Ron Dunn Podcast - Suffering (Ron Dunn Podcast)

Episode Date: March 15, 2017

Ron Dunn preaches a message on 2 Corinthians 1:1-7 about how we find our comfort in Christ even in the midst of suffering.

You are listening to the Ron Dunn Podcast. Ron Dunn is a well-known author and was one of the most in-demand preachers during the latter part of the 20th century. He led Bible studies all over the United States, Europe, and South Africa. For more information and resources from Ron Dunn, please visit rondunn.com. I want you to open your Bibles this morning to 2 Corinthians chapter 1. 2 Corinthians chapter 1. And during these four days that we have together, I'm going to be speaking to you out of 2 Corinthians. And I have to say at the outset that I don't know of any study that has blessed me personally

any more than has my recent study of this letter that Paul wrote to the Corinthians, 2 Corinthians. And we're going to read this morning from chapter 1, and we'll read the first seven verses. Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy our brother, to the church of God, which is at Corinth with all the saints who are throughout Achaia. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God

of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we will be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted with God. For just as the sufferings of Christ are ours in abundance, so also our comfort is abundant through Christ. But if we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation. Or if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which is effective in the patient enduring of the same sufferings which we also suffer. And our hope for you is firmly grounded, knowing that as you are sharers of our sufferings, so also you are sharers of our comfort. A few years ago, the great German theologian Helmut Teleki visited the United States.

And upon his return to Germany, one of his colleagues asked him, What do you think of American Christianity? And his answer was simply this, They have an inadequate view of suffering. They have an inadequate view of suffering now I wouldn't be surprised if most European Christians and Asian Christians

and African Christians would not say the same thing about our western culture and about American Christianity. For many of those people have had to suffer for the cause of Christ and to this day suffer for the cause of Christ. You and I have been called upon to do very little suffering. And as one man said, there's not anything good yet can be said about suffering. And so we fail to see the ministry that God often has

in the suffering of His children. Now, immediately as Paul opens this letter, he comes to this matter of suffering, which tells us that this is going to be one of the major themes of his letter to these Corinthians. And at the outset, he tries to set the right perspective upon it. From the outset, he gives us the divine perspective upon suffering. And so I want to share with you this morning what I think Paul is saying and what makes us come to realize

what is an adequate view of suffering. What is the divine perspective upon suffering? And let me just mention, I have down here seven things. I told you it's going to preach longer than I've ever preached before, but I really want. But there are seven things here that I want to share with you. First of all, an adequate view of suffering teaches us something about God that we did not otherwise know. All true suffering in the Christian life, if we have an adequate view of it, will always teach us something about God that we did not know or either will emphasize to a greater extent something that we have known about God. Now you'll notice in verse 3, Paul breaks into kind of an emotional kind of blessing. He said, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

And then he defines him further with two phrases, the Father of mercies, or literally the Father of all pities, the pityings, and the God of all comfort. And so Paul, in his experience with suffering, has this to say, he is the father of all mercies. All mercy comes from him, and he is the God of all comfort. Now that first expression, he is the father of all mercies, indicates God's inner feeling, God's inner attitude towards us. That inwardly, He is the Father of all mercies. He is the originator of all mercies. That's the indication of the word Father. That all mercies originate with Him. And that indicates his inward feeling. But the next phrase, the God of all comfort, indicates his outward action. That not only is God in his heart and in his being a father of mercies, yet in his activity towards us, he is a God of all comfort. Now, if you look at that word comfort, you'll have to

realize that it's one of the key verses, one of the key words in this passage. It appears 10 times within these few verses. Now, if I'm reading about seven or eight verses and I come to the same word 10 times, it sort of gives me the idea that God's trying to get something across to me. And ten times in this passage, he uses that word comfort. Sometimes it may be translated in your Bible, consolation or encouragement, but it's all the same Greek word. It's the word from which the word Holy Spirit comes, paraclete.

And it means that someone who is called alongside to stand by us, to give us aid in time of need. It's one of the rich words of the New Testament. And it indicates God's personal involvement with us in whatever our situation. You remember when Paul was in prison and he had to stand before the Caesar and no one was there to stand with him. He said, all men forsook me, but he said, the Lord stood near me, stood by me. And it's a legal term that indicates of a lawyer who stands next to his client who is

accused of something and he whispers in his ear the things that he ought to say. It's the same idea here as the word comfort. Jesus said, I will not leave you comfortless. He said, but I will send another comforter just like myself. In other words, the Lord has not left us without somebody to stand by our side and to give us aid and advice and wisdom during times of need. And that's what Paul is saying. He is the God of all comfort. Now, you'll notice again over and over how Paul uses that all-exclusive word, all.

He is the God of all comfort, who comforts us. Now, the tenses of that word, who comforts us, indicate it is the character of God. That's His character. He is always comforting us in all our affliction so that we will be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. In other words,

He is the source of all comfort, and it excludes everything else, and it includes anything that comes into our lives. And when He talks about the affliction that comes upon us, He's talking about those times of distress and those times of undue pressure. I remember a few weeks ago, or actually it's been a few months ago, I was getting my hair cut. You know, I still want to call them a barber, but when it's a young lady, it's hard to call them a barber. And they call them a salon now. So I'm not sure what the right term is. I have a hard time calling them my hairdresser. Anyway, so she was cutting my hair, and another girl was finishing up,

and she was leaving for the day, and as she passed by Tina, she said, well, good luck tomorrow. And so I said, after she had gone, I said, what's tomorrow? What do you need good luck for tomorrow? And the doctors thought that she might have a tumor in her brain. And so they were going to do the test tomorrow to discover

because she had been passing out and couldn't maintain her balance. And when she told me that, then she began to cry and she said, at the same time, I'm going through a very rough divorce. And I thought to myself, isn't it a tragedy that all you can say to somebody like that is, good luck? How weak, how impotent. How insufficient. Good luck. No. And so I took her hand and I said, I want you to know that God cares for you and I want you to know that I'm going to be praying for you tomorrow

and that the Lord is going to be nearby. I tell you folks, just to be able to, that's all the world has to offer is just good luck. Oh listen, if I'm going in for something like that, seriously, I want more than somebody just say to me,

good luck. I want to know that there is a God in heaven who bends near me and is concerned about my situation and who's there to extend to me all encouragement and all comfort and all strengthening there in that point of need.

And I tell you you don't learn that until you stand in those places. It's one thing to learn it from the Word of God but it's another thing to learn it from your own personal experience when it from the Word of God, but it's another thing to learn it from your own personal experience when there in the darkest of nights you can feel the presence of God.

And you know that God is with you and you can hear Him whispering your name and ministering to you. You can feel His strength going through your own system. And so an adequate view of suffering always teaches us something about God.

Teaches us that He is the God of all comfort. Now I want you to notice He doesn't promise to deliver us from the affliction. He promises to comfort us in the affliction. Now Comfort us in the affliction. Now, I don't know that I have a great deal

of good things to say about affliction. But I do notice that the Bible here speaks not that God will deliver us from this affliction, but that He will comfort us during this affliction. In other words, Christianity is not an escapist religion. And it does not promise us that we will be able to escape every pressure, every affliction, every distressing time that will come upon us. It will not. And there are those who teach you that it will, but you'll be disappointed to discover that that's not true. What God does promise, and I'm not saying that

He sometimes does not deliver us, but what I am saying, what God does promise us And I'm not saying that He sometimes does not deliver us. But what I am saying, what God does promise us, that in the midst of that, He will reveal Himself to us and we will have a fresh encounter with God and a fresh experience with God. And I tell you, my dear friends, sometimes that is worth more than all the deliverance that's in the world. To have that fresh experience with God and to know Him in a way

that you've never known Him before. So the first thing is this, that an adequate view of suffering teaches us something about God. Secondly, it shows us that suffering is a part of the Christian life. It's just a part of the Christian life. It's just a part of the Christian life. There's no escaping it.

He says in verse 7, And our hope for you is firmly grounded, knowing that as you are sharers of our suffering, so also you are sharers of our comfort. It's a part of the Christian life. The minute you enter into the Christian life, God does not give you a vaccination that will suddenly make you immune to all of the pressures

and disturbances of life. No, that's a part of the Christian life. And I'll show you what I mean by that. I want you to flip over to chapter 4. And verse 17, Paul says, for momentary light affliction is producing for us. It is achieving for us. Our momentary light affliction. You say, well, my affliction isn't light. Well, he's comparing it to the glory that we shall have. And he says, compared to the glory that we shall have, all affliction is light. But that's not what I'm wanting you to see. I'm wanting you to see that word. For our momentary light affliction is producing for us, achieving for us an eternal weight of glory.

Now, it's not like this, that in our lives, of course, we have sorrows, and in our lives we have heartaches. Bless God one of these days when we die, we'll be removed from all those heartaches and those distresses, and then we'll move into the eternal weight of glory.

That's not what Paul is saying. Paul is saying that the afflictions which we now endure are actually producing that eternal weight of glory. The eternal weight of glory doesn't come just because you die. It doesn't come just by accident. It doesn't come just by accident. It doesn't come by natural process. It is being produced and achieved by our momentary light suffering. You see, it's an essential part of the Christian life.

It's the same thing that Paul says in Romans chapter 8, that whoever does not suffer with me shall not reign with me. And so whatever suffering, whatever tribulation, whatever pressure you're going through in your life right now, you need to understand that that is not

wasted time and not wasted experience, but it is actively producing in your life an eternal weight of glory. Number three, an adequate view of suffering teaches us that our sufferings are a part of the sufferings of Christ. You'll notice in verse 5, he says, For just as the sufferings of Christ are ours in abundance, so also our comfort is abundant through Christ. He links our

suffering with the sufferings of Christ. And that changes our sufferings totally. Raises them to a new level. And clothes them in dignity. Our sufferings are a part of the sufferings of Christ. You see, grace is not going to do for you more than it did for Jesus. God's grace did not keep Jesus from suffering.

And it will not keep you from suffering. But the Bible says over and over again that there are some sufferings that Christ left us to do. Now, a believer, if he has the correct and divine perspective in his life,

he recognizes that in his sufferings, his sufferings are a part of the sufferings of Christ. That ought to lend dignity to whatever pressure or suffering we're going through. Folks, Christ left some suffering for us to do. He said in this world you have tribulation

and the servant is not greater than the master. And if a master has suffered in this world, so you also will. But remember, you're suffering with Christ. And just as the sufferings of Christ brought about the salvation of many, so your sufferings in Christ, if you have the right attitude, will bring glory to God and others to Jesus Christ. Well, there's a fourth thing.

We're going to do this after all. A proper view of suffering teaches us that our lives are linked together. That our lives are linked together. Look at verses 6 and 7. But if we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation. Or if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which is effective in the patient enduring of the same sufferings which we also suffer.

And our hope for you is firmly grounded, knowing that as you are sharers of our suffering, so also you are sharers of our comfort. Do you see what I'm getting at? Paul says, if we suffer, it is for you. If we comfort, it is for you. Whatever happens is for you. In other words, Paul is saying,

my life and your life, we are linked together. Now, one of the things that we'll see as we get further into 2 Corinthians is that Paul is, in a sense, a preacher fighting for his job. Because there have been some folks, we'll see this later, Paul calls them super apostles

who never suffered and always work in miracles and always spouting off, you know, revelations and everything. And they were criticizing Paul. What they're trying to do is to dislodge their loyalty from Paul. And one of the criticisms they have about Paul and saying that he cannot be a true disciple

is because of all the sufferings that he's gone through. You know, a true apostle is not going to suffer like that. Of course, we don't hear that today, do we? You know, a true Christian is not going to suffer like that. And so they're trying to say, you're different from Paul. And Paul comes back and he says, I want to say something to you, friend, that you are a part of my suffering and I something to you, friend, that you are a part of my suffering and I'm a part of yours, that we are linked together. Why? Because we are a body

of Christ. And you can't say that when one member hurts, the whole body does not hurt. And I think that one of the things that we need to recapture today in our church is the fact that we are a community of believers, that we are a body, and that when one member of the body hurts, we cannot just turn away and act nonchalantly about it and say it has nothing to do with us. No, it has everything to do with you. Our lives are linked together.

If God blesses me, you share in that blessing. If God causes me to suffer, you share in that suffering. It is a mutual agreement. It is a mutual association. Our lives are linked together. So we can't just isolate ourselves, say, well, I'm a member of Sherwood Baptist Church, but that's all I am,

and I just isolate myself, and what happens down there has nothing to do with me, and what I do has nothing to do with them. Oh, no, you're a member of the body. You're a part of the body, and our lives are linked together whether we like it or not. We need to once again

recapture that attitude of a common community, of a common body that we are all, our lives are linked together. And friend, it does make a difference to this church what you do with your life

and how you live your life. Well, move on. Number six. Number six. The suffering never outweighs the comfort. The suffering never outweighs the comfort. In verse 5, he says, We're just as the sufferings of Christ

are ours in abundance, so also our comfort is abundant through Christ. What is Paul saying? Our suffering never outweighs our comfort. That as our suffering is measured, so our comfort is measured. So that if affliction abounds in us, comfort also abounds in us.

That God never puts more upon us than we are able to bear by His grace. You see? Suffering never outweighs the comfort. And then there's one last word and it is this. Suffering

enables us to minister to others. It enables us to minister to others. He says in verse 4, speaking about this God who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we will be able to comfort those who are in any affliction so that we will be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves

are comforted by God. And again he says in verse 6, But if we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation. Or if we are comforted, it is for your comfort and salvation. Or if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which is effective in the same patient enduring of the same sufferings which we also suffer. In other words, he's saying that if we suffer, Paul is saying, and if you go on and read verses 12 and following, Paul will talk about a great suffering that he has endured.

But he says, if I suffer, it is for your comfort. Now that's an interesting statement. If I suffer, it is so that I in turn may be able to comfort you with the same comfort that I've received of God. You know, one of the amazing things about the Christian life is that God chooses to work

through individuals. And He chooses to work through individuals. And He ministers to us through individuals. Haven't you been ministered to by individuals? You know, sometimes God just comes to you out of the blue and speaks to you, but isn't it true that most of the time

it is through some other believer that God speaks to you and ministers to you. You see? God works through the individual believers of His church. And if I suffer,

I'm not to look upon my suffering with, oh me, poor me. But I'm to say about it, what am I going to do with it? What now? Well, I guarantee you, sooner or later, somebody's going to cross my path that needs to know what I've learned during that time of suffering.

And I'm to take the comfort that I've received from God and not hold it in myself and absorb it to myself, but I'm to take that same comfort, that same comfort that I've received from God and I am passed on to you.

And that's when you can tell the difference between comfort that you receive from people. You may be going through a hard time right now and it may be a messy divorce or maybe you have a rebellious child or something. And maybe someone who has never, never experienced that will try to come and comfort you. But it's usually pretty hollow.

It doesn't mean a great deal. But it's when someone who's been there and has experienced the grace of God and has experienced the comfort of God, and when they come to you and they say, listen, I know exactly how you feel. I've been there, and let me tell you that God's grace will be sufficient.

That makes all the difference in the world. God doesn't give me comfort just so that it may end with me, but so that I may pass it on to others. See, you are a minister of God. And I tell you, the thing that saddens me is that so many believers have been hurt and have gone through suffering, and they just turn inward rather than trying to minister to somebody else. I tell you the truth, the best way to heal your own suffering is to endeavor to heal somebody else's suffering.

And so it is suffering that enables us to comfort others. Let me just sum up this in this way. It is in the extremity of our weakness that the supreme power and grace of God are manifested. That is God's view of suffering. are manifested.

That is God's view of suffering. That is the adequate view of suffering. And we're going to see this all the way through, although we're not going to be talking about suffering all the way through, but you're going to see this crop up over and over again. Because you see, those opponents of Paul accused him of being weak. Weak in appearance. He wasn't eloquent. He couldn't even win his own people to the Lord. That's

why he turned to the Gentiles. And they're accusing him of that, not knowing that God had directed that. But they took that up and they said, why Paul is such an ineffective speaker. He can't even win his own people to Jesus. He's so weak. Look at all he's been through. He's so weak.

And the message of Paul is going to come through loud and strong. It is in that extremity of weakness that the power and grace of God are best manifested. And you know something, folks, that is contradictory to just about everything you and I believe about the Christian life. We believe in strength, power, and those that we follow strength, power.

And those that we follow must be strong and powerful and must be magnetic in their personality. And yet Paul presents himself as one who is weak. And he says to these Corinthians, if you had an adequate view of suffering, you would understand that is in the extremity of our weakness that the power of God is most ably manifested. Ron Dunn's podcast is available only for personal edification, not to be duplicated,

uploaded to the web, or resold without prior written consent. It is managed and operated by Sherwood Baptist Church. For more Rondon materials, sermon outlines, devotions, and scanned pages from his study Bible, please visit rondon.com.