Sermon: Suffering Matters

Would you take a copy of God's word this morning? We will turn to the book of 2 Corinthians as we continue our way through that book. If you want to grab a pew Bible, you can do so. It's right there on page 964 in the pew Bible, 964 in the pew Bible. This morning, second week here in 2 Corinthians, we're looking at verses three through seven of 2 Corinthians 1:3-7.

Let's pray, and let's ask for God's blessing of His word this morning.

Father, we thank you for the gift of your word, and we come before it humbly this morning and say, teach us, O Lord. Teach us to know you, to know your ways, and would you indeed conform us to the likeness of your Son. And we pray all of this in the strong name of your Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. This morning, 2 Corinthians 1:3-7. This is the holy, inerrant, sufficient word of God. "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 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 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 suffering that 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." Though the grass withers and the flower fades, the word of God is forever. Thanks be to God. Amen.

I want you to look at these verses here with me, and I want you to count the word comfort just in these verses. It's in verse three.

It's in verse four, four times. It's in verse five. It's in verse six, three times, and it's in verse seven.

Ten times in just these few verses. Comfort, comfort, comfort. Why the need? Well, you can see that in the other words scattered throughout these verses, affliction, afflicted, suffering, suffers. The emphasis of this text is the comfort of God in our suffering. Comfort. That word has the idea of consolation or solace, or maybe what's best in our kind of modern English would be the word encouragement. The emphasis of this text is this, is that you need it, I need

it, and here's the good news, the Lord gives it. Comfort. Our first point this morning, our God of comfort, our God of comfort. Paul begins this passage with a kind of doxology. He 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." Notice, this is so very important. Notice the God of all comfort, the Father of all mercies, does not

remove all affliction, but comforts us in all our affliction. In the midst of affliction, we receive comfort. Affliction comes in different forms. I was with a family member recently who was hospitalized. He was still upset weeks later after his hospitalization because he believed the nurses didn't understand his affliction, and because they didn't understand his affliction he was enduring, they thus didn't provide the help he wanted during his hospitalization.

But every nurse knows, every pastor knows, everyone in this room knows everyone wants comfort in their affliction. And Paul reminds the Corinthians that comfort, true comfort, lasting comfort, only comes from this God who he calls the God of all comfort. Here's the source Paul is saying. He's the fountainhead. He's the dispenser of these good gifts. He's the wellspring of all comfort. He's saying if you're looking for comfort,

it comes from this God, our God. He acknowledges Him by another title as well, the God who is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. All this comfort comes from God the Father in and through Christ. Here's lasting, sufficient comfort. With and in Christ, all comfort. Father of mercies, God of all comfort.

Our afflictions are finite. Now granted, it doesn't always feel that way. It doesn't always seem that way, but they're finite. Whereas the Father of mercies and comfort that He provides are infinite. God of all comfort for all of us and all of our affliction if He is our Father in Christ. For all. For all affliction, all comfort.

My guess, and having had this conversation over the years with a number of people, is that many walk into a church like this. Maybe you're here this morning thinking this. And you walk in and you think it's easy for that family or it's easy for that individual to worship a God that they've prayed about and they've sung about being sovereign and over all and all-powerful. It's easy for them to give Him worship because their life is so easy.

And I would say to you it's easy to make such an assumption.

There's a view that one gains from being a pastor that is unique. I'm allowed to see what many of you don't get to see.

And one thing is clear, everyone is suffering.

There's not an exception. Everyone is suffering. Now there are degrees of suffering, to be sure. And in a room like this, of this size, there is always going to be some that have suffered less than you have suffered. But there are also going to be those in this room that have suffered more than you have suffered.

And it's hard. You rarely know who suffered more and who suffered less. I say that having seen more of this room's private pain than anyone else simply by virtue of my position But you can know this much,

everyone suffers.

We live in a fallen world, degrees to be sure, but simply degrees. And it does not matter to the degree that the comfort comes the same way, Paul is saying.

How do Christians with differing afflictions bear up in the midst of suffering? With and in Christ. With and in Christ, we receive the abundant mercies and the comfort of the Father. He's our God of comfort.

Without Christ, the seemingly smallest of afflictions can be overwhelming. But with Christ, the seemingly heaviest of afflictions can seem light, because in Him we receive all comfort.

Here's a good idea for our prayer lives. Maybe reframe our prayers when we're in the midst of affliction. Instead of only asking God to remove this point of suffering, ask Him to comfort you in the suffering. That's a good prayer to a good God. He gives comfort in the suffering.

Our second point this morning is our union in Christ's suffering.

Now, here's one of the secrets in the midst of suffering, is that blessing comes in suffering, not despite the suffering.

Paul is making that clear. He says this in verse five, "As we share abundantly in Christ's sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too." As one pastor commented, he said, "Though one would expect misery to abound where suffering abounds, and expect comfort to abound where stability abounds, Paul claims just the opposite." And that's exactly right. He's claiming the opposite. What does Paul mean by this?

In verse five, he says we share abundantly in Christ's sufferings. Well, he cannot and he does not mean that Christ's suffering upon the cross was somehow insufficient for our justification, for our declaration before the throne of God that we are indeed free and declared righteous, that we have peace with God. No, Christ on that cross, in His final dying words, He's crying out, "It is finished." It's finished. It's done. It's complete, more than sufficient.

Rather, what he's saying is because God's people are identified with Christ, Paul can say that as they suffer, they are Christ's sufferings. And he was taught this, remember, when Paul was on the road to Damascus, and having persecuted Christians, he hears thundering from the sky the voice of the Lord Jesus Christ, who says to him, at that time his name was Saul, "Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?"

There's an inextricable link between the church and the Savior of the church. He is the head, we are the body.

There's a true sense in which the sufferings of the church are Christ's sufferings. In a parallel passage in Colossians 1, Paul seems to hint to that. After mentioning, he says, "Filling up what is lacking in Christ's afflictions," Paul says this, "For the sake of his body," that is the church. Christ is the head, we are His body. As the body is afflicted, the head can be said to be afflicted because we're one.

Now, Paul is speaking first of his own apostolic sufferings, but the same body logic applies to every single member of the church. As we share in Christ's sufferings, we're conformed to Christ.

There's actually blessing in that. Our Savior was a suffering Savior. He didn't look at our suffering from afar. He entered into it. He felt it to carry it. He was a man of sorrows. The author of Hebrews will say that He was made perfect through suffering. Peter will say that as we suffer, we follow in His footsteps.

In personal suffering, you and I, we get more of a glimpse of Him. And as we get more of a glimpse to Him, we become more like Him.

There's one Pauline scholar that has coined a term that I absolutely love. He talks about this being a cruciformity. cruciformity.

"If anyone would follow me, let him deny himself and pick up his cross and follow me."

Christian, isn't that your great pursuit in this life?

To see more of Christ so that you might be conformed more to Christ, cruciformity. It comes more than through anything else through suffering.

If you're suffering right now, a good question in the midst of it is to ask yourself, what is it that God is forming in me right now?

What's He after?

We want to become more like the one we love.

Samuel Rutherford, the 17th century Scottish Presbyterian, once wrote in a letter, he said, "Welcome, welcome, cross of Christ, if Christ be with it."

And he was simply saying, if I get Christ by having a side of suffering, then let me have suffering, because he so loved Christ.

Suffering is a way of bringing us to the end of ourselves, and it shows us our utter dependence upon Christ. What Paul articulates is that there is strength in weakness. The path of the Christian pilgrim through this world is strength in weakness, because in weakness, I look to Christ. We'll tackle this in the weeks to come because it is a constant theme in this book, but these super apostles in Corinth, self-designated super apostles,

they were commending themselves, and they're tearing down the Apostle Paul and causing doubt among the Corinthians about him and his ministry because Paul is weak. He's weak in physical presence. He's weak in his credentials. He's weak in his speech. He's weak in that he suffers. But Paul is clear, suffering is a path for the Christian in the world. A weak Christian is redundant.

There's no other way to be a Christian.

He will go so far as to say in chapter 12, "When I am weak, then I am strong."

The strength of the Christian, genuine strength, is located outside the Christian. We are weak in self but strong in Christ. You'll notice this is the language throughout the scriptures. Ephesians 6:10, as an example, "Be strong, Paul," commands But it doesn't stop there. Be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might. We depend upon Him. We come to look more like Him when we depend upon Him.

And yet, in our passage, Paul emphasizes something even more striking. Our suffering not only sanctifies us, it serves the church. And that's our third point this morning, our ministry of comfort. He says, verse six, "If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation, and if we are comforted, it is for your comfort." There's a great line from "The Hobbit" at the end. Gandalf will say to Bilbo, or he asks Bilbo, he says, "You don't really suppose, do

you, that all your adventures and escapes were managed by mere luck, just for your sole benefit?"

And we could ask the same. Dear Christian, you don't really suppose, do you, that your sufferings are just for your sole benefit? It serves the church. Your sufferings aren't just about you.

Before being ordained, like Benjamin was up here this morning, I interned at a large PCA church in Dallas, Texas, and a church of that size had a lot of people in the hospital every week, a minimum of at least 20 in the hospital every week, and we would visit every week. The patients in the hospital was the job of the pastors, but some weeks the duty fell on us as interns, and we would divide the list, and we would trek out

individually to go to all the different hospitals in Dallas to visit these members. And for three weeks straight, I drove 45 minutes across town to visit one member that was in this one hospital, and each time I would knock on her door, I would announce who I was, and she would yell from the room, "I'm not taking any visitors today." The fourth week,

I told a fellow intern that I wasn't going to visit her, though she showed up on my list again. I told myself it was a waste of time driving 45 minutes back and forth. But driving back toward the church from another hospital, my conscience wouldn't leave me alone, so I turned the car around and off I went on the 45-minute trek in the traffic of Dallas. And this time I knocked, and I announced myself, and I got an unexpected reply.

She said, "Come in." And when I entered, I found a young woman, maybe in her mid-20s. She was propped up by pillows, and she had no legs, and she had no arms. She was just a head and a torso. And she then proceeded to ask for my forgiveness for turning me away the previous three weeks. She said, "Oh..." She called me Pastor, though I wasn't. "Oh, Pastor, the pain can get so severe, I just can't talk with people."

When I asked about how long she'd been there, she replied that it had been 120 days.

And for the next half hour, she talked to me about the Lord, and she talked about how she just wanted to get home because her father had painted her bedroom a new pink color, and she wanted to see it.

She was

delighting in the Lord and the colors He made. That was her comfort. That was her joy. I walked out of her hospital room and was struck with this thought, I didn't minister to her. She ministered to me. She died a few months later, and I've never complained about doing a hospital visit again.

And since that day, she often goes through my mind

when I want to complain about my own afflictions.

Her comfort became my comfort.

"If we're afflicted," Paul says, "it's 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." Understand the implication.

Your personal suffering serves the church.

When you received the call of Christ, you made a pledge. My life is not my own. All of your life. Your suffering is not your own.

It belongs to us,

for us. "If anyone would follow after me, let him deny himself, pick up his cross, and follow me." My suffering isn't just about me. I find that incredibly encouraging.

In fact, I'd take a step further and say that the 'so that' in verse four communicates a responsibility that we have to extend the comfort we have received. It's to overflow our persons, and it's to splash onto the lives of our brothers and sisters around us. Jowett, a commentator on this passage, said this, he said, "God does not comfort us to make us comfortable, but to make us comforters." And that's absolutely true.

We're caught up looking at our afflictions on the cellphone screen of our lives when He has put it on the IMAX. There is a great bigger picture for your sufferings, a much greater view that you're to have of them.

Paul is making that clear. The comfort we receive doesn't terminate on us. It's a highway by which we are privileged to extend that comfort to others. And so some of you are suffering right now, and the temptation is to quietly sneak out of the church and to kind of disappear from body life, but your endurance and your comfort are meant to strengthen us.

It's not just about you.

Some of you have persevered through severe trial, and the comfort maybe you received years ago or decades ago, or you're just now experiencing from all of that pain from 20 years ago, you're now equipped to do ministry in the present.

The Lord has entrusted it to you for the benefit of those around you. My sufferings don't personally belong to me. They're for the benefit of the body,

to make me a more able minister to the body, to extend the comfort I receive to the body.

Haven't you found this true?

That those most able to minister are those who have most suffered.

I find this consistently true in history. I find it consistently true by experience. Give me a brother or sister who has suffered, and they have the makings of a good minister of the gospel.

Show me somebody that is proud and haughty and self-absorbed, and I almost guarantee you they have not suffered greatly.

Haven't you found this true? Those most able to minister have most suffered. Someone made the comment last week during our 60th anniversary celebration last weekend that more often than not, when a man is ordained as an elder here at University Reformed Church, he tends to enter pretty quickly into a season of severe trial in his life. That's not a mistake. That's divine providence. It's actually a blessing for us.

When you're with a mature Christian, someone who exudes Christ and wisdom and charity and knowledge and grace, almost always, without fail, they are someone who has greatly suffered. It seems paradoxical, but it's true nonetheless. We see affliction as a thief, yet the greater the suffering, the more you actually have to give.

Now, having said that, we've got to be crystal clear. We don't go looking for suffering. The foolishness of some in the history of the church, where they would put themselves on high platforms and live up there, or they would flagellate themselves with whips on their back, or they would even seek martyrdom, that's just wrong, and that's anti-Christian. You live long enough for Christ, and you realize that you don't have to go looking

for suffering. It comes, and when it comes, it's not a friend, but it comes from the hand of a friend,

and a hand that has all comfort.

A preacher in former generations said this, "This is a dynamic way of looking at life because it endows all Christian living with elevated importance. The hard things we undergo, as well as the comforts, are all graces that together authenticate and empower ministry so that those who truly desire to minister will patiently accept their lot from God and work on." Your suffering matters.

It matters to God, and it matters to your brothers and sisters in Christ. It's for his glory and for their good.

Finally, our hope of comfort. Paul closes our passage in verse seven with this. He says, "Our hope for you is unshaken. We know that as you share in our sufferings, you will also share in our comfort." He knows it.

I've walked and watched with many of you through suffering,

and I've allowed myself to continue to be amazed. Actually, I have to work at it to some degree. "Wow, you're continuing to endure through this trial. How have you maintained hope in such horrible circumstances? How is it that you continue to cling to Christ and faith when it just seems like your plate is overflowing with suffering?"

I want to continue to be amazed. But here's the other side. It's not so amazing. Not in the sense of being unique, because it happens over and over and over again in the church.

I've seen it so many times, no matter the heat of the fire, no matter the deepness of the waters, no matter the depth of the valley.

I can say with Paul, "My hope for you is unshaken." I can say with him, "For I know that as you share in our sufferings, you will also share in our comfort." How can I have such hope? How can Paul have such hope?

Because our God is the father of mercies, and our God is the God of all comfort.

Our God.

Those suffering even now, let me remind you of something. I've said this to you before. Your trial is not greater than his grace. Your loss is not greater than his love. Your suffering is not stronger than his promises. And that's the note Paul was ending this passage on. Our God remains unrattled. So he says, "Let our hope remain unshaken, no matter the affliction. Our God is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father

of all mercies

and comfort." All comfort. Let's pray together.

God and Father of mercies and God of all comfort, we're thankful that you are a God who indeed dispenses mercy and grace that is ever-flowing to your people. That we can have such a confident hope

that you extend encouragement in all our afflictions. That the God who is sovereign over all sustains his people in all, and that you will indeed bring us home to glory. May you help us to bear the afflictions and sufferings of this life,

rejoicing in our suffering, as the Apostle will say in another passage, knowing that it conforms us to the likeness of your Son, and looking forward to that day when every tear shall be wiped away, and there shall no longer be dying or sickness or mourning any longer, but all of our afflictions laid as a footstool beneath His feet for your glory and for our good forevermore. Help us to persevere to the end. Be a God of all comfort to us.

We pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen.