share the sufferings that we undergo, you also share the source of comfort we possess.

Behind this passage there is a kind of summary of the Christian life.

(1) Paul writes as a man who knows trouble to those who are in trouble. The word that he uses for affliction is thlipsis. In ordinary Greek this word always describes actual physical pressure on a man. R. C. Trench writes, “When, according to the ancient law of England, those who willfully refused to plead had heavy weights placed on their breasts, and were so pressed and crushed to death, this was literally thlipsis.”

Sometimes there falls upon a man’s spirit the burden and the mystery of this unintelligible world. In the early years of Christianity the man who chose to become a Christian chose to face trouble. There might well come to him abandonment by his own family, hostility from his heathen neighbors, and persecution from the official powers. Samuel Rutherford wrote to one of his friends, “God has called you to Christ’s side, and the wind is now in Christ’s face in this land: and seeing you are with him you cannot expect the lee-side or the sunny side of the brae.” It is always a costly thing to be a real Christian, for there can be no Christianity without its cross.

(2) The answer to this suffering lies in endurance. The Greek word for this endurance is hupomone. The keynote of hupomone is not a grim bleak acceptance of trouble but triumph. It describes the spirit of a Christian that cannot only accept suffering but triumph over it. Someone once said to a sufferer, “Suffering colors life, doesn’t it?” The sufferer replied, “Yes, but I propose to choose the colors” Just as silver becomes purer from being in the fire, so the Christian can emerge finer and stronger from hard days. The Christian is the athlete of God whose spiritual muscles become stronger from the discipline of difficulties.(3)

But we are not left to face this trial and to provide this endurance alone. There comes to us the comfort of God. Between 2 Corinthians 1:3 and 2 Corinthians 1:7 the noun comfort or the verb to comfort occurs no fewer than nine times. Comfort in the New Testament always means far more than soothing sympathy. It is always true to its root meaning because its root meaning is the Latin fortis and fortis means brave. Christian comfort is the comfort that brings courage and enables a man to cope with all that life can do to him.Paul was quite sure that God never sends a man a vision without the power to work it out and never sends him a task without the strength to do it.

Even apart from that, there is always a certain inspiration in any suffering which a man’s Christianity may incur, for such suffering, as Paul puts it, is the overflow of Christ’s suffering reaching to us. It is a sharing in the suffering of Christ. In the old days of chivalry, the knights used to come demanding some especially difficult task, in order that they might show their devotion to the lady whom they loved. To suffer for Christ is a privilege. When the hard thing comes, the Christian can say, as Polycarp, the aged Bishop of Smyrna said when they bound him to the stake, “I thank thee that thou hast judged me worthy of this hour.”

The supreme result of all this is that we gain the power to comfort others who are going through it(4). Paul claims that the things that have happened to him and the comfort that he has received have made him able to be a source of comfort to others. Barrie tells how his mother lost her dearest son, and then he says, “That is where my mother got her soft eyes and why other mothers ran to her when they had lost a child.” It was said of Jesus, “Because he himself has gone through it, he is able to help others who are going through it,” (Hebrews 2:18). It is worthwhile experiencing suffering and sorrow if that experience will enable us to help others struggling with life’s difficulties.” (1)

R. Kent Hughes adds the following equally insightful comments: “With the resounding comfort of God still sounding, Paul now relates a dramatic personal example of God’s care for which he continues to bless God. “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 that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death” (vv. 8, 9a).

The exact nature of what befell Paul in Asia remains a mystery. Some believe that it happened during the famous riots in Ephesus during the intense confrontation between Paul and a lynch mob under the sway of Demetrius the silversmith (cf. Acts 19:23ff.). Certainly the potential for violence was there, but Ephesus is unlikely. If it was in Ephesus, Paul would have said so, as that was the capital city of Asia. Also, the account in Acts 19 mentions no physical violence coming to Paul.

Some of the early church fathers thought this referred to Paul’s fighting hand-to-hand with wild beasts in Ephesus, because they (wrongly) interpreted 1 Corinthians 15:32 literally instead of figuratively. Others imagine the affliction in Asia to be a life-threatening illness or an attack from his “thorn,” his unknown ailment. But the language suggests a life-threatening event. Paul’s graphic repetitions suggest a recent explosive instance of such intensity that it had death written all over it.

His despair is framed in memorable terms because the Greek words translated “For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength” were also used to describe an overloaded ship riding low in the water or a pack animal that pitifully falls in despair under its load so that it cannot rise. Paul was so “utterly, unbearably crushed” that he couldn’t get up, as if he wore a leaden cape. Inertia gripped his being so much that he “despaired of life itself.” His despair was so deep that he was literally “without a way” of escape. There was no exit. “Indeed,” he says of himself, “we felt that we had received the sentence of death” (v. 9a)—an official sentence of death —which could have been handed down as an official verdict or as a divine reply to Paul’s prayer for deliverance. Either way, Paul conceded that he was done for, that it was over—he was being utterly crushed under an unbearable weight, helplessly awaiting death.

Perhaps you have experienced this from sudden trauma or disease, and you were utterly helpless. The sentence of death was written over you, and there was nothing you could do. My wife experienced this as she lay helpless, bleeding, feeling her life drain away, immobilized, speechless, unable to communicate with those who hovered over her, in a dark free fall.

Paul sensed that despite all his remarkable earlier deliverances, his time had come. Think of it! Paul had had multiple life-threatening experiences—the stoning, five beatings that each took him to within an inch of his life, multiplied dangers and shipwrecks. But this affliction in Asia was the most damaging and debilitating. An inexorable, paralyzing weight had fallen on him in Asia, and there was no exit.

But there was a purpose in all of this, to which Paul gives a simple explanation: “But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead” (v. 9b). Suddenly the power of Christ’s resurrection was brought to bear on Paul’s deathly despair. There in Asia Paul’s affliction (tantamount to death) was followed by a wondrous experience (tantamount to resurrection). Notice that God’s resurrection power is not described in the past tense (“God who raised the dead”) but in the present (“God who raises the dead”) because God continues to display that resurrection power in his delivering his children from impossible circumstances.

Here the cycle of Christ’s experience becomes the pattern for Paul and all serious Christians: affliction—death—resurrection. As a pastor I found this cycle to be true in my earliest experience in ministry when planting a church. It all began so well, and in the initial years it appeared that a solid work was in progress. But to my surprise and despair, it began to unravel. In retrospect some of the reasons are clear. A respected church leader was carrying on a secret life of sexual perversion. A church officer, responsible for financial affairs, was addicted to alcohol and drugs. Exotic legalism gripped others and set them at odds with healthy Christians. Converts, people we discipled, rejected sound doctrine and fell to asceticism. I was witnessing the death of a dream.

One dark summer night I bared all my death-like disappointments and afflictions to my wife, who responded unforgettably, “Hang on to my faith; I have enough for both of us.” That dark night marked the beginning of a spiritual resurrection in my soul as we began to search the Scriptures as to the true meaning of ministry and success.

The one thing that you can be sure of as a child of God is that he will deliver you in the midst of your affliction as you call upon him. There is no doubt about this. True, he will not deliver us from all death situations in the near future of this life, but he will ultimately do so because he raises the dead.

This makes us, along with Paul, a people of hope—”On him we have set our hope that he will deliver us again.”

Prayer and Affliction (v. 11) Paul was confident in deliverance, but his confidence did not rest on God’s past faithfulness alone, but on the prayer of believers, especially the Corinthians with whom he had shared so much. “You also must help us by prayer, so that many will give thanks on our behalf for the blessing granted us through the prayers of many” (v. 11).

Today the church needs pastors and missionary leaders who share the afflictions of Christ. Such an assertion may seem 2,000 years out-of-date or from another planet. Today’s pastors are regularly taught to be CEOs and managers—anything but the above. But as lifelong pastor and New Testament scholar Bishop Paul Barnett concludes:

Paul’s experience of suffering and comfort in the course of his ministry is replicated in every generation in the lives of godly missionaries and pastors in their interrelationships with their congregations. While both minister and people suffer as they bear witness to Christ in an alien culture, there remains a distinctive role and therefore a distinctive suffering to the Christian leader. As the comfort of God is experienced in the life of the leader, so it will be passed on through ministry to the people (in the congregation).” Preaching the Word – 2 Corinthians: Power in Weakness. (2)

“Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, sayeth your God.” Isaiah 40:1 (KJV).

That particular verse speaks loud and clear to me. So much so that I have an intense desire to do everything I possibly can to comfort all the hurting folks, that; back in eternity past, God planned to bring into my life. I believe He saw to it that I would inherit my Mom’s “comfort gene.” For instance, I will never forget the times when that wonderful woman provided care in our home to relatives and friends who were either sick and/or dying. She intuitedly knew how to comfort, encourage and give hope to hurting people- including me.

For instance, I still remember her tender loving care. I loved hearing her sing my favorite tune when I was a two year old toddler that had just been bitten by a mosquito or a little kid who fell off his first scooter and scraped his knee and I cried and cried, and cried and couldn’t stop. I remember my Mom rushing over to her boy, pick me up, put me on her lap and hold me close to her bosom and gently rock me back and forth and sing “An Irish Lullaby” until I stopped crying. The lyrics go like this,

Over in Killarney many years ago,
Me mudder sang a song to me in tones so sweet and low,
Just a simple little ditty, in her good old Irish way,
And I’d give the world if I could hear her sing that song today.

Too ra loo ra loo ra,
Too ra loo lah ri,
Too ra loo ra loo ra,
That’s an Irish lullaby.

I’m now in my 82nd year of living in a world that is saturated with sin and I’m often clobbered by the effects of it just as you folks are. However, I can count on that tune popping into my mind whenever I’m experiencing a very painful physical and/or emotional time. I know immediately that my Mom is praying for me in Heaven and I’m uplifted with all the “Comfort, Encouragement and Hope” that I need for that day.

Lord willing, next week….

The Letters to the Corinthians, revised edition © 1975 by William Barclay. Published by The Westminster Press, Philadelphia, Pa. Pgs. 169-171.
Preaching the Word 2 Corinthians: Power in Weakness, by R. Kent Hughes, electronic version.

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September 7, 2014 Posted by Categories: Uncategorized 2 comments

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