Sermon Tone Analysis

Ministry of Trouble, Part 2

STRANGE MINISTERS

Ron Dunn

2 Corinthians 1:3-10

 

 

Open your Bibles to 2 Corinthians 1:3-10

 

Those of you who were here this morning will remember that we started the message this morning on the Ministry of Trouble.

There are two ways to bear any wounds that you receive.

Whether they are spiritual, mental, physical, financial, etc., it really doesn't make any difference.

Anytime that a problem, a difficulty, a hurt, or a pressure comes into your life, it is sent from God to minister.

There are two ways to bear them.

One is to bear it the world's way.

That always brings about death.

The other is to bear it God's way.

That always brings about such a change of heart Paul says that you don't regret having the wounds.

I could not help but think tonight as some of these testimonies were given (some of the difficulties that were encountered, some of the pressures that were experienced) how true that teaching is of the Word of God.

When a problem, a difficulty, a pressure, a wound, a hurt of any kind is borne God's way, it produces a change of heart so great, so tremendous that you do not regret having the wound.

The way to bear it God's way so as to produce this change of heart is to see it as a minister sent from God for our good to do a work in us that God has preplanned before the foundations of the earth.

We saw this morning that the first reason that God allows these things to come into our life is that you and I may experience the comfort of God.

Beginning with verse 3,

Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort; who comforteth us in all our tribulation (The word literally means all our pressures.

We always have the idea of physical pain, but that is not the primary meaning of the word.

If we understand it as any kind of problem or pressure, it will be more meaningful to us.), that we may be able to comfort them which are in any (every kind of) trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God.

For as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our consolation also aboundeth by Christ.

And whether we be afflicted, it is for your consolation and salvation, which is effectual in the enduring of the same sufferings which we also suffer:  or whether we be comforted, it is for your consolation and salvation.

And our hope of you  is steadfast, knowing, that as you are partakers of the sufferings, so shall ye be also of the consolation.

For we would not, brethren, have you ignorant of our trouble which came to us in Asia, that we were pressed out of measure, above strength, in so much that we despaired even of life.

But we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God which raiseth the dead: who delivered us from so great a death, and doth deliver: in whom we trust that he will yet deliver us.

2)     God allows trouble to come into our lives not only that we may experience his own comfort but that we may be equipped to comfort others.

Notice what he says in verse 4.  Let me read from the New English Bible which I think makes it a little clearer than the King James Version.

He comforts us in all our troubles so that we in turn may be able to comfort others in any trouble of theirs, and to share with them the consolation we ourselves receive from God.

As Christ's cup of suffering overflows, and we suffer with him, so also through Christ our consolation overflows.

If distress be our lot, it is the price we pay for your consolation, for your salvation, your wholeness.

If our lot be consolation, it is to help us to bring you comfort and strength to face with fortitude the same sufferings we now endure.

Our hope for you is firmly grounded for we know that if you have part in the suffering, you have part also in the divine consolation.

In that statement Paul is making a tremendous revelation.

The reason God comforts us, and the reason God comes to us in those times of distress and pressure, and makes himself real, and stands over us, and overshadows us with his strength and encouragement is not that that comfort might terminate within ourselves, but that we might become a channel through which God may be able to comfort others also.

The key word in verse 4 is the word that.

It is a purpose clause in the Greek language.

It means simply this:  the reason that God comforts us in all of our trouble is for the express purpose that we may be able to comfort other people in every kind of trouble with the same comfort that we ourselves have experienced.

That is one of the main principles of the Christian faith.

It is that you and I receive something from God that we may pass on to someone else.

God blesses us.

Why?--that we in turn may be a blessing to someone else.

The most distorted view of the Christian life is that God blesses us simply that we may be blessed, and that God comforts us simply that we may be consoled.

If you will check out the Old Testament, you will discover this is why God had to temporarily set aside the people of Israel and to graft in another branch into the tree.

The Israelites in the Old Testament had the idea that they were the end of all of God's purpose.

God had given them blessing upon blessing just because they deserved it, just because he wanted to bless them.

They did not see this tremendous principle that the reason God chose Israel was that they might be a channel through which he could reach other people.

They were to simply take what God gave to them and pass it on to other people.

They were blessed in order that they might become a blessing.

There is nothing that will sour the fruit on the tree of your godly life any quicker than thinking that the reason God gives you fruit is that you may enjoy it simply for yourself.

It is only when you take the fruit that God gives in your life and pass it on to somebody else that it flourishes and reproduces itself.

The chain of events here is so interesting.

Paul was in Asia and had serious difficulty.

Perhaps this trouble had absolutely not a thing to do with the Corinthians.

It may have come from some other direction.

It may have been occasioned by something that was not even related to the Corinthians.

Paul says here is the way God works.

Here is the chain reaction.

God let us get into a tight place—pressure, tribulation so intense that we even despaired (word despair means we were in doubt of survival).

Phillips translates it like this:  we thought this was the end.

Paul is literally saying we thought our number was up.

We thought we were going down for the count.

It had nothing to do with the Corinthian situation.

Paul says God let us experience that so that in turn he might be able to comfort us that we might experience God's ability and adequacy to meet every need.

The reason he did that is so that we might be able to pass on to you our experience of God's complete adequacy in every need.

Why does God let it come?

How does it minister to us?

You stop looking upon that as a hospital; you look upon it as a seminary in which God has enrolled you to train you and equip you and prepare you to minister to someone else.

He says that God has allowed this to happen to us that we might take that very same comfort, encouragement that we have received of God and share it with you.

He says in the fifth verse that as the sufferings of Christ are overflowing the banks of our lives so also is the consolation.

When God pours out his comfort and comes with his adequacy, there is so much of it that there is enough for you to share it with somebody else.

There is always more than you need yourself.

God never gives you simply enough to meet your own needs; he always gives you enough to meet your need and the needs of others.

By the way, that's true not only of spiritual encouragement; that's true of money.

If you will read in 2 Corinthians, chapter 9, he says that he gives us enough so that we can be generous for every situation.

How about that?

The thing that stagnates the Christian's life financially, spiritually, emotionally and every other way is when he gets the idea that God has given him just enough barely to get by himself.

That's how most Christians live.

They don't have time to minister to somebody else.

They think they are just going to barely be saved by the skin of their teeth themselves.

They don't have time to help someone else, to comfort someone else, to give to someone else in need.

God never works that way.

If you'll read the Scriptures, you'll find that every time God gives, he always uses words that have the idea of giving lavishly and freely and overflowing.

God never gives you anything that is simply adequate only for yourself.

He always gives you enough to meet the needs of somebody else.

Now I want to tell you a tragedy.

I have seen it happen so many times in the seven years that I have been here.

I have seen it happen in my own life, and I stand condemned tonight by my own memory.

A pressure comes, a heartbreak comes, a tragedy comes and I bear it the world's way.

I resent it.

I get bitter.

I feel sorry for myself.

I begin to mumble and gripe and complain.

There is no comfort, no blessing, no victory.

Then suddenly one day my path crosses with somebody who is in desperate need of ministry, of comforting.

That person goes unhelped, uncomforted because I was unable to share with them anything but my own bitterness and resentment.

I don't know how many times I have seen somebody in a need, and I've thought of somebody else.

I thought to myself, oh, if so-and-so had just reacted to that problem in a Christian way and found victory, how they could minister to this other person.

The tragedy is that there are a great number of people tonight who are not being helped, and encouraged and ministered to because their ministers never learned the secret of receiving burdens in the way God intended us to receive them.