Verse 6. In this you grace greatly
rejoice, and now for a little while, if need be, you have been
grieved by various trials, that the genuineness of your faith,
being much more precious than gold that perishes, though it be
tested by fire, may be found to praise, honor, and glory at the
revelation of Jesus Christ. God has a plan for the things
that we don't like in our lives. I don't like trials any more
than you do. I realize though, that trials
are what brings me closer to God.
And God knows what you need in your life whenever you need it.
We're all proud people, and we have a tendency to be focused on
ourselves and not the Lord many times.
And so the Lord allows adversity to come into our life to cause
us all the sudden to look heavenward.
The first thing I do, and I'm sure you do too, is when you're
in adversity and trial is you're looking up to God and you're
asking him why, then you're asking him, when and how long
will this continue and how long do I have to deal with this?
That's usually the first kind of conversations you have.
And then you're being humbled. You're, you're realizing again
how much you need the Lord in your life.
We forget how much we need the Lord, all of us.
We can get used to living our lives and our own strength very
easily. It comes naturally.
And the Lord knows, OK, they're getting a little bit too carried
away with themselves and their own strength.
I'm going to allow something to come into their life to cause
them to realize that my strength is made perfect in their
weakness, that the power of Christ may rest upon them.
So I think one of the ways that we can avoid unnecessary trials
and conflicts and chastening from the Lord is to stay close
to Jesus. You know, if you stay close to
the Lord, he many times won't have to bring things into your
life to make you realize how much you need to deal with in
your heart as far as repenting or getting right with God or
getting closer with God or putting him #1 in your life.
Again, if you're, if you're doing that every day and you're
endeavoring to look to him and yield to Him and surrender to
him, I really believe you will have less problems in your life.
But most of us don't live that way, super close to the Lord.
We, we trust him, we know him, we love him, but we're busy
about our lives, right? And so the Lord needs to remind
us, hey, I'm gone, I'm here. I want to be involved with your
life. I want to work with you, I want
to bless you, I want to lead you, I want to guide you.
And then all of a sudden, OK, we're in a place where we're
teachable again and we realize how much we we need the Lord.
The psalmist says in Psalm 1/19, it was good that I was
afflicted. Why?
That I may learn to walk in your ways.
God uses affliction, trials, difficulty, and adversity to
bring us closer to himself. Now, Paul, because he was an
apostle and he had a lot of spiritual warfare with the enemy
that was engaged against him 24/7.
He had a lot of things in his life that were what we call
spiritual warfare. So there's self-inflicted trials
that we experienced because of stupidity and sin and pride and
self centeredness or whatever, making wrong decisions.
And how did I get into this mess?
And then we realized, well, because I did this, this and
that, and this is the consequences of these things
I'm, I'm being challenged with right now.
But when it comes to warfare, the enemy has his target on
anybody that's really seriously committed to serving the Lord
and following him and, and being used by him.
And so it's not something to fear.
It's just a reality of, of what happens when you're engaged in
in the, in the ministry of the gospel.
And there's teachings that the Lord shows us how to get through
those things, how to overcome them, how to be victorious in
them. But it's always realizing that
Christ is our armor bearer and that he is with us all the time.
He'll never leave us or forsake us.
He told us in the world you'll have tribulation, but be of good
cheer of overcome the world. And Paul said that all those who
live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution not may
suffer persecution, but will suffer persecution.
So what what kind of persecution are are we struggling with or
what kind of persecution are we suffering?
That's that's something I wanted to talk about here this morning
a little bit in in in the lieu of this chapter as we go through
it. There's some statistics how many
Christians are in Iran now Iran's getting as President
Trump says the H bombed out of him, right?
And so we might say, yeah, go get him, destroy him off the
face of not realizing that there is over 1,000,000 Christians
living in Iran underground trusting in Jesus Christ.
And they're suffering because of this war and because of the
totalitarian government, evil Islamic extremist radical
government that's causing terrible consequences for the
people live in Iran. There's about 200,000 Christians
that live in Israel. Now that's really amazing, isn't
it? 1,000,000 in Iran and and about
200,000 in Israel. OK.
And most of the Christians in Israel are Arab Christians.
People don't realize that. So to this day, Israel, even
though God has a plan for them in the days ahead in the future,
they are diametrically opposed to the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Let's just be frank and and real and true about it.
Now there's more Jewish people coming to know Christ and that's
God's plan as time time moves on.
But when you look at war and you look at nations, you have to
understand there's people like you and me that are living in
these persecuted nations, whether it's Russia, Ukraine,
Nigeria, Sudan, Pakistan, all these countries in the world
that have terrible, terrible persecution.
The people in Iran, the Christians like you and me,
detest the government role of what's happening there, but they
don't have the freedom to protest like we would in our
country if that happened to us. If they start acting out, they
will be immediately martyred and killed for their position.
And So what what God does through world powers and leaders
is he humbles and topples governments of of ungodly
nations. And right now we're in the
process of seeing Iran being toppled, and the sooner the
better that there's a new government in there, just like
in Venezuela right now, and the attack that was recently and
made in Africa to stop the persecution of Christians.
So I think about the the issue of the places in the world where
there's the most persecution. And my brother John Hildebrand
sent me something this morning that sort of caused me to think
about this chapter in light of what is persecution.
You and I are fortunate. We live in a nation right now.
We're not really being persecuted at this point in
time. There might be pushed back a
little bit from the far left in regard to our positions on
abortion and marriage and what the Bible teaches about truth,
but it's more verbal than physical at this point in time.
And it's really important to realize that your vote is very
important in regard to the type of country you live in.
If you allow your country to be run by a far leftist extremist,
then you're going to find that you're going to soon experience
perhaps some of these horrors that some of these other nations
are experiencing. But the 10 most persecuted
nations. This is from Open Door Ministry.
North Korea tops the list for decades where Christians face
extreme persecution, including execution or labor camps.
You want to live in North Korea? How about Somalia?
Al Shabaab militants and families target converts from
Islam to Christianity. Yemen.
Ongoing civil war and extremist groups make Christianity
dangerous. Sudan Christians face
discrimination and violence amid severe civil conflict Atria The
government only recognizes 4 denominations, with others
facing unlawful arrests. Syria A surge of violence has
returned it to the top ten with the dwindling Christian
population. Nigeria has the highest number
of Christians killed for their faith with extremists targeting
communities particularly in the north.
Pakistan Christians face danger through strict blasphemy laws
with mob violence. Libya hub for extremist groups
that target Christians, migrants and converts.
Iran converts from Islam face imprisonment, interrogation and
systemic discrimination. This unbelievable what a lot of
these places in the world are dealing with the most Christian
nations by percentage. And I don't know if you ever
think about this. Did you pick your place of
birth? God for some reason caused you
to be born in the United States of America and we don't realize
how privileged we are. I can't believe how many
Americans are complaining about living here.
They had to take a vacation in Sudan for a while or go live in
Iran or something like that. It's, it's just unbelievable
the, the unthankfulness and the, the, the people in the streets
that are saying death to America and, and they're allowed to do
that here. Mike Johnson recently shared his
concern about Sharia law. And Sharia law is when the
Muslims have control of a particular geographic area and
they force you to bow down to their false God, Allah, and they
run their places like a prison because if you're not committed
to Islam extremism, you are considered an enemy and they
will be out to get you to kill you.
And in some places in America right now, like especially in
some parts of Michigan and some cities you go in and they're
predominantly controlled by this kind of mentality.
And you got a mayor in New York that is committed Muslim.
I'm surprised he spoke out against the attack on the
synagogue in Israel recently that where the guy drove the
truck through. He said these kind of things
shouldn't exist, but that guy's passion is Islam.
And and so to have in America, the United States of America,
one nation under God with liberty and justice for all in
the Constitution, all the things this country was founded upon
Judeo-christian values. Excuse me.
And we have all these groups coming into our country now that
are trying to destroy what was built here for us to live with
peace and freedom. These these, these are very,
very concerning. The Armenia part of the world,
98% Christian Romania, Multa, United States of America,
219,000,000 Christians, roughly 63 to 70% of the population,
Brazil, Mexico. And there's some parts even in
Nigeria where there's a strong Christian influence even though
they're being destroyed. And so when Paul was writing
this book, he was in a governmental system that was
Antichrist. The Roman Empire and the Roman
Empire wanted to destroy Christianity, but they couldn't
because Jesus, he, he reigns on his throne.
All power is given unto him in heaven and in earth.
And he's blessing the spread of the gospel, even though it
requires martyrdom at times. He's blessing the growth of
people in these various nations that have come to faith in Jesus
Christ. Some of the strongest churches
are in China underground. We hear China, and right away we
think they're our enemy, and in many ways they are.
But boy, thank God what he's doing in China with the body of
Christ, it's powerful. And so God's will can't be
thwarted or circumvented by man. Thank God for that, right?
So Paul continued to do what he had to do.
And in this book of Second Corinthians, not any.
Did he talk about his suffering openly?
But he talked about his apostleship that people weren't
receiving anymore or even accepting, and the churches that
he had planted. There was a disrespect for his
spiritual authority and the calling and the anointing of God
upon his life, but it didn't stop him for doing what he still
needed to do. So it says he's an apostle of
Jesus Christ by the will of God, not by the will of man.
He was raised up by God. Anybody that's raised up by man
to be a leader will fail. And most of the time they're not
going to be true to the the leader, the true leader, the
Lord Jesus Christ. But when God raises up people to
follow him and to start churches or to do ministries, and it's
obvious that He's in charge and not them, God will use those
people, men and women, to be able to impact the the nation in
the world and the communities with the gospel of Jesus Christ.
And then he says that Timothy's with him as well.
Timothy, our brother Timothy was Paul's understudy, his right
hand man, and he was also responsible to carry on the work
of the ministry in Ephesus when Paul was no longer on the face
of the earth. And then it says to the Church
of God, which is at Corinth with all the Saints who are in all
Achaea. And Achaea was the region of the
nation of Greece and, and many, many churches, many, many people
were being impacted by the apostle Paul's ministry.
And then he uses these words and many of his Gospels 18 times and
not of the Gospels of the epistles 18 times.
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus
Christ. The grace of God is the most
important thing that you and I need on a daily basis.
The grace of God is what enables you to overcome temptation.
The grace of God is the power that gives you the ability to
suffer through adversity and trials, issues of health,
finances, relationships, marriages, kids, whatever.
God's grace is sort of like this uplifting power that He bestows
upon us to be able to be OK and stable.
When you get the diagnosis that you don't want to get,
regardless of the diagnosis, that won't circumvent or thwart
the power of God's grace to sustain you in the midst of the
most difficult times of life. You'll get through them because
of God's grace. You won't get through them
without God's grace. You'll fail, you'll fall, you'll
curse God, and you'll fall away if you don't have the grace of
God. We're not made and we're not
wired to deal with impossible adversity apart from the grace
of God. So Paul always bestowed and
prayed that they would be recipients of His grace.
And you don't earn the grace of God.
The grace of God is a gift. And the grace of God comes even
today by you being in His church, worshipping Him in His
Word, having your heart open to the truth of His Word, yielding
to Him. And God is just pouring grace
into your life as you, your recipients of His Word, and as
you pray and as you seek his face.
And if you have God's grace, you'll have his peace.
I've watched families in this church go through tremendous
suffering, and I watch the families get through the
suffering because of the grace of God.
And I see them having the peace of God.
They don't like it. It's no fun, it's not enjoyable,
but they're calm because God's peace is upon them, because
God's grace is in them. And then he says in verse 3,
blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the
Father of mercies and the God of all comfort who comforts us and
all our tribulation. Not some tribulation, but all
tribulation. God is able to comfort us in all
our tribulation. He's defined as a God of all
comfort, the comfort do you need to be comforted today?
We all need to be comforted, and that comfort comes from this
wonderful God we have our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and the
power of the Holy Spirit. You're never alone in the midst
of the trial. If you look to the comforter,
The comforter is defined in John chapter 14 as the Holy Spirit.
Before Jesus ascended, He told them it was necessary that He
would go up so that the Holy Spirit would come down and not
only come down but also dwell in them.
And he said in John 1415, If you love me, keep my commandments,
and I will pray the Father, and He will give you another helper,
that He may abide with you forever.
And some of your translations that will say comforter.
The spirit of truth in the world can't receive because it neither
sees Him nor knows him. But you know Him, for He dwells
with you and will be with you. And I will not leave you
orphans, and I will come to you. How many of you today here have
experienced the work of the Holy Spirit in the time of trials in
your life? Raise your hand, everyone of
you, There's not one of us here who has not experienced this
comforter. But why is it so often that he's
the last one we go to when we're going through a trial?
We go through something we don't like and we're calling 30 people
asking him, what do? What do we do?
How do we get through this? And we have this God the Holy
Spirit dwelling in us, the comforter, where we can say to
him, show us what we're to do, show us how we're to handle
this. Give us a strength in the midst
of this season that I can't get through apart from you
comforting me. He is the God of all comfort and
He's able to comfort those who are in any trouble, any trouble.
You might be here today and you're in trouble of some sort.
I don't know, but God knows. But He says that this comforter
is going to be able to comfort you in the midst of the trouble
that you're in right now. But you have to look to him.
You have to trust in him. You have to talk to him, ask
him. I don't know how many times a
day I'm walking around in my life saying, Lord have mercy,
help me Jesus, you know you don't have to like my prayer
time in the morning, 10 minutes, OK, whatever.
No, your prayer times all day long.
Lord, give me wisdom in this situation.
I don't know what to do about this person that's giving me a
problem right now. I don't know what to do about
this situation I'm in that I'm not comfortable with or I don't
have the wisdom to know how to circumvent the OR navigate this
singing work or business or whatever.
It's ridiculous how much we rely on our own strength and not the
Lord, right? We need to ask God for help.
If you're hurting right now, if you're afraid, if you're
confused, if you're upset or whatever, say help me, Lord,
that's humility. Don't, don't try to handle it
yourself and ask your brothers and sisters to pray for you,
that they would come alongside of you and help you and pray for
you. We have every Sunday is an
opportunity to come up and pray. If you need prayer, don't be
embarrassed to come up. You don't have to get into the
details. You can just say to the person
that's asking you what you need prayer for.
Just pray for me. I need help.
That's all you need to say. And God will use those people
behind you and beside you to comfort you as they pray for you
and help you. He says that the sufferings of
Christ abound in us. This is Paul when we got a lot
of suffering going on in us. So our consolation also abounds
through Christ. In other words, Paul said I got
problems you wouldn't even imagine.
He talks about some of them later on when we get into the
book, what he went through from people, from church stuff, from,
you know, physical beatings, imprisonments.
I mean, this guy was constantly, constantly suffering in ways
that none of us will ever experience.
But he's saying himself that as a sufferings of Christ are in
US, along with what might you might be going through are all
our consolation, our comfort comes through Christ.
Now, if we're afflicted in verse 6, it's for your consolation and
salvation which is effective for enduring the same sufferings
which we also suffer. So he's saying, like, what I'm
going through right now should encourage you in the sense that
you're not alone and God's helping me, and I'll show you
how he helped me so you'll believe he can help you.
Paul never tried to cover up his his problems or his challenges.
He didn't complain about him, but he sure wanted people to
know that things weren't easy for him.
And he talks about the suffering as being similar in some ways to
what the people would go through as well.
Not to the degree that he went through, but the sufferings were
somewhat common. We've all been sick physically.
So you know what it's like to suffer from physical illness.
We all can identify with that. Some of you have been through
cancers or are, are in cancers have come out of cancers, the
suffering of, of going through the chemo and the drugs and the,
the nauseousness and all that stuff.
Boy, I'll tell you, unless you are in that and go through that,
you don't know what it's like unless you talk to someone else
who's going through it or experiencing it presently.
That's why they have the, the support groups that people will
see how God has gotten them through some of these very, very
difficult seasons of life. And then he says, if we're
comforted, it's for your consolation, salvation.
So when someone tells a story about what God did for them, how
he comforted them, how he got through something and you're on
the other end hearing them and you're going through something,
you're going to be comforted by what they told you God did for
them. It'll give you hope and the the
truth of experiencing comfort has to come from personal
experience. If you've never been comforted
by God, I, I can't tell you what it's like.
I can tell you what I experienced, but I can't tell
you what it's like until you experience it.
And once you experience the comfort of God, boy, we have
some good conversation, don't we?
We can praise God, we can thank God.
We can glorify God together. We can rejoice in God together.
We can, you know, just be excited when we see God has done
something wonderful to comfort someone who's in a very
perilous, difficult situation. It makes me feel good.
Whenever I know that God's taking care of people.
I can't take care of them like God can.
I care. I'll do all I can to help
people, but I'm not God. I can't comfort you like God can
comfort you. I can tell you that God can
comfort you, but you have to experience God's comfort
yourself. And our hope for you is
steadfast, verse 7, because we know that as you are partakers
of the suffering, so also you will partake of the consolation.
And that's the good news. Yeah, you're suffering right now
and you're partaking of these sufferings.
You're experiencing them, but God is going to allow you to
partake of this consolation and this comfort that things are
going to be OK. They're going to work out.
You know, Romans 828 says all things work together for good to
those who love God and are called according to His purpose.
And I've wrestled with that verse many times with seeing
what's going on in my own life at times and the lives of people
I I'm close to tragedies, challenges, needless deaths or
heartache. I, I don't understand God, why,
why I cry out like that as David did.
But then I realized that God knows what he's doing because he
said about this all things working together for good.
He said to those he foreknow for new that the consequences of
these things that he says work out good are to conform us the
image of Jesus Christ or to make us more like Jesus right, and
that's what this is all about. This journey, this pilgrimage of
being a Christian is to become like Jesus.
It isn't to get more information or be able to quote verses that
are know where all the books of the Bible are.
That's all nice, but it's like I know whom I believed in and I'm
persuaded that he is able to keep that which I've committed
unto him against that day. Not hope, I wish, maybe.
No, I am 100% persuaded that God is faithful.
And until we get to that point, each of us individually, we're
going to be we're going to be like Jelly 11 problem against
another complaining, crying out, I need help.
Why doesn't God help me? Well, probably he's not helping
you because you haven't asked him to help you.
He said, Whosoever comes to him, he will in no wise cast out his
arms are continually open to every one of us, saying, Come
unto me all you that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give
you rest, for my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.
Learn of me, for I am meek and lowly of heart, and you shall
find rest for your souls. Lord, help us to come to you.
Help us. Verse 8.
For we do not want you to be ignorant, brethren of our
trouble which came to us in Asia, that we were burdened
beyond measure, above strength, so that we despaired even of
life. Yes, we had the sense of death
in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God,
who raises the dead, who delivered us from so great a
death and does deliver us in whom we trust that he will still
deliver us. Isn't that something?
He's like totally, 100% transparent?
Life is a pain right now. It's hard, it's a struggle, it
hurts, it's scary, it's overwhelming.
Whatever term you want to use the definition to describe this
season that Paul's in despairing even of life like I don't know
if we'll make it. He's saying I don't know if
we'll we'll be alive tomorrow. But then he's trust was not in
anything else or anybody else, but trusting in God, that we
should not trust in ourselves but in God.
Are you trusting in yourself or are you trusting in God?
That's the big question, isn't it?
Hebrews tells us that we're able to come in to the throne room of
grace at any time of the day. I might call you to ask for
prayer and phone goes into voicemail.
I can't talk with you, but I know you'll get the voicemail
and you will pray or whatever. God doesn't have voicemail.
He's on the line personally, presently 24/7.
I'm not going to go into that throne room of grace and there's
a million people ahead of me, which there is, but it doesn't
matter. I don't know how He does it.
He handles every situation simultaneously, individually, in
in real time, moment by moment. He's not saying, hey, come back
in a month. There's 2 million people before
you and there's people that have more problems than you do,
serious problems. Now it says that we might go
into that throne of throne of grace with boldness.
That's like assurance, like I'm here because you told me to come
to get help, that we might find mercy and grace and help and our
time of need. Isn't that awesome?
Mercy and grace and help in our time of need as a worship team
can come forward. In verse 11, it says you also
helping together in prayer for us, that thanks may be given by
many persons on our behalf for the gifts granted to us through
many. So not many was God involved in
bringing the comfort, but the people that were close to Paul
in the churches were also praying and holding him up and
encouraging him. So God has his part, but he's
also given you and me a part. So you you know I'm hurting.
I know you were hurting. Can I pray for you?
Yeah, absolutely. Pray for me.
Can I pray for you? Yes, please pray for me.
The more people. And it isn't like, well, if you
have 1000 people praying, God will really answer no, you only
need one really. But he's interceding
continually. But somehow he uses your prayers
along with his prayer to bring comfort to others.
So we're the hands and feet of Jesus to comfort one another.
Someone's hurting in a way that you maybe know a little bit more
about than someone else. You go to that person and say,
hey, I've been where you've been.
I've been through what you've been through, and this is what
God will do. Let's pray and you pray and you
bring that comfort on behalf of others.
And this is a gift that God's given to you and me to provide
for other people to, to bring comfort to them as well.
So whenever I had the title for this message, I sent it out to
someone who sends you guys something.
And, and the person said I really needed that.
Guess what? Me too.
We all need it, don't we? So now you have the solution.
Now you have the answer. The application now is to start
talking to Jesus more about what it is.
It's giving you a hard time and say, Lord, help me through this.
Show me how to handle this and he will Amen.
God bless you guys. Let's take the supper together.
Lord, we're so thankful again for your word.
You say the entrance of your word gives light.
It gives understanding to the simple.
We're simple folk, Lord, we need, we need simplicity.
We we need to have this stuff broken down in ways that we can
apply in our lives. And we're so thankful for Paul
and his way to communicate truth so that it's accessible to
everybody. You put it in a lower level and
we can reach on the shelf and pull it down for ourselves and
say, Lord, this is what I need right now.
I need your comfort, Lord, please comfort me.
I don't understand why I'm in what I'm in right now.
I don't understand what the doctors talking about.
I don't understand why the job isn't there.
I don't understand why the marriage is struggling or why
the kids are running or Lord, I don't understand any of these
things. I don't understand why there has
to be these wars, Lord. But you know about all this
stuff, Lord, and I pray you would comfort us, comfort me,
comfort my brothers and sisters and what it is we don't
understand, and to help us trust You and ask for You to show us
how to get through it. And we're so thankful, Lord,
that You will never leave us or forsake us.
You'll be there for us to supply to us the grace that we need to
get through whatever it is. It's hard.
And You'll give us the peace to be settled in the midst of the
storm. And because of that, Lord, you
tell us to remember you in the supper, to come into your
presence, and to experience this holy, your Holy Spirit in US,
comforting us. And we take this today to
remember you and for your glory, and also to strengthen us.
And on the night that Jesus is betrayed, he took the bread in
his hands, He broke it, and he gave thanks.
He said, take, eat. This is My body which was given
for you. Eat this in remembrance of me.
The same manner in that evening he took the cup.
He said this cup is a new covenant, My blood which is shed
for the forgiveness of sins of many.
Drink this in remembrance of Me. There's often as you eat this
bread and you drink this cup, you show forth the Lord's death
till he comes again. Amen.
God bless you guys.