Testimony

Recap Comforting Calamity

We continue in our series on the early church. We started on Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians. We know for a fact that this is not his second letter. It is actually his third. The letter in between first and second Corinthians was a very harsh letter. We know that because Paul will reference how hurt they might have been by the letter. Paul has sent this letter to give more instruction and inform them as to why he has not been able to visit.

Sometimes, we hit delays. That is okay. Sometimes there are issues that pop up that prevent us from doing what we want to do or causes us to fail at doing something. Last week we looked at the fact that Paul has been prevented from returning to them because he has run into affliction. Paul did not have an easy time in ministry. We have already seen several times how there were attempts on his life. He is imprisoned several times because of his evangelism efforts throughout the Mediterranean. Though Paul has suffered, he does not bemoan the suffering. Instead, he looks the suffering as an opportunity to grow in his faith. These issues arise, not to mar him, but they strengthen him.

We looked at the mystery of how God turns our afflictions and suffering into comfort. When we suffer, God gives us comfort. He walks through those issues with us. Then later on, we will have opportunities presented to us that allow us to help someone as they go through their suffering. It is a lot easier to relate with someone and what they are going through when we ourselves have gone through something similar. Our goal as believers is to lean into the adversity that comes our way. It should not stop us, instead it should embolden us. Look at Jesus. Jesus met resistance and adversity, but He stayed the course and followed the Father’s plan of redemption. There is Paul. Remember a while back we read about how they had to lower him out of the city in a basket so he could escape imprisonment. Paul does not sit back and think to himself “you know, I should just stop doing what im doing, life will be a lot easier if I just give this mission up.” Paul knows that the message of Christ is so important, he has to give the message to everyone he can. Do we feel the same way? Resistance, if we respond properly, will make us stronger than we were before.

Before we jump into today’s sermon, I want us all to ask ourselves this question.

Is our Conscience Clear?

Paul is writing this letter to them with a clear conscience. He is not writing them with any level of deceit. His conscience is clear. If you have your Bibles, please turn them to 2 Corinthians 1:12-24

2 Corinthians 1:12–24 CSB

Indeed, this is our boast: The testimony of our conscience is that we have conducted ourselves in the world, and especially toward you, with godly sincerity and purity, not by human wisdom but by God’s grace. For we are writing nothing to you other than what you can read and also understand. I hope you will understand completely—just as you have partially understood us—that we are your reason for pride, just as you also are ours in the day of our Lord Jesus. Because of this confidence, I planned to come to you first, so that you could have a second benefit, and to visit you on my way to Macedonia, and then come to you again from Macedonia and be helped by you on my journey to Judea. Now when I planned this, was I of two minds? Or what I plan, do I plan in a purely human way so that I say “Yes, yes” and “No, no” at the same time? As God is faithful, our message to you is not “Yes and no.” For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, whom we proclaimed among you—Silvanus, Timothy, and I—did not become “Yes and no.” On the contrary, in him it is always “Yes.” For every one of God’s promises is “Yes” in him. Therefore, through him we also say “Amen” to the glory of God. Now it is God who strengthens us together with you in Christ, and who has anointed us. He has also put his seal on us and given us the Spirit in our hearts as a down payment. I call on God as a witness, on my life, that it was to spare you that I did not come to Corinth. I do not mean that we lord it over your faith, but we are workers with you for your joy, because you stand firm in your faith.

Paul uses some interesting language here. He speaks of boasting and he speaks of pride. However, the pride and boasting he is talking about here is not the sinful kind of boast or pride. Instead, it means that he has confidence. He is confident in the testimony of his conscience that he has approached them with godly sincerity. He is not lying to them. He wanted to come visit, but he could not. There is a great difference between intending to go, but being held back by issues outside of our control and saying we are going to do something, but then not doing it because we just didn’t feel like it or because of our irresponsibility.

For instance, I was once late for my duty day. Duty onboard a destroyer is typically no fun. Every six days, we spend a full 24 hours on the ship, standing watch, running drills, and doing our other jobs. Being late for duty is frowned upon. When someone runs late, that means another Sailor gets stuck on watch that was not supposed to be and there is a series of other effects this tardiness has. However, there is a difference between being late because of carelessness and irresponsibility and things outside of the person’s control. That careless and irresponsibility should cause the person to have guilt about not being on time. However, even when the person cannot help it, there might still be guilt. We had duty turnover at 0630. Back then, I typically got up at about 0430 so I could be to the ship no later than 0530. Well, on this particular morning, the commute was going great, until I got on the first part of the Hampton Roads Bridge Tunnel. Oh, the HRBT, I hate that thing. If I had any worry about eternal damnation, I am sure that the HRBT would be part of my eternal torment. People actually get license plates made up to profess their hatred for this bridge tunnel. Anyway, I got to the first part and then traffic came to a grinding halt. We sat there for an hour, no movement. At that point, it’s 0600, so I call my section leader. Sure enough, one of my other buddies on duty is stuck just a couple of car lengths ahead of me. We sat another hour. At that point, we find out that someone was doing maintenance in the tunnel the night before. They removed a grate to perform said maintenance and the person forgot to put the grate back down. They opened the tunnel, the first car goes through and falls into the pit where the grate should have been. An investigation is launched, they have to find the grate, and everyone is stuck like chuck waiting for it to reopen. I didn’t get to the ship that day until 11:30. I caught grief from my buddies because I had left them in the lurch, but I did not get in trouble with my chain of command. I was guilty of being late, but it was not on my conscience because there was truly nothing I could do at that point. It would have been a wholly different thing if I had just rolled out of bed at 11:00 am and wandered on down to base.

That’s what Paul is saying here. He has failed them, but not because he is being irresponsible or callous toward them. As a result, he his conscience is clean. I don’t know about you, but even when I am not necessarily responsible for missing something, I can carry a level of guilt around regardless. It happens. In this instance here, Paul is upset that he could not make it to them, but his conscience is not bothered.

A Clear Conscience Does not always mean we are right with God.

However, just because we have a clear conscience doesn’t mean that we should think that we are doing okay. From time to time, it is good to sit down and reflect on how we are doing with our walk with the LORD. Not everyone’s conscience is affected by their sin. My hope and prayer is that our conscience is affected by our sin. If we are able to blatantly sin and not care about it, then we might need to question our relationship with Jesus. As believers, the Holy Spirit should be residing in us and giving us correction. Nowadays, we see the world say that it is okay to do things that the Bible does not allow. Yet people engage in them and many of them claim to be Christians. It’s not just the sin that is committed out in the open either, it’s the sin that is hard to determine since it happens in a hush hush manner or there is a level of deceit to it like lying, something that God detests. If we don’t have that check, we might need to determine whether we have stifled the Spirit like 1 Thessalonians 5:19 “Don’t stifle the Spirit.” That’s a scary idea, that we can continue in our sin to the point that the Spirit is stifled and no longer sends those pings when we engage in sinful behavior. We have to remember that nothing is hidden from God.

That’s why it is good for us to do a conscience check from time to time to make sure we truly are on the up and up. If not, we can go down a bad road and not even realize what has happened. Or we go down that bad road and our conscience doesn’t stop us. Or it tries to, but we do it anyway. I used to tell my kids that if they have to ask themselves if they should not be doing something, they should go ahead and err on the side of they should not be doing it. Because if the goodness or validity of something has to be questioned, then it probably is not all that it promises to be.

No one is immune from the problem. It can hit anyone. I was just having a conversation with an ordination candidate. Last Wednesday during Bible study, we were going over the incident of David with Bathsheba. What is interesting here is that outsiders observing David’s behavior would think that he had done the right thing. They would think that he was just this kind and loving king that does what he can to take care of his people. For instance, one of his best fighters was killed in battle. So what does David do? He marries his pregnant widow. Talk about a good and upstanding king with great character. The people who saw David do all this probably lifted his name up around the dinner table. They talked about it with pride.

Except nothing he did in that entire scenario was actually honorable. I am sure we all remember the story of David and Bathsheba. David has his army out fighting against an enemy that is all but defeated at this point. They have retreated to within their city walls and now it is just a matter of time before the surrender or the people revolt because of a lack of supplies. David stays home and sees a beautiful lady bathing. He sends some men to ask about her, they come back and report that she is married. He sends them back to retrieve her, they sleep together, she gets pregnant, he has her husband brought off the front lines of battle. If he could just get Uriah to go home and sleep with his wife, then no harm done. Everyone wins. David isn’t caught and Uriah has another kid. Uriah doesn’t go home, though, because of his loyalty to the army, to David, and most of all to God. So David sends a letter with Uriah basically giving instructions for Uriah to die. The letter tells Joab to rush the city and then draw back when the fighting is fiercest. Uriah dies, just as David wanted, still no one is any the wiser about the treachery in David’s plan. So he marries the woman and seems to make it “all right”. It was “all right” from a worldly standard. 2 Samuel 11:27 “When the time of mourning ended, David had her brought to his house. She became his wife and bore him a son. However, the Lord considered what David had done to be evil.”

All that to say just because we might think we are clear and just because the people around us might be cheering it on, if it is against God and His will, then it is wrong.

Paul then goes on to respond to a charge of duplicity. The charge is that Paul is not honest here. Yet he admits that he did not make the proper planning arrangements. Rather than consult with God about his travel plans, he kind of decided to do his own thing. Then God redirected him.

This idea of duplicitousness is very serious. Jesus Himself says in Matthew 5:37 “But let your ‘yes’ mean ‘yes,’ and your ‘no’ mean ‘no.’ Anything more than this is from the evil one.” When we say we are going to do something, we need to do it. When we say we are going to do something, but we don’t follow through, it calls our integrity into question. The same thing goes with our no. When we say no, our no needs to remain no. I find that one especially hard to deal with when it comes to children. I tend to the party of “no” when a kid asks me for something. Then they go and talk to Dania who will sometimes come along and convince me that my way of thinking was not right and that I should have in fact said yes. So then I change my mind and give in. That is problematic in and of itself because I am not maintaining my no as a no. Even if it does not cause my kids to question my integrity, it gives another dangerous lesson: When Dad doesn’t give us what we want, we go to Mom. When kids tell their dad they want to talk to their mom, it is essentially them demanding to see the manager.

People are going to view us from our ability to maintain our yeses and nos. If we don’t, then people may question us. When our names come up in conversation, is it because our name is associated with good or with something else? Proverbs 22:1 “A good name is to be chosen over great wealth; favor is better than silver and gold.” At the end of the day, when we leave this earth, we are not taking any silver or gold with us. Our reputation will follow us beyond the grave, so we should want that reputation to be a good one.

However, it is not just our reputation that is affected when integrity breaks. Others can be affected, their faith can be affected. As people, we can fail, we can lie, we can mess things up. God cannot. He does not. God does not fail. However, when we as his people fail, it might cause confusion for others as they work out their salvation. That is why Paul is addressing this issue here because God does not operate in a state where yes is no and no is yes. When God says something, He means it. His yes is always yes. His no is always no. 1 Samuel 15:29 “Furthermore, the Eternal One of Israel does not lie or change his mind, for he is not man who changes his mind.”” So we see the danger here. If we use double speak and consistently fail, then the people around us won’t see us as trustworthy. Since we are attached to Christ and are His people, then others might assume that He Himself uses double speak as well. That’s a problem. There are plenty of people out there today, even people in some churches, that believe there will be a second chance when we all stand before Christ. That no matter what, everyone will enter into heaven, regardless of their faith or what they did here on earth. While that sentiment might seem nice, it is not Biblical. If it was Biblical, then Jesus would not have warned people about hell. People might be double minded, but God is not. People might change, but God does not. He is the same today as He was yesterday. He is the same as He was in the beginning when He laid the foundations of the earth. He will be the same thousands of years from now. What great news that is. What great news to know that God is not going to change His standards for entering heaven. He isn’t going to change His mind and say, “yeah, no, in addition to Christ dying on the cross, now you have to do this, too.” We can take great comfort in knowing that God never changes.

Paul goes through all of this and again tries to clarify why he has not been able to come back. I am certain that he knew there were people in the Corinthian church that did not believe him. So he puts this small planning faux pas in comparison with the big work he has been doing for the kingdom. Let’s face it, there are some people that will never be satisfied. They will always find fault in whatever someone is doing. I am sure we all know the type. A kid brings home straight As and all mom and dad do is focus on the fact that the child accidentally left his backpack at school. Rather than focus on the momentous and great achievement the child had, they focus on a small piece that really has no meaning in the grand scheme of things. That’s just one of many examples. I am sure we can all think back to people in our lives that were never satisfied with all the good stuff, they just focused on the bad stuff. Thankfully, those people are not the ones that will be judging us when we depart this earth.

Paul is out doing kingdom work. Just like Paul, we can go and do kingdom work. Just like Paul, we are going to have moments where we speak too soon and our yes will turn to a no. We are humans and mistakes will happen. However, when this happens, let’s not lose sight of the big picture. We might fail. At some point a person in our lives is going to fail us. At some point, we are going to fail someone and disappoint them. Thankfully, my faith is not in you and your faith is not in me. Our faith is in the One true God, the maker of heaven and earth. God Almighty never fails.Thankfully, we serve the One True God. He never fails. All our trust and hope can be put in Him because we know that He will always come through and take care of His people. If you are here this morning and have never put your faith into the One who will never fail you, I urge you to come to Him today. The best decision we can ever make in our lives is to put our faith in Him.