Sweet Fruit from a Thorny Tree (2 Cor. 1:3-11)

INTRODUCTION

WELCOME & RELEASE KIDS

Good Morning – Release Kids

REVIEW

New Series – Last Week

Light of the Gospel

Paul, an Apostle, by the will of God

The church f God that is at Corinth

BUT...

Seems beautiful and life-giving, yet we learned last week of the mistrust and disunity that existed before the author of 2 Corinthians, the Apostle Paul, and his audience, the Church of God in Corinth.

2 Corinthians – Background

The Corinthians were greatly influenced by their surrounding culture - leading them to ungodliness

Corinthians rejected Paul’s first letter of corrections (1 Corinthians)

Paul visited them and they questioned his authority, doubted his apostleship, critical of his character because Paul changed his travel plans, and there were false teachers.

Here’s the reality: If God is saying one thing and its is hard to accept, then people prefer the path of least resistance and become attracted to other “teachers” who will give them permission to do what they want. In Corinth this was false teachers, in Orlando - it’s YouTube.

Connection

Culture shapes the way we see and value the world around us. Sometimes this may be helpful and other times it is detrimental.

Corinthians value of Leadership

A church with problems related to the immaturity of the people - changed by the culture and

Honor & Shame culture (not guilt, like here) - you grew in honor by doing the right things and acheiving certain successes but then you could bring shame on yourself and others by doing the wrong things.

The Corinthians were oriented to competition

leadership - climb the ladder status and influence. This meant you would boast about your accomplishments while putting down the opposition’s weaknesses.

How to move up:

Power (wealth, influence, etc) - Paul on the other hand boasts of his weaknesses, not his power.

Skill & Rhetoric - yet Paul is accused of being a poor speaker and Paul has already written in “For the wisdom of this world is foolishness to God. as the Scripture say, “He traps the wise in the snare of their own cleverness.”

Wealth - you had to have the money to built monuments and put on parties. Wealth would move you up the ladder. They could buy the services - Paul denies money from a patron because he would be obligated to that person. Paul works with his hands. Paul also does the unthinkable and asks the Corinthians to give - which would never be done.

Comfort - lavish, comfortable lifestyle. Suffering is for the weak, the poor, those with whom the gods are displeased. For some, Paul’s suffering was a sign that he should be disqualified from ministry but Paul is going to say that his suffering is the means by which he ministers.

It is this point of suffering that Paul is addressing this morning?

PURPOSE:

In the midst of suffering, we tend to ask 1) “Why me? and, 2) Doesn’t anyone care?”

Through today’s message, I want to help us reframe those questions according the principles and God’s Word.

Pray

What kind of person do you look toward when you are going through a particularly hard season in life?

Broken People

The teaching in today’s passage is not easy…

Pressing into areas of our lives we try to wall off and protect - this passage is going to tell you to open the gates.

Today’s passage is going to challenge you to bring out into the light parts of your story where shame and/or regret plead for secretive darkness.

GOD OF ALL COMFORT

READ THE PASSAGE

TRANSITION

What kind of person do you look toward when you are going through a particularly hard season in life?

Broken People

Dark Seasons of the Soul

Pressing into areas of our lives we try to wall off and protect - this passage is going to tell you to open the gates.

Today’s passage is going to challenge you to bring out into the light parts of your story where shame and/or regret plead for secretive darkness.

COMFORT/ENCOURAGEMENT

In the verse 3-7 we see the word “COMFORT” said 10 different times.

What does this mean?

“It’s OK, everything will be fine. All things work together...”

It is critically important for us to understand this word biblically or we will allow our experience and/or culture to define it for us and then read that back into the passage.

Dictionary: sooth, console, reassure

Is this the kind of comfort Paul received, is this the kind of comfort Paul gave to the Corinthians?

Words that cannot withstand the weight of true pain and suffering.

Paraklésis

Means to call to one’s side or aide.

Consolation vs Comfort - You live up north where it actually gets cold for winter and you see a homeless woman laying on a park bench shivering in the cold.

Passive - Here’s a blanket, my thoughts and prayers are with you...

Active - Covering them in your coat as you help them to their feet, allowing them to lean their weight on you because their legs are too weak to carry themselves. You bring them inside, fix them a hot meal, and make a room for them in your house.

WHICH OF THESE IS COMFORT?

David Garland

“The comfort that Paul has in mind has nothing to do with a languorous feelings of contentment. It is not some tranquilizing dose of grace that only dulls pains but a stiffening agent that fortifies one in heart, mind, and soul. Comfort relates to encouragement, help, exhortation. God’s comfort strengthens weak knees and sustains sagging spirits so that one faces the troubles of life with unbending resolve and unending assurance.”

NOT

Feelings of contentment

Tranquilizing dose of grace to dull the pain

just words of consolation

IT IS

Active love

Stiffening that fortifies the heart, mind, and soul

It is help, exhortation, encouragement (bear up under the weight of another)

Strengthens weak knees and sustain sagging spirits

Unbending resolve and unending assrance

CHARACTER OF GOD

"When Paul says that God is the ‘Father OF mercies’ and ‘God of ALL comfort,’ he means more than simply that mercy and comfort come from God. yes, God most assuredly dispenses these wonderful blessings, but Paul is more concerned to tell us something about God’s character, his personality, the disposition and inclination of his heart... This is his personality, not just his performance.” (Sam Storms)

MY PAIN

WHY DO WE NEED COMFORT

2 Corinthians 1:4 ESV

who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.

2 Corinthians

“who comforts us in ALL our affliction”

OUR AFFLICTION - Describe what affliction feels like

Utterly burdened, beyond our strength

Despaired of life itself

Received a sentence of death

Have you ever felt this way?

I have...

I have prayed and asked God to take my life

I have been in situations where I didn’t think I would survive

I have endured seasons in my life when to only word I could utter in prayer was, “help.”

A weak, broken prayer on repeat, like a broken record, but with each repetition there was a new and expanding reality to my need.

ALL OUR AFFLICTION

Paul’s suffering was severe (according to Paul at the end of this letter)

5 times he was beaten within an inch of his life by the Jews

3 other times he was beaten with rods

He was stoned and left for dead

Shipwrecked 3 times - left adrift at sea

Constantly travelling and at risk from the elements and other people

The work of ministry was hard and the night were sleepless.

Maybe we hear Paul’s story and I begin to think - well what do I have to complain about?

We try to convince ourselves that our suffering isn’t as significant so we shouldn’t say anything but this doesn’t change the weighted impact on our souls.

We too have a culture of competition

We minimize our own pain or that of others.

Paul says “who comforts us in all our affliction”

Not just spiritual, not only when it is worse than someone else.

He comforts you in your suffering because that is his nature. That is his character.

Pressing into areas of our lives we try to wall off and protect - this passage is going to tell you to open the gates.

Can you identify with Paul?

Today’s passage is going to challenge you to bring out into the light parts of your story where shame and/or regret plead for secretive darkness.

Have you ever walked through this kind of season in life?

Are you currently bearing the weight of such grief and hardship?

RESULT - PAUL’S RESPOSNE

“But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead.”

CH Spurgeon spoke on this passage and titled his message

Sweet Fruit from a Thorny Tree

Thorny Tree = suffering and afflication

Sweet Fruit = Is the experience of God’s comfort and mercy

I look back on those difficult times in my own life differently now

I experienced God is new ways like never before.

I’ve tasted the sweetness of undeserved grace and comfort in ways that would never have been possible had I not walked through the dark valleys of life.

Though the darkness felt thick and suffocating - God’s light shone through to give life and hope

This teaching in today’s passage is not easy… b/c it doesn’t just end here… with us receiving the sweet fruit of God’s comfort

Pressing into areas of our lives we try to wall off and protect - this passage is going to tell you to open the gates.

Today’s passage is going to challenge you to bring out into the light parts of your story where shame and/or regret plead for secretive darkness.

Suffering

The Questions

Why Me?

Doesn’t Anyone Care?

Reframing the Questions

Who else?

What for?

How can we do this?

C.H. Spurgeon

THEIR COMFORT

OUR SCARS

Hidden or Revealed

Scars

Eleanor - hide the scar

Boys - show the scar, I have a story

Emotional Scars - we try to cover with a smile, a joke, change the topic, end a relationship before they get to close, move away...

The Questions - we often ask these questions when faced with suffering...

Why Me?

Doesn’t Anyone Care?

These questions are:

Inwardly focused

Constantly pursuing ease and worldly comfort (absence of pain)

Reframing the Questions - This passage invites us to reframe these questions

Who else?

“so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction”

Any affliction - not just what you have gone through

Not just people with the same story.

Everyone’s story in unique but suffering and affliction are shared.

It requires us to look beyond ourselves and toward others - NOT self-focused

It requires is to live openly and honestly with others - NOT hidden and protective

What for?

Suffering equips us to minister to others

“If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation; and if we are comforted, it is for your comfort...”

Your suffering, your pain is not in vain - those trials and thorns enabled you to taste the sweet fruit of God’s sufficiency and grace.

What you experienced can not be taught in a classroom.

They have uniquely equipped you to minister to other.

The question is:

Will you focus on yourself saying, Why me, poor pitiful me, nobody loves me, everybody hates me, I’m gonna go eat worms

OR - will you look up and look around to see who God has uniquely equipped you to serve? To administer HIS COMFORT to them.

Think of this - a war-torn saint, scarred but healed, now administering the healing balm of God’s comfort to other wounded saints.

How can we do this?

C.H. Spurgeon

One Sunday morning CH Spurgeon was preaching on the passage, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”

Though Spurgeon did not express it to his congregation he preached from his own feelings of depression.

He said, “I heard my own chains clank while I tried to preach to my fellow-prisoners in dark; but I could not tell why I was brought into such an awful horror of darkness, for which I condemned myself.”

The next day a man came to see him who bore the marks of his own despair. The man said, “I never before, in my life, heard any man speak who seemed to known my heart. You preached as though you had been inside my soul.”

That man felt as though he could not escape the darkness and planned to take his own life but the light of the gospel brought freedom and salvation.

Spurgeon said, “I know I could not have done it if I had not myself been confined in the dungeon in which he lay.” Spurgeon continued, “I tell you this story because you sometimes may not understand your own experience, and the perfect people may condemn you for having it, but what do they know of God’s servants? You and I have to suffer much for the sake of the people of our charge.”

JESUS’ SCARS

Our scars can bring healing and hope to others.

This is the gospel paradox

“By his wounds, we are healed...”

“by his wounds we are healed.”

He was pierced for our transgressions

He was crushed for our inquities

The punishment that brought us peace was on him

Through Jesus’ sufferings we are comforted and healed.

We experience God grace and comfort more deeply through our suffering

It is this experienced comfort that we can then administer to others.

Jesus identitifies with our pain (Hebrews)

We do not heal anyone from our wounds

We have been healed and comforted by God

It is God’s comfort that we can now administer to others.

It is not by our own power, nor is it comfort from within ourselves.

“God of All Comfort...”

It is a comfort we have received that we are then able to give away

APPLICATION

BEHOLD

God is a God of comfort

He applies a healing balm to our hearts with pierced hands. Through his suffering, he has brought of peace. This is the nature of the gospel we celebrate and this is the nature of the gospel we demonstrate.

How have you experienced God’s the sweet fruit of God’s comfort in the midst of thorns, suffering, and affliction?

What does it mean that God not only gives us a portion of comfort but he is by nature and character comfort and gives us himself?

What did this show you of God’s character in the end?

REFLECT

Lift our eyes away from ourselves and our pain to ask:

What for?

How might your pain and more importantly, the comfort you have received from God be a blessing to others?

Who else?

Who do you know that needs to be comforted?

MEDITATE

2 Corinthians 1:20 ESV

For all the promises of God find their Yes in him. That is why it is through him that we utter our Amen to God for his glory.

TINA HOOD’S TESTIMONY

We all have a story.

Invite Tina to the platform to share her story

1. My greatest fears ... tell some of the emotions I felt over the 5 month journey.

2. Experiencing peace ... how I came to a place of peace that really did surpass understanding.

3. Remembering He was with Me ... when fear arose in the roller coaster of emotions. How God met me on a particular day through scripture.

4. The comfort I experienced....through the body of the church surrounding me, and by God Himself, even more than the favorable results.