Grosey's Messages

1 Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by God’s will, and Timothy our brother: To God’s church at Corinth, with all the saints who are throughout Achaia.
2 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort.
4 He comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any kind of affliction, through the comfort we ourselves receive from God.
5 For as the sufferings of Christ overflow to us, so our comfort overflows through Christ.
6 If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation; if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which is experienced in the endurance of the same sufferings that we suffer.

7 And our hope for you is firm, because we know that as you share in the sufferings, so you will share in the comfort.
8 For we don’t want you to be unaware, brothers, of our affliction that took place in the province of •Asia: we were completely overwhelmed—beyond our strength—so that we even despaired of life.
9 However, we personally had a death sentence within ourselves so that we would not trust in ourselves, but in God who raises the dead.
10 He has delivered us from such a terrible death, and He will deliver us; we have placed our hope in Him that He will deliver us again.
11 And you can join in helping with prayer for us, so that thanks may be given by many on our behalf for the gift that came to us through the prayers of many.

Life itself is hard. I look around the room. I see those who have lost husbands, wives, loved ones. I see people who have gone through terrible sickness. I see people who have experienced failure in their jobs, huge disappointments. I see people who have been betrayed and slandered by others. I've seen people who have tried with all their might, and yet, some would consider them failures. It's true: life is hard. And, you know, once you give yourself to the Lord, life's sufferings almost become more intense because the closer you grow to the Lord, the more you begin to feel the same sorrow that Christ felt. Also, you experience rejection often as you seek to call people to God's higher standards which are for their best. When we read the rest of this letter, we discover that this was a church with problems with a capital P.

It really does remind me of that wonderful song from The Music Man where Harold Hills says:

"Ya got trouble, Right here in River city! With a capital 'T'

And that rhymes with 'P' And that stands for Pool.

We've surely got trouble! Right here in River City!"

Why do you have troubles?

Paul had troubles. Sometimes these troubles all seem to swamp us at once. Everything piles on. And we feel the pressure driving us into the ground. Paul had troubles. And like pile drivers each pressed him down.

You’ve got to admit, if you gave the average Christian a stress test after one of these trials, his blood pressure would be through the roof. But Paul had these stacked on. Listen:

2 Cor 11: 23 Are they servants of Christ? I’m talking like a madman—I’m a better one: with far more labors, many more imprisonments, far worse beatings, near death many times.
24 Five times I received from the Jews 40 lashes minus one. 25 Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked. I have spent a night and a day in the depths of the sea. 26 On frequent journeys, [I faced]dangers from rivers, dangers from robbers, dangers from my own people, dangers from the Gentiles, dangers in the city, dangers in the open country, dangers on the sea, and dangers among false brothers; 27 labor and hardship, many sleepless nights, hunger and thirst, often without food, cold, and lacking clothing. 28 Not to mention other things, there is the daily pressure on me: my care for all the churches.

Each one stacked on. You know, in football, its not how fast a man can run that makes a good football player, but what it takes to stop him. There have been plenty of fast runners. But there are only a few that can run and run through the pack!

Well Paul tells us he got stopped!

He despaired even of life:

2 Cor 1:8  For we don’t want you to be unaware, brothers, of our affliction that took place in the province of • Asia: we were completely overwhelmed—beyond our strength—so that we even despaired of life.
9 However, we personally had a death sentence within ourselves

Was it the riot in Ephesus?

Acts 19 tells us of the great riot which broke out in Ephesus, threatening the lives of the Christians in that city. At that time it appeared the whole Christian cause had collapsed in Ephesus and all Paul had labored on for years was falling apart. He must have gone through unusual emotional stress and physical threat during this time. He tells us that he was "utterly, unbearably crushed." Now that is the lowest ebb the human spirit can come to, the uttermost sense of despair. "Why," he said, "we felt that we had received the sentence of death." It was absolutely hopeless; he had given up; there was no way out. He could see himself losing his life at this point.

Was it the very powerful enemies and their followers he had made?

2 Tim 4: 14 Alexander the coppersmith did great harm to me. The Lord will repay him according to his works. 15 Watch out for him yourself, because he strongly opposed our words. 16 At my first defense, no one came to my assistance, but everyone deserted me. May it not be counted against them.

Friday, in Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, asks why If God were so omni[potent and powerful, God had not yet destroyed the devil. Crusoe runs away to avoid having to answer the question. Good question.

Another good Question is Why do believer’s suffer so?

I remember one minister who had a secretary who was always cheerful no matter how much she was going through. He said to her one day, "I wish I had your faith and optimism." She replied, "Well, you would if you'd read your Bible right." "What do you mean?" he asked. "I read it in Greek and in English." She said, "Well, you don't read it right, because Paul says, 'Glory in tribulation.' Now G-L-O-R-Y doesn't spell 'growl,'" she said. "When you get tribulations you growl, you complain all the time, but Scripture says glory in tribulations, welcome them as challenges, as opportunities, as occasions to discover the strengthening of God." The truly Christian reaction to troubles and pressures is to see them all as sent by a loving God who is still in control, who will limit them, as he promised, so they will not be more than you are able to bear. He has sent them deliberately to help you discover the inner strengthening that can keep your heart at peace, no matter what the pressure is. That is the first reason pressures are sent.

The Purpose For Which You Experience Suffering And Comforted

a. God Comforts us To Comfort others

4 He comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any kind of affliction, through the comfort we ourselves receive from God.

2 Cor 7: 6 Nevertheless God, that comforteth those that are cast down, comforted us by the coming of Titus; 6 But God, who comforts the humble, comforted us by the coming of Titus,

THIS GOD ENABLES US TO COMFORT OTHERS.

There is something about us that makes us feel that no one else can really understand the pain that we have when life is so hard. Yet, every one of us has terribly difficult situations, and out of them we can help and encourage and comfort and console one another. That's the way the family works. It is ministry. In just this one paragraph, the verbs and nouns for the word comfort, which implies suffering, occur ten times. The word for trouble is used three times and suffering is used four times. So, suffering is referred to seventeen times directly or indirectly in just four or five verses. "In the world, you will have trouble, but don't despair, I have overcome the world."

God comforts us in assuring us that even the most senseless and unjust suffering can have a purpose.

One of Elisabeth Elliot's long-time friends had cancer surgery and its aftermath was an incision that had to be scraped and cleaned daily for weeks. She wrote to Elisabeth, "It was so painful that Diana, Jim, Monica, and I prayed while she cleaned it, three times and some days four times. Monica would wipe my tears. Yes, Jesus stands right there as the pain takes the breath away, and my toes curl to keep from crying out loud. But I haven't asked, Why me Lord? It is only now that I can pray for cancer patients and know how the flesh hurts and how relief, even for a moment, is blessed" (Elisabeth Elliott, "On Asking God Why," Fleming H. Revell, 1989, p.16). Her own sufferings and the divine comfort received have made her a comforter.

Colson not long ago in which he said that he often asked himself why he had to go to prison as a result of Watergate. Legally, there was no reason why he should have been put in prison. Nevertheless, he ended up there and for a long time he struggled with this fact. Why did he have to suffer the humiliation, the shame, the disgrace and the discontent of prison? But then the answer began to come. While he was in prison he learned what prisoners go through. He saw these forgotten men and women of American society, the awful injustices they often face, the difficulty, even the impossibility of recovering themselves, and there was born in him a great sense of compassion and a desire to help. Since he has been released from prison he has devoted his whole life and ministry to going back in and helping these people. Now wonderful stories are beginning to come from prisons all over America of dramatic changes in human lives because Chuck Colson was sent to prison. That is why God sends us into difficulties at times. It is not always for our sake, but for someone else's sake. We have been brought along and matured to the point where we can take it and rejoice in it and handle it rightly. When we do, what a lesson we are giving to those who are following along behind.

b. God comforts us model perseverance

6. if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which is experienced in the endurance of the same sufferings that we suffer.

i.e. A pastor friend has endured much over many years. I look at him and know I can endure what he has endured, because the same Lord who has been faithful to him will also be faithful to me.

Someone once said his favorite scripture was, "And it came to pass." It did not come to stay, it came to pass. This, too, will pass, and you will be strengthened by it, therefore, patiently endure and discover the strength that God can give.

c. God comforts us to draw us to Himself and away from ourselves

8 For we don’t want you to be unaware, brothers, of our affliction that took place in the province of  Asia: we were completely overwhelmed—beyond our strength—so that we even despaired of life. 9 However, we personally had a death sentence within ourselves so that we would not trust in ourselves, but in God who raises the dead.

Just writing about this seems to prompt Paul to want to share with his readers some very personal experiences he had just recently endured himself. Apparently, across the Aegean Sea in Ephesus, Paul had been through a terrible time. We know some of the story, but we don't know a lot of it. Listen to what he continues to say in verses 8 and 9:

What is the source of your spiritual strength? Is it your strong will? Is it your effective self- discipline? Or is it the Lord Himself?

Dave Dravecky, the major league pitcher who lost his arm to cancer, told of such an experience in his book entitled, When You Can't Come Back. "Looking back," he said, "my wife, Jan, and I have learned that the wilderness is part of the landscape of faith and every bit as essential as the mountaintop. On the mountaintop, we are overwhelmed by God's presence; in the wilderness we are overwhelmed by God's absence. Both places should bring us to our knees. The one, in utter awe; the other, in utter dependence."

Just writing about this seems to prompt Paul to want to share with his readers some very personal experiences he had just recently endured himself. Apparently, across the Aegean Sea in Ephesus, Paul had been through a terrible time. We know some of the story, but we don't know a lot of it.

"We were under great pressure:"

"a number of those who had practised sorcery brought their scrolls together and burned them publicly" (Acts 19:19). They started a bonfire of evil literature and burned everything they had, notwithstanding the cost.

One believes that such triumphs over the devil and his works would exact a price from every courageous fighter for Christ. There is such a reality as a 'demonic backlash.' The Reformation is followed by the counter-reformation. The Puritan period is followed by resurgent Arianism. The 1904 revival is followed by the 1914-1918 war and 20th century declension. Our Lord himself needed to fast and pray before his encounter in the wilderness with the devil. That battle wasn't like some military exercises in which blank cartridges are used. It was war, and it was costly to Jesus. Angels needed to come and give him help. When the disciples of Jesus failed to change a boy dominated by an evil spirit the Lord told them that such deliverances would not come without praying and fasting. When Paul reminds these Ephesians of the nature of the Christian life he tells them, "It's war," and he spells out the reality of battling against principalities and powers, the rulers of the darkness of this world and spiritual wickedness in high places. There was one time when Bunyan's Pilgrim fights for his life with Apollyon. Every Christian needs to clothe himself in all the armour of God just to survive, so that when the day of evil comes he may stand and fight (Ephs. 6:10-20).

"far beyond our ability to endure:" Paul quickly reached the limit of his own physique. He was not a brawny man. His enemies said about him that his bodily presence was weak. A little fellow with the marks of scars and beatings on his head and body, and often he reached the limit of his own endurance, but then he had other reserves. When the grand-daughter of General Booth of the Salvation Army took part in her first open air meeting she went to give a report of it to the General. "How did it go?" he said to her. "All right, I think," she said, "I did my best." His soft face hardened: "Your best is not good enough for God. Through Jesus Christ you can do better than your best." How quickly we reach the point of our own ability to endure, and we know it, and we are looking unto Jesus. "Lord, I can't get through this next day without you. Every burden is too heavy without you, every temptation is too powerful, every mountain too high, every journey too long, every responsibility too great, every sickness too painful, every loss too grievous." They are all far beyond our ability to endure. But through Jesus Christ we can do all things. We can love our enemies. We can go the second mile. We can turn the other cheek. We can forgive and forgive and forgive seventy times seven. We can sand up and denounce sin, when we are fearful of the repercussions of the immoral crowd:

Ephesus was also the centre of corrupt vested interests in the commercial and business life of the city. Guilds made silver charms, mini-statues of the goddess Artemis, idols designed to order for home and garden, and souvenirs to be sold to the visitors who had sailed to the shrine from all over the Med. But then the gospel arrives in Ephesus, and it has a pervasive impact on the people of the city: "the word of the Lord spread widely and grew in power" (Acts 19:20). Sales of silver shrines went down. Idol-sellers took home less money. Idol-manufacturers became unemployed, and Ephesian citizens at last were speaking out about being joyfully delivered from the worship of a lifeless statue. A meeting of workmen was summoned by angry Demetrius a silversmith of all men connected with the temple and its manufacturing industries. The meeting soon went out of control, the mob went wild and they seized two companions of Paul and would have taken him too if they could have caught him. "Soon the whole city was in an uproar," (Acts 19:29). An ugly crowd was baying for blood. There was murder in the air. Similar situations today can leave people traumatised. They dragged the men into the huge theatre which had room for 25,000 people and "they all shouted in unison for about two hours: 'Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!" (Acts 19:34).

Paul is not unique in the Bible. The Psalmist cried to his own heart, "Why are you cast down O my soul?" Elijah lay down under a juniper tree and asked God to take away his life. Jonah "wanted to die, and said, 'It would be better for me to die than to live'" (Jonah 4:8). The psalmist in Psalm 88 cries bitterly to God. The only chink of light in that entire psalm is the first phrase, "O Lord, the God who saves me." Men rarely read it publicly or announce it to be sung because it chills a congregation. With these three verses it abruptly ends, "From my youth I have been afflicted and close to death; I have suffered your terrors and am in despair. Your wrath has swept over me; your terrors have destroyed me. All day long they surround me like a flood; they have completely engulfed me. You have taken my companions and loved ones from me; the darkness is my closest friend."

Murdoch Campbell says, "Many a poor distressed soul has seen his own image in this mirror."

Listen to what he continues to say in verses 8 and 9: "We despaired even of life;"

Those familiar with clinical depression may sense in Paul's words something of almost that magnitude. Something terrible had happened to Paul—whether it was illness, or imprisonment, or the result of that riot in Ephesus where he almost was murdered—something so indescribably beyond limits of his power to deal with, it took him to the very depths. An indescribable sadness, a pressure, a weight was upon him, so that he felt that he must die. Some of you have been there. Your marriages have been so completely dead, lacking any life, or your dreams have been so totally crushed or defeated, or you've been in such trouble, or you've been so sick that you just felt that you had no hope within yourselves, as though you were under the "sentence of death," to use Paul's words. There was the great catastrophe at the Surrey Gardens Music Hall which the church had hired to find more room for the crowds who wished to hear Spurgeon. Some evil men created a disturbance causing a panic and rush for the doors in which seven people were killed. C.H.Spurgeon was inconsolable: "who can conceive the anguish of my sad spirit? I refused to be comforted; tears were my meat by day, and dreams my terror by night. I felt as I had never felt before ... My mind lay, like a wreck upon the sand, incapable of its usual motion. I was in a strange land, and a stranger in it. My Bible, once my daily food, was but a hand to lift the sluices of my woe" ("The Early Years," Banner of Truth, p.426).

Yet, Paul said, out of it he learned to rely not on himself, but on God. "But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead"

Did you know that the only way God can raise the dead is if there has been a death? If your marriage has died, or if your career has died, if your hope has died, then God can truly work. Sometimes—thank God it's not often—we have to actually hear the death sentence pronounced or lose all hope within ourselves in order at last to throw ourselves upon God to such a degree that we are able to see God work. Sometimes God can't work until we give up.

The pain you feel is not whimsical or arbitrary. It is never a matter of mere sovereignty. Scripture witness to this abounds: "the Lord does not afflict willingly," (Lamentations 3:33). Our human fathers, according to the epistle to the Hebrews, corrected us after their own pleasure, after their own whim, but God corrects his children for their profit (Hebrews 12:10).

d. God comforts us by blessing us with the hope of heaven.

10 He has delivered us from such a terrible death, and He will deliver us; we have placed our hope in Him that He will deliver us again.
"I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us" (Roms. 8:18). Paul wrote that as one who had known immense suffering. Put in the balances the sufferings of today and then the glories of eternity. There is no comparison.

Eric Barker, a missionary from Great Britain, spent over 50 years in Portugal preaching the Gospel -- often under adverse conditions. During WWII, the situation became so critical that he was advised to send his wife and eight children to England for safety. His sister and her three children were also evacuated on the same ship. While his beloved relatives were forced to leave, he remained behind to carry on the work. On the Sunday following their departure, pastor Barker said to his congregation, "I've just received word that all my family have arrived safely home!" He then proceeded with the service as usual. Later, the full meaning of his words became known to his people. He had been handed a wire just before the meeting, informing him that a submarine had torpedoed the ship and everyone on board had drowned. He knew that because all were believers, they had reached a safer shore than England. Although overwhelmed with grief, he managed by the grace of God to live above the circumstances. The certain knowledge that his family was enjoying the bliss of Heaven comforted his heart.

10 He has delivered us from such a terrible death, and He will deliver us; we have placed our hope in Him that He will deliver us again.

“He has delivered us”.. from Sin and Satan and hell.

"He will deliver us," adds Paul. He is absolutely certain of it. That great deliverance was not a 'one-off.' It was simply a reflection of his covenantal relationship with all his people. They have a Sovereign Protector.

His love in times past Forbids me to think,
He'll leave me at last In trouble to sink.

Each sweet Ebenezer I have in review,

Confirms His good pleasure to see me quite through

“He will deliver us again.”

For I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day."

e. God comforts us by driving us to prayer.

11 And you can join in helping with prayer for us, so that thanks may be given by many on our behalf for the gift that came to us through [the prayers of]many.

Not a burden we bear, Not a sorrow we share,
But our toil He doth richly repay; Not a grief nor a loss,
Not a frown nor a cross But is blessed if we trust and obey.

The Arabs have a saying, "All sunshine makes a desert." The danger of prosperity is it encourages a sense of false independence. It makes us think that we are okay to handle life alone. I like what Abraham Lincoln said: "I have often been driven to my knees in prayer because I had no where else to go." Often, it's in times of misfortune that we find out who our friends are and we find out who God is and what God is able to do—just how dependable God really is.

# posted by Groseys messages @ 8:18 AM