Sermon: How Does the Christian Life and Ministry Work?

Let's pray brothers and sisters

and the word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen His glory as of the only son from the Father full of grace and truth. Lord, how we need your grace this morning, your undeserved kindness, mercy,

your desire to bless us with astounding blessings when we deserve hell and how we need your truth this morning. Jesus said, if you abide in my word, you will know the truth and the truth will set you free. So Lord, would you pour out through your spirit as we read and preach and hear the word grace and truth for your glory? We pray it in Jesus' name. Amen. So it's December 29th, last Sunday of the year, and I think we would all agree it's been a

memorable year. Nate kind of alluded to that as he prayed for us. There have been a lot of good things this year, wonderful ways God has blessed us. I, you probably don't know this, but 76 new members joined our church this year. 40 professions of faith, 29 baptisms, 12 weddings, numerous babies. Not to mention all the behind the scenes, hidden work hours of labor by our pastors and ministry staff and growth group leaders and all of you.

God has motivated us and he has empowered us and it has been a fruitful year. He has blessed us both numerically and spiritually, but it's also been a really hard year. There have been strained marriages, there have been various sicknesses, some life threatening, there have been wayward children deaths, both very young and old. There have been moral failings and other secret sins and sufferings. And God has, as Nate alluded to, he has sustained us

through this difficult year. But I think if we could look into the hearts of people in this congregation, we would see a river of tears.

Now someone might say, well, every year has joys and sorrows and afflictions and comfort. So this year's no different than any other. Well, yes, but this year seems more so. So how do we make sense of all of that? How do we, how do we get our minds around all the good things and all the hard things? I want to help us understand this past year and look towards the new year in the context of a more important question. And that question is, how does Christian life

and ministry work? What's the dynamic? How does God bring about blessing of Christ-like character and the blessing of Christlike ministry? And how does suffering play into this? So we're gonna look at eight ways that God works with us through his grace received by faith and how he brings about Christian life in ministry. So I'd invite you to turn in your Bibles to Second Corinthians chapter one, and we're gonna read in just a minute

verses three through 11. Before we read that, let me just give a little bit of background on the church in Corinth was begun by Paul in the early fifties ad he had a long and complex relationship with them. It's possible that Second Corinthians is actually the fourth letter he wrote to them, he considered the church a genuine church. He said, you are saints. He considered it a gifted church. He said, you're not lacking in any spiritual gift,

but he also considered a very worldly church. Their besetting sins seemed to be pride. Corinth was a, was a famous, wealthy, popular seaport city. And this pride caused the Corinthians, including the Corinthian church, to overvalue worldly things like money. They were very prosperous city. They took great pride in their wealth and their status power in their religion. They worship what they considered very powerful gods and goddesses.

And so they emulated them and they, they pursued bodily health and strength in various forms of power. They worshiped athletics. They had their own version of the Olympic games and they hero worshiped their superlative athletes much like we do today. They were very, very enamored of people who could speak persuasively. They loved rhetoric, not so much the content, but just the ability to move people. And finally, they way

overvalued sex. And the city became just notorious for its sexual immorality. There were thought to be 1000 prostitutes at the temple of Aphrodite, the goddess of love and beauty and the name of their city. Corinth became a synonym with fornication to Corinthian eyes, meant to fornicate. So because the Corinthians loved power and superiority and worldliness, Paul wrote this letter to both expose and depose their pride

because their pride was antithetical to the heart of the faith, to the cross of Christ by which we have been saved and to Christ call for us to take up our cross to follow him. And so Paul wrote passionately to them. He wrote very pointedly to them, and he wrote paradoxically, in order to puncture their pride. Here are some themes in the book of Second Corinthians. Comfort coming through affliction, life through death,

confidence through personal incompetence, renewal through decay, joy through suffering, generosity through poverty. And then maybe the umbrella for it all, power through weakness. Commentator Trent Casto, who just wrote a commentary on second uh Corinthians, used God's strength in our weakness as kind of the subtitle of his commentary. That's kind of the lesson of the whole book. And this brings us again to the question,

how does Christian life work? How does God produce Christian ministry and how does suffering factor in? So let's read two Corinthians one chapter, uh, verses three through 11. Paul says, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction so that we may be able to comfort others 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 too. If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation. And if we are comforted, it is for your comfort which you experience. When you patiently endure the same sufferings that we suffer, our hope for you is unshaken. For we know that as you share in our sufferings, you also will share in our comfort. 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, but that was to make us rely not on ourselves, but on 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 that he will deliver us again. You also must help us by prayer so

that many will give thanks on our behalf for the blessing granted through the prayers of many. This is God's word to us this morning. So I want to point out eight things that this passage teaches us. Eight ways that we cooperate with God's grace as he works, his power in our weakness to bring about Christian life and ministry. So the first thing is right there in verse three, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the father of mercies

and God of God, of all comfort. The first thing we do to cooperate with God is to know who He is as He's revealed us to him, revealed himself to us. And bless him, we bless God as he has revealed himself to us. And Paul gives us three beautiful titles. First of all, he calls him the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Notice how specific he is. He's not talking about a vague higher power or a generic deity. This is the true

and the only God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Ever since Christ came into the world to fulfill the father's will and mission, that is how God chooses to be known. So any God that is not the father of our Lord Jesus Christ, anything different from that is not the true God. And this is a little speculation, but it seems to me that the father of our Lord Jesus Christ, would be the father's favorite title. There's nothing he delights in more

or exalts in than being the father of his beloved son, Jesus Christ. The second title by which we know God here is Father of mercies. That is a beautiful title. A w Tozer famously said, the most important thing about you is what you think about God. What's the first thing you think of when you hear, when you think about God? I wonder for how many of it is he's the father of mercies. My, my Abba is kind and merciful. But that's actually what God says about himself in that such

so important passage in Exodus 34 where Moses is on top of the mountain with God and Moses is seized a passion to see and know the glory of God. And he says, show me your glory. And God says, gonna hide you in a rock and I'll pass before you and you can see the backside of me. So he puts Moses in the rock and he passes in front of him. And here's what the Lord says about himself, the Lord, the Lord a God, merciful and gracious, slow to anger

and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. That's what God wants you to know about him. He's the father of mercies. Just as we beget children, he begets mercies. Puritan Thomas Goodwin says, God has a multitude of mercies of all kinds as our hearts, and the devil are the father of a variety of sins. So God is the father of a variety of mercies. There is no sin or misery, but God has a mercy for it. He has a multitude of mercies of every kind.

So let me ask you, what would tomorrow be like if when you woke up and you thought about God, you thought my Abba is the father of mercies. What difference would that make? And then the third title goes right along with father of mercies. He is the God of all comfort. The word comfort is so important in these verses that in verses three through seven five verses, Paul uses some variation of this word comfort 10 times.

That's two times every verse. The Greek word is parato. It means to call alongside, to come alongside, to encourage or strengthen or exhort in a time of suffering and testing. Notice here that God's comfort presupposes suffering. Now God's comfort comes because he's the father of mercies. He has 10,000 mercies. His comfort comes in all kinds of different ways. Here's just some of the ways we might experience comfort from God.

It might be a timely text or phone call. It might be something you hear in a sermon. It might be a song or even just one line or a stanza of a song that we sing on Sunday morning. It might come in your scripture reading on Monday morning or an article or a podcast. Sometimes God's comfort comes through noticeable relief from a situation of suffering. Other times it comes when God sort of unpacks the big picture and he shows you how, how your story, even

with its suffering is connected to the big story creation, fall redemption, consummation. And that big picture changes everything. And sometimes the spirit just seems to blow a little wind from heaven on your soul in an unexpected, surprising way and you just feel strangely refreshed. But the point here is that every comfort of every kind in every situation comes from God, the Father, the God of all comfort. He is the source and sum of all comfort.

So the first thing we do is we bless God as he's revealed himself to us. The second thing, and this one's a little harder, we experience affliction. That's that's what that, that's what this whole passage is about. We experience affliction. This is the part of Christian life and ministry that nobody really wants. But it's integral to what Paul is talking about here, and it's been our experience this past year. There has been much affliction.

The first thing we need to remember brothers and sisters is this affliction is normal. It's not unusual. That's hard for us to get in America where we just figure technology and modern science and everything is just gonna alleviate all suffering. Peter tells us in one Peter four, do not be surprised, beloved, when the fiery trial comes upon you to test you as if something strange were happening. We're not to be surprised affliction.

So what's that word mean? Literally it means anything that stresses or presses it, it literally means oppressing. So picture a trash compactor. It's squeezing it this way and squeezing it that way. And isn't that the way life feels sometimes coming at you from every direction just, just crushing. So it means pressure, oppression. David Palon describes it this way. It's whatever presses you or distresses you, tests or troubles you hurts or burdens you.

That's wide open whatever. One of the wonderful things in scripture is that God gives us words and descriptions that are specific enough that we can say I relate to that, but not so specific that it has to deal with just one particular example of that. So we are invited to read our own details into the word affliction.

Whatever stresses, presses, stresses you. So maybe your affliction recently has been physical, you feel weak or sick. Maybe there's some something that needs surgery or maybe your body's just aging. It's a kind of affliction. Maybe it's loneliness. Maybe it's some kind of mental or emotional distress. Maybe it's relational or family tension, or maybe there are certain temptations that just seem to be pursuing you. And it's so hard to get away these verses

about affliction, presuppose that God knows, allows, and even ordains these fl afflictions for our good. Now, God has no pleasure in affliction for its own sake. He has no pleasure in seeing us hurt, but he does take pleasure in achieving his purposes through the afflictions. So I've said before, God sometimes ordains what he hates in order to achieve what he loves. So that's the second thing we experience affliction.

The third thing is in verse four,

God who comforts us in all our affliction so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction. So the third thing is, yes, affliction will come, but God says, I'm the God of all comfort who will comfort you in all your afflictions. Not some of them, not many of them, but all of them. God actively intervenes to strengthen us, to encourage us and to help us in all our afflictions. As I said earlier, God has many ways of comforting us

sometimes, but not always. By removing the suffering, one writer says God's comfort is unusual. He doesn't make life easy, but our father's comfort actively strengthens you in the midst of weakness, pain, and need. Listen to this so you can take heart and take action. I remember a very strange way of being comforted years ago. Uh, it was a difficult time of life. I was meeting with an older, wiser Christian and we were talking about what was hard

and kind of out of the blue he said, pat, what if God told you that this affliction or this trouble was his will for you right now, that you hadn't wandered off the path and he would be with you in it and he would bring you through it? He asked me that question and I remember, I remember tearing up and I said, if I knew that I would embrace it. And I remember leaving that meaning me meeting lighthearted, nothing had changed till a difficult time.

But he brought comfort to me by asking a provocative question. So that's one way God might comfort us. So we are comforted so that we can take heart and take action. Number four, this is in verse five, for as we share abundantly in Christ's sufferings. So through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too. One way God comforts us in our affliction is by explaining to us that any suffering we experience, remember all our afflictions as we walk obediently

with Jesus is sharing in his sufferings. There's a direct connection between all our afflictions in verse four and sharing in Christ's sufferings in verse five. The key here is that we live by faith in union with Christ. And as we live in union with Christ, he shares with us his sufferings and his comfort. He's the source of both. So what are Christ's sufferings? This this makes us think, and we, we can get confused about this.

Well, most of us, if we were asked, what does it mean to suffer with Christ or shared Christ's sufferings, we would say it means persecution, uh, hostility because of your faith in Christ. And that would certainly top the list in the New Testament as far as types of sufferings mentioned. How many times that would top the list. And maybe we could even say that's the most important kind of suffering, but it wouldn't exhaust the list.

Sharing in Christ's sufferings or suffering with Christ is a broader care category than just persecution. Let me try to show that to you. In Romans eight, verse 17, Paul says, we will be glorified with Christ provided we suffer with him. So there's that idea of sharing in his sufferings, but then right after that, in verse 18, he talks about, I'm convinced that the sufferings of this present age are not worth comparing to the glory

that will be revealed to us. 17, suffer with him. 18 sufferings of this present age. That's a broader category that obviously relates to suffering with Christ. So if you look through the rest of Romans eight, you see that it refers to all kinds of things. He mentions tribulation, uh, distress, persecution, famine, naked sword. So theologian Richard Gaffin says, the sufferings of this present age include all the futility

and frustration, all the decay and pervasive innervating weakness of this time. The Westminster larger and shorter catechism says that this includes the miseries of this life, the infirmities of the flesh and the temptations of Satan. So sharing in Christ's sufferings includes persecution, but it's broader than that. So the sufferings of Christ or uh, the sufferings of this present age are all our afflictions, or we could turn it around.

All our afflictions are sufferings of Christ or the sufferings of this present age. Now why is that important? If you know that what's ha coming at you again as you are faithfully following Jesus, if all of that is sharing in the sufferings of Christ, it doesn't remove the pain, but it gives those sufferings a meaning and a purpose and a dignity. You are in solidarity with Christ and it means that it will end well. Number five, back to verses three through seven,

especially verses four, five and six. All of this that we've just talked about leads us to believe and expect that God is going to use all the afflictions and all the comfort that we have in Christ to bring comfort to us. That's verse four. God comforts us in all our affliction so that we can comfort others in any affliction. And then verse six, if we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation. This is how the Christian life and ministry works.

We suffer affliction, we receive comfort from God. We have that to pass on to others, and the body is built up.

Our afflictions are actually necessary for effective ministry. Think about it. If we don't experience affliction, we don't really get it when other people do. So we lack understanding. We often try to fix people quickly and we're not wise. And we even may use scripture in a way that's kind of just superficial platitudes. So afflictions help us to, to gain understanding and wisdom and patience and kindness. It's essential for good ministry.

And then the comforts we receive give us something solid and hopeful and life-changing to share with others. So again, God ordains what he hates, afflictions to achieve what he loves comforting us. And then that comfort passing through us to others. That's how the saving power and life of Christ increases and the church is built up. So as we think of this last year, and as we think about 2025 in front of us, we don't wanna think about blessings

and sufferings as parallel tracks. They just run side by side. No, they're intersecting all the way. God uses our afflictions and comforts not only to sanctify us personally, but to extend his comfort, strength, and encouragement to others, thus building up the church, thus extending the kingdom and thus causing us to long for its completion and consummation. So as we look forward to 2025, we wanna be prepared. There's going to be affliction, there's going to be comfort,

and the church will continue to grow. Now, at this point, someone may be thinking or wondering along these lines, pat, this sounds good as we sit here in our comfortable fuse, and maybe this dynamic works for mild or moderate afflictions. But what about the afflictions that are utterly overwhelming, that threaten to squeeze all the life and hope out of you? That's a fair question.

Some of you have been through deep waters this year, and you may be sitting here today thinking, I, I don't see how this works. That's why Paul starting in verse eight gives us his own personal testimony. Let's read it again verses eight through 11. 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, but that was to make us rely not on ourselves, but on God who raises the dead. I'll stop there. Paul shares his own testimony to show that even the most severe afflictions are ordained by God for great good. We were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life and felt we had received the sentence of death. That's Paul in his usual manner of using the most,

he's stretching human language as far as it'll go to to show something. And and he's talking here about how severe afflictions can be. Let's, I wanna look at three words here. The word utterly, we were so utterly burdened. The the Greek word is literally hyperbole. That means affliction. That's exaggerated. It's, it's over the top. It's beyond measuring.

My wife and I have a number of beautiful grandchildren. One of them is six years old. And she often will say to me, I love you papa. And I say, I love you Stacia. I love you more. And I'll say, well, I love you much as much as more. And then she will go off. Well, I love you a million times, 10,000 times, 60 times infinity times, whatever. And I'll say, well, you really love me a lot. What she's saying is, I love you utterly.

I love you without measure. That's how Paul's talking about what this experience in Asia was like. It was beyond measure. And then he said, we were burden, utterly burden weighed down oppressed. One writer said, imagine a bus rolls over on you. You're you're pinned under the bus. No matter how hard you try, no matter if you phone a friend, you're not gonna get that bus off you. It's you're, it's too heavy. And then he said, we despaired of life.

That means he was utterly at a loss. He was completely out of resources and he had no hope. And again, some of you have experienced exactly what Paul wrote this past year. And some of you may be sitting here today thinking, if you only knew. So I wanna say something and I wanna say it with gentleness and understanding and tenderness. It is true that some of you can say, that's exactly what my life has been like. But what you can't say is,

I've experienced something worse than that. Because there isn't something worse than being so utterly burdened beyond your strength that you despair of life. And the strange comfort there is that everything you have or are experiencing, it's in the Bible. It's accounted for. It's in God's hands. And as we're gonna see there is great hope.

But you might be thinking, okay, it's in the Bible, but I I, I can't see any good hope coming out of this. In fact, what I'm experiencing seems like the absolute end of all hope. Paul says no. Maybe he, maybe he would say, that's what I thought too. Until I had this experience where I had no hope. But Paul's gonna say, no, no, no. The greatest good can come out of those kinds of experiences. The greatest good for proud

self-sufficient sinners is this to make us not rely on ourselves, but on God who raises the dead.

This experience, whatever it was, brought Paul to the very end of himself. So he actually discovered the one thing, the only thing that can overcome everything. And that one thing is God himself who raises the dead. No matter what affliction we have, even if it ends in death, it can't get any worse than that. God can raise the debt. And that brings us right back to the heart of our faith. Christ died for our sins. God raised him for our justification and salvation.

This knowing God who raises the debt and relying on him is what we need. More than medical breakthroughs, more than marriage retreats, more than wonderful reversals of fortune. More than therapies or sound investments or better schools or political victories or spiritual disciplines or church planting strategies or even biblical counseling. That's what we need most. God who raises the dead. We need to stop relying on ourselves

and throw ourselves completely and permanently on the mercies of God in Christ more than once. Brothers and sisters, I have sat on my porch swing at home and I've said to God, I don't Need help. I need you to raise me from the dead.

But do you see how Tenacious we are in wanting to hold on to relying on ourselves? I mean, everything can die Before that, right? Our Plans, our Our ability To fix things or Make strategies and God values our Faith and our reliance on him so much That he Will do anything to secure and strengthen that faith and that reliance. But if We're honest, To get to That point where You realize can't do it, can't do it, you've gotta do it.

That's a good place to get to. But It's frightening, isn't it? To let go Of our plans and power to make things right? Feels Like we go into free fall. But that's why God sometimes leads us to situations Where we Just can't make it Right. We need to be comforted That way with God Who raises the dead. And we need to comfort others That way. God who raises the dead. This is How Christian life and ministry works. And we become, as one person said, missionaries

of comfort. Two more things Quickly. Verse 10,

he delivered Us from such a Deadly peril And he will deliver Us On him. We have set Our hope that he will Deliver us again. So the next thing we do is we continually thank God for Past deliverances And we hope confidently For future deliverances. That's what Paul's doing. He's looking back and hey, you know that situation where we had no hope, God delivered us And he will deliver us and he's going to deliver us in the future.

That's where Something like keeping a journal can be so helpful. 'cause we forget, don't we? So I'm gonna make a suggestion that you Begin. I'm even gonna give it a title For you, A treasury of comfort. And that can be Books. I've got a stack Of books by my bed That I read something from every night. They're books that just encourage me. It can be, Um, Scriptures. You Can write 'em out or write out the references of scriptures

that encourage you, help you quotes book page numbers. Like if I look at this book on this page, I, I'm gonna read something that's really helpful. Write down answers to prayer in your treasury of comfort. And write down times when God delivered you comforted you. Because as powerful as those times are, we forget. So keep adding to it and reread it often, and it will encourage you and it'll comfort you. If you don't, it's easy for those things to fade.

Lastly, verse 11, you also must help us by prayer. So that many will give thanks on our behalf for the blessing granted through us, through the prayers of many. The last thing we do to cooperate with God's power and our weakness in the Christian life and ministry is we enlist the prayers of others. So blessings and thanksgiving will abound. So that last one sounds pretty easy. Ask for prayer. We do that all the time. I ask my wife every day to pray for me. She does.

God answers. But when we start to widen the circle, because things are really hard, that's hard because again, we want to be sufficient. We wanna be competent. We want to be able to handle life. So asking for prayer is hard, but it's good because it's all about humility. It both reflects a humble attitude and it nourishes a humble attitude. Asking for prayer gets you in touch with your weakness. So God's power can be manifested a again,

a quote from Trent Casto, our weakness is not something to be ashamed of, therefore, but it is the point at which we learn to rely on God and discover the fullness of his strength, not only for our own comfort, but also to comfort others. So many of you are in growth groups. Those should be places where we, where we pray, not just for circumstantial things, but pray for inner things, for encouragement, for strength, for perseverance, for humility,

for forgiveness, for all those things. We have a prayer chain that I know many of you use in love. How many times have we something's been put on the prayer chain? Some, sometimes very quickly, sometimes over a long time. God answers those prayers. So growth groups, prayer chain. Sometimes we just have our own group of friends that we regularly ask for prayer. So let me summarize here. How does the Christian life and ministry work?

Well, it works this way. God reveals himself and redeems us through Jesus Christ, crucified and raised from the dead. And then we respond. And here's how we respond. We bless God as he has revealed himself to us. We experience affliction and we experience comfort from God in all our affliction. We understand that our afflictions are sharing in Christ's sufferings and comfort. We then comfort others in any affliction. We trust that even our most severe afflictions are or

or are ordained for good. And we thank God for past deliverances and hope for future deliverances. And finally, we ask others to pray for us. One final quote from David Paulison. Paul received comfort so that he could comfort, strengthen, encourage, guide, lead, challenge, and support others. And that's the way it's meant to be for every one of us. But our father's comfort actively strengthens you in the midst of weakness, pain,

and need so that you can take heart and take action. His goal for you is to embody love by taking to heart the troubles and struggles of others. He does this by first, taking to heart your troubles and struggles. Let's pray.

Father, in Philippians three, Paul says really strange things. He says that everything in his life, he considers a loss. He considers rubbish even a lot of very good things because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ. Oh Lord, would you work in us so that we value Christ infinitely more than all that is near and dear to us? And then he says, and this is really his life mission statement. He says, I want to know Christ, this Christ

and the power of his resurrection, oh Lord, how we need the power of your spirit, the power of grace, the power of the resurrection, to lift us up above our normal interpretations and reactions to things you need to lift us to the rock that is higher than we are. We need to know the power of the resurrection. And then he says, And to share in the fellowship of Christ's sufferings. Lord, help us to love Christ so much that we would rather suffer with him than be dis distant

and without him and have a comfortable life. Lord, your gospel is meant to bring about these very things. We thank you for your word today and pray that you would continue in the year ahead to comfort us in all our affliction so that we can comfort others in any affliction. We pray it in Jesus' name. Amen.