The Bible Doesn't Say That - "God Won't Give You More Than You Can Handle"
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Good morning Harmony!
It has certainly been a busy two weeks for the family. As most of you know, our first grandchild was born two weeks ago, and Kristin and I and the kids spent some time down there helping Anna and Edward out some as they adjusted to having a newborn in the house.
That was an exciting, blessed week for us as new grandparents.
And I want to say a special thanks to Adam for filling in for me last week and giving us that opportunity to do that.
Then last week was youth camp, where for four nights the Harmony worship team was there ministering to about 35 or 40 youth and some adults as Chaplain John Marr from over on post preached the Word and lives were changed.
It has been a busy two weeks. And it’s not over! This coming Tuesday we’re going to have an opportunity to yet again go out and minister to our community, and we’ll discuss that more later.
This week, we’re going to wrap up our series on The Bible Doesn’t Say That, where we have already addressed some things like prosperity gospel and suffering and sin, and today we are going to be in the book of II Corinthians, chapter one, were we are going to see our main point for today, that
Main Point: The Bible doesn’t really say, “God won’t give you more than you can handle.” Instead, God will never give you more than he can handle.
How many have heard that before? Maybe you’ve even heard that this week. Now the place in Scripture where those words are taken from, they come from 1 Corinthians 10:13
13 No temptation has come upon you except what is common to humanity. But God is faithful; he will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to bear it.
That’s where the presumption comes from, and we have kind of talked about this before. We cannot take a single verse of Scripture and know it’s full meaning without the passages around it. That would be like the media does today when they take a snippet from an interview and use that against someone.
In context this verse means something very different, and even just reading this verse we can get the concept of the context that God doesn’t tempt us, and with Jesus we can overcome temptation - only with Jesus we can overcome that temptation, because it is He who gives us the way out of that temptation.
And yet people use this saying for things that are not temptations. Sometimes our lives can just get overburdened and overworked.
The past week with camp going on, I’m working a full time job, I’m doing worship, I’ve got a boatload of schoolwork due yesterday, and I still have my responsibilities to the church. I was stretched pretty thin this past week. And I’m here to tell you that without Jesus, some of that wouldn’t have gotten done, because I probably would have given up on some of that or all of that on Monday!
But because of that I am able to see God’s hand guiding and pushing for perseverence, and therefore I am able to see God’s glory as we will see here in 2 Corinthians 1.
If we are pursuing God wholeheartedly, we will inevitably find ourselves stretched beyond our own capacities, and this will bring glory to God.
Beginning in verse 3 -
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 just as the sufferings of Christ overflow to us, so also through Christ our comfort overflows.
6 If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation. If we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which produces in you patient 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 also share in the comfort.
8 We don’t want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters, of our affliction that took place in Asia. We were completely overwhelmed—beyond our strength—so that we even despaired of life itself.
9 Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death, 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 put our hope in him that he will deliver us again
11 while you join in helping us by your prayers. Then many will give thanks on our behalf for the gift that came to us through the prayers of many.
A few weeks ago we were in 1 Corinthians and we talked about how they were, right - how the corinthians were these sort of rough group of people that really didn’t know how to act. And so they got two letters.
This time they had accepted false teachers among themselves, and these false teachers had become slanderers of Paul because of Paul’s suffering. These false preachers were in it for the money, whereas Paul was in it for the Gospel. Prosperity gospel is not a new thing.
And so this letter is a letter that is meant to prepare the Corinthians for an iminent visit, and it is a prepatory defense of the Gospel and the events that have occured in the life of Paul. By the time this letter was written, Paul has been beaten, deprived, shipwrecked, and stoned. Paul is going to explain to them his credentials as a follower of Christ, as presented in the Gospel, and through that present to them the falsehood of that saying that God won’t give you more than you can handle.
Paul greets them, and then he gets right into how things have been going, and we see two aspects of how God helps us when we are afflicted. The first aspect is that
1. He is the COMFORTER in our trials, vv. 3-7.
Paul says
3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort.
God is the Comforter of the Lord, He is our Father, and He is where we find mercy and comfort.
And the Greek word used for comfort means more than just a brief, passing relief from suffering, it means more than just sympathy. It’s used ten times between verses 3 and 7, and it’s this word that means He stands right beside us while we are in those times. he is right there, to comfort us as we go through the struggle.
God is the comforter in our trials. Why?
Verse 4 -
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.
he comforts us - again, a word meaning walks beside us - so that we can comfort others, even though that ultimate comfort comes from the Father.
It is the same word used for comfort the entire time.
now that word affliction, that doesn’t mean little things, although He does comfort then too. This isn’t talking about some little splinter or some small affliction like having a cold, no, Paul has his history in mind when he’s talking about this word affliction.
He’s referring back to those times where he was beaten, imprisoned, and stoned for the Gospel.
He’s talking about those serious times in our lives where something has occured, and God will walk with us through that, so that we can walk together with God and someone else through that.
He’s talking about those times where we are broken, where all hope seems lost, where it seems like there is no light at the end of that tunnel of life. And Paul says even in those moments, God was with me, so that I could comfort someone else that is going through that same affliction.
Back in 2004, Kristin and I had a lot going on. Kristin’s dad that raised her most of her life, he gets cancer, and at 24 years old, and pregnant, Kristin loses her dad 2 days before thanksgiving.
A few weeks later, in December, we suffer a miscarriage. And we are just devestated. We’re broken. We’re asking those questions of why God, why?
And the church we were at came alongside us and there was someone there to comfort us in that time.
A few years later, we had moved to Tennessee, and a family there had a miscarriage, and we were able to minister to someone else, and walk beside them, and show them that God is the ultimate comforter and that there is hope and there is promise through that grief and affliction.
Verse 5 says
5 For just as the sufferings of Christ overflow to us, so also through Christ our comfort overflows.
Here Paul is specifically talking about about righteous suffering. We suffer just as Christ suffered, even though He was perfect and righteous. But because of that, we also share in the comfort - again same word, that Holy Spirit, walking right beside us - because we are in Christ and through His sacrifice for the believer we receive that comfort.
Verse 6 - I love verse 6 -
6 If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation. If we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which produces in you patient endurance of the same sufferings that we suffer.
This verse says a lot about why we suffer. Why do we suffer affliction? For your comfort, for the Holy Spirit to walk beside you, and for you to have salvation.
Because without suffering, you wouldn’t recognize your need for salvation.
Does that mean that everyone will believe and follow Christ when they face these afflictions? No, that isn’t what Paul is saying, but if you understand the Gospel, then you understand that Christ’s suffering was necessary for our salvation. Through His suffering we can understand the cost that sin has, and that means that at some point in our lives we are going to go through something that gives us two choices - follow Christ or reject Christ, knowing that it was through His suffering that He is able to sympathize with us and comfort us.
We are aflicted to fully know of His salvation and comfort, because when we are comforted that produces the endurance to know that He is walking beside us and that we are able to then go out and share that hope with someone else that is suffering similar to our suffering.
And verse 7 finishes out the statement-
7 And our hope for you is firm, because we know that as you share in the sufferings, so you will also share in the comfort.
We are afflicted to demonstrate our salvation, that produces comfort, that produces Christ-focused endurance, that presents itself to us so that we are able to go out and share in one another’s afflictions, and verse seven says because of that, because we know you share in those afflictions and sufferings, we will all share in the comfort of the Lord Jesus Christ.
That’s the comforter in our trials. We may be enduring great hardships and great trials, but through Jesus Christ we are able to have the hope of the comfort of God and share in the work of the ministry.
The second aspect is that
2. He is the STRENGTHENER in our trials, vv. 8-11.
Paul says not only does He comfort us, He strengthens us. Verse 8
8 We don’t want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters, of our affliction that took place in Asia. We were completely overwhelmed—beyond our strength—so that we even despaired of life itself.
9 Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death, so that we would not trust in ourselves but in God who raises the dead.
Paul is reinforcing that word affliction here - and he says let me enlighten you to what it looks like to be a minister of Christ.
He says we don’t want you to miss this. Here is what has been happening throughout Asia. We were completely overwhelmed, we had nothing left in the tank, so much so that we despaired of life itself.
Now Paul isn’t talking about suicide here, though one might say that he was having similar tension in his affliction. Paul is saying that at one of those points in his ministry journey that he felt as though his life was over and there was nothing that he was going to be able to do about it. Perhaps that was when he was stoned, or some other time, but in any case Paul didn’t see a way out of this situation. He thought it was over.
Have you ever been out of strength?
We aren’t talking weak, because weak indicates there is still some action able to be taken, but we are talking not able to move, not able to think, empty.
Paul is talking about that moment of helplessness, where everyone and everything is against you. You’re discouraged, you’re captured by the enemy, you have no hope of survival. The attack feels as though it is succeeding at crushing you, and it’s at this time that the only thing you have to rely on is God.
The same God who gave sight to the blind. The same God who made the deaf hear and the mute speak. The same God who raised a paralytic and made him walk again. The same God who raised Lazarus, the same God who raised Jesus, the Same God that raises you and I to walk again in the newness of life.
When we are at our lowest point, when all you have left is to rely on the Savior, when you have absolutely no hope in anything that you can do, that is when Jesus is at His strongest. That is when the strength of Jesus is your strength, and there is no power in hell that can change that!
Paul says
10 He has delivered us from such a terrible death, and he will deliver us. We have put our hope in him that he will deliver us again
He has delivered us! He will deliver us! Paul says that death cannot hold us, because He, King Jesus, has delivered us from that death that is hopeless and alone and weak, and we have put all our hope in the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords that when we can’t handle the suffering and the afflictions of this world that He can and He will.
Paul says in my name I was weak, but in Jesus I have the power flowing through these veins that raises dead men to walk again, and it has raised us as believers in Christ to have new life in these dead bodies!
It doesn’t get much more exciting than that!
Verse 11 Paul adds to this though, he says
11 while you join in helping us by your prayers. Then many will give thanks on our behalf for the gift that came to us through the prayers of many.
You are a part of that ministry. When you are praying for one another, when you are praying for us, Paul says, while you are doing that, then many will give glory to God for what happens when God hears their prayers and when God blesses them and shows His work through them.
We can never pray for one another enough.
And yet, that is probably the one thing that we don’t do enough.
More often than not, we are doing exactly what Paul is writing this letter to combat. More often than not, we choose to ridicule, to belittle, to attack fellow believers in Christ.
And we may not be doing it on the inside of the church, but we’ll do it on the outside. We’ll attack members of our own body when we walk out those doors. We’ll attack other churches because they aren’t like us when we walk out those doors.
And it’s one thing to call others out on things that should be called out, like blatant sin, but it’s another thing completely to be out slandering just because you think that they should be acting a certain way or doing something a certain way that is not found in the Word of God.
Paul says while you join in helping us by your prayers. Imagine what this church would look like if we all just prayed for one another instead of focusing on other things. Imagine what our county would look like if we started praying for every Bible-believing church out there, rather than focusing on why we don’t go there. Imagine what would happen if we were able to see past the things that divided us and were able to join on the things that united us.
And don’t imagine it because it would reflect well upon us - imagine it because of the Glory that God would receive from that. Imagine the lives that would be reached and changed for the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Martin Pistorius was just 12 years old when a mysterious illness began slowly robbing him of his ability to walk, talk, or communicate on any level. Finally, he descended into a vegetative state that left the doctors baffled and his family despairing. His parents were told to “take their son home because his time left was limited.” But his time wasn’t limited. “Martin just kept going, just kept going,” said his mother.
The first two years, Martin was indeed in a coma-like condition, motionless, unresponsive, and utterly unconscious. But some two years into his ordeal, his mind began to wake up. Unfortunately, his mind was the only thing that began to awaken. Martin was soon fully conscious, but unable to communicate with the outside world. No one, not even his closest caretakers or doctors knew that he could hear and see everything going on around him.
Martin felt trapped, claustrophobic, terrified, and felt that he would surely go insane. His lowest moment came when he heard his mother say, “I hope you die.” So full of despair, she later (unsuccessfully) attempted to take her own life. As for his father, “For the next decade, his father's life consisted of getting up early in the morning, driving his helpless son to a special care center, then picking him up eight hours later and driving him home, where he would be bathed, fed and put to bed,” reports the UK DAILY MAIL.
But Martin remained trapped in a frozen body. “‘I knew who I was and where I was, and understood I’d been robbed of a real life.”
Suddenly, after more than a decade of imprisonment within his own body, Martin began to once again feel his members. Slowly and painstakingly, movement followed, and then came rigorous rehabilitation. In his late 20s, he learned to use a computer to speak. Soon after, he got a government job. Then he graduated from college with a degree in computer science, started his own web design company and married his wife Joanna in 2008.
“His story may sound far-fetched,” reports Snopes.com, “but The National Institute of Neurological Orders and Stroke states ‘locked-in syndrome’ is in fact a real disorder.
Martin was surely given something that he couldn’t handle on his own.
Yet in an interview with Christianity Today, Martin says
“Without the Lord, I would not be here today. I have no doubt it was only His intervention that saved me. It was only through God that I have found my voice.”
The Bible doesn’t say, “God won’t give you more than you can handle.” But it does say that God will never give you more than He can handle, if you trust Him.
Prayer.
Now, if you’re here today and you’ve never trusted Jesus as your Lord and Savior, then right now the hope of salvation and comfort doesn’t reside with you.
But it doesn’t have to stay that way. You can know the hope, love, and peace of God that surpasses all understanding today.
God loves you enough to send His Son Jesus to pay for your sins and to redeem you, to give you hope in a hopeless world..
Christ loves you enough to have paid that price. Jesus paid it all. Jesus Christ died for you, was buried for three days, and rose again to save you from sin, death, Hell, and the grave. He did that so that you could have real peace and real joy and real hope in a relationship with Him.
If you have never called out to God and received Christ as Lord and Savior, if you haven't done that at any point in your life, you can do that today.
If you feel that God is calling out to you to embrace Him as Lord and Savior, then you can simply come up here and someone will share with you how you can do that today, or you can text the number on the screen or fill out a connect card from your bulletin and someone will contact you today. If you’d like you can grab the person that invited, you or someone you know that is here and we will walk you through what that looks like and share who Jesus is with you.
As the music plays softly for just a moment more, if you have never experienced that hope, this is your opportunity. If you need to come and pray for another person or church, this is that opportunity. If you need to repent of something you said or did to another brother or sister in Christ, this is that opportunity. Don’t let that stubborn pride or fear stop you from coming and laying it all down at the feet of the Savior today.
Whatever it is, you can do that today as the music continues softly for just another minute or so.
Prayer.