2 Corinthians

2 Cor 1v1-11 Comfort in times of trouble

The story has been told of a museum guide who would take his tour group to a darkened room, shine a light on a mass of string, colour, and apparent chaos and ask the group, "What do you think this is?"
 "I don't know," was the inevitable reply.

He would then say, "Stand over there and watch." As the group moved over to the other side of the room, he would turn on a spotlight. It was instantly apparent that the mass of jumbled coloured string seen just a moment earlier was in fact an enormous tapestry – from the back side. The real work had to be seen from a different perspective to understand what the artist was creating.

BM Franklin wrote:

My life is but a weaving
Between my Lord and me.
I cannot choose the colours
He weaves so skilfully.

Sometimes He weaveth sorrow
And I in foolish pride
Forget He sees the upper
And I the underside.

Not ‘til the loom is silent
And the shuttles cease to fly
Will God unroll the canvas
And explain the reasons why-

The dark threads are as needful,
In The Weaver’s skilful hands
As the threads of gold and silver
In the pattern He has planned.

God has a plan for our lives that will lead us one day to heaven, which will be wonderful – but until we get there our lives sometimes seem haphazard, knotty and patternless. We see the underside of the tapestry which God is weaving, and it can often be difficult to work out what is going on. Thinking of knotty bits of life leads me to the question I would like to tackle today:

What do we do in times of trouble?

It is a big question, and I don’t propose to cover everything that the Bible has to say about this topic this morning – but I do want to see what we can learn from this passage at the start of 2 Corinthians, where Paul wants to encourage his readers to understand how involved God is with helping us through times of trouble, and where our comfort comes from.

Comfort in this sense doesn’t mean a nice comfy sofa as often advertised on Boxing Day; the word is the same one that is used for the Holy Spirit being our Comforter – literally one who comes alongside, an advocate, a helper. Someone who walks alongside us and supports us.

God is the ultimate source of comfort (v3-4). Sometimes God may comfort us directly, through the action of the Holy Spirit, but here Paul tells us that God typically uses other people to mediate his comfort to us. God enables us to be comforters for other people, drawing upon the comfort we have already received at some time in the past. We pass comfort on, each of us acting like links in a chain which lead back to the anchor and source of our hope, God our father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

God has not promised Skies ever blue,
Flower-strewn pathways always for you.
God has not promised Sun without rain,
Joy without sorrow, Peace without pain.
But He has promised Strength from above,
Unfailing sympathy, undying love.

God is not isolated from our hurts and our feelings. We know from Acts 9 where Saul encounters the Lord when he is on the road to Damascus and hears those incredible words “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” that the Lord Jesus Christ personally feels the pain of persecution whenever one of his people is persecuted. The Lord Jesus identifies completely with us, and our pain, our suffering is his pain and suffering. That is what is meant by v5 where it talks about the ‘sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives’. The sufferings of Christ are the sufferings of his body, the church, which are the sufferings of us.

Suffering, trouble. What can we say about it?

Trouble is universal

Sooner or later it comes to everyone. We live in a fallen world, where sin is endemic. This isn’t the paradise which God originally created – it is a world where there is sickness, unfairness, cruelty, wickedness and even random events which bring us trouble. A reminder, if we need it, that heaven isn’t here and now, it is our hope for the future.

Matt 5v45 says “He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous”. Trouble comes to everyone.

Trouble gets our attention

People respond to trouble. It grabs our attention. For some people they grumble and curse God for the trouble that comes upon them, for others it causes them to question what is happening in their life.

You probably remember the war in former Yugoslavia during the 90’s. I had the privilege of being involved in trips taking aid and the gospel to refugees from 1995 to 2000 and despite the human tragedy of the war and its aftermath, many of the refugees who had lost homes, possessions and even family members because of the fighting still rejoiced that their horrible suffering had led them to meet Jesus and trust in him for salvation. Indeed, in Novi Sad there is now a large church of 400+ members which is comprised almost entirely of refugees who found salvation in Jesus.

For churchgoers too, some people draw strength from God in times of trouble and others turn away from God and his people – turning away, sadly, from the surest form of comfort they might be able to receive.

Trouble unifies us

When trouble comes upon people as a group it often unifies them against a common cause. I’ve known churches where everyone rallied together to support someone in desperate need. I’ve read about the underground churches in eastern Europe in the 20th century and in China and some Muslim countries in this century where the believers face terrible persecution but that makes them cleave together more strongly, valuing their connection to one another and to God.

The Open Doors organisation, formed by Brother Andrew, regularly provides information about our brothers and sisters in Christ who are facing trouble more extreme than we imagine – some of whom we pray for in their extremity, others we are encouraged by when we read of their amazing faith and dedication to the Lord. Indeed, the comfort that they have received from the Lord comforts us with the knowledge that there is a God there who can help us overcome the most terrible adversity.

Trouble produces spiritual maturity

Look at v8-9. “We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life. Indeed, in our hearts we felt the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead.”

Although trouble isn’t pleasant when it comes upon us, it can be used to refine us, sharpen us, lead us to trust more in God, to rely more on God. Hebrews 12 tells us that some hardship that we suffer is discipline from God to train us for his plans.

You can take two acorns off of the same oak tree – Plant one in South Carolina and the other in
Pennsylvania. Both will grow into oak trees. In thirty years cut them down for lumber. The one in
South Carolina grew faster under a milder climate. The one in Pennsylvania grew slower because of the short summers and harsh winters. Which one do you think will make the strongest lumber. The harsh winters made the Pennsylvania tree stronger and it’s lumber more usable.

Conclusion

Nobody wants to face trouble, but it can come upon any of us, grabbing our attention, demanding that we make a response towards God. There is much that I don’t know about you. But I do know one thing. God has been at work in your lives. You’ve had some experiences which have been tough, but which have uniquely qualified you to comfort other people who go through similar circumstances.

The Christian writer Joe Aldrich writes about an occasion when a young mother from his church had a baby that tragically died. The mother was so devastated that she wouldn’t let go of the body of her dead baby. Police experts had talked to her. The church minister had talked to her, all manner of ‘Bible band-aids’ had been provided, but Romans 8v28 didn’t seem to have any power here. Then the minister remembered about another woman in the church who had lost a baby in similar circumstances some years ago. After a phone call she arrived and went in to speak with the young mother on her own. The young mother then released the body of her child to the authorities and healing began for her. “So that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God”.

God has been working in you, preparing you so that you can comfort other people, both those inside the church whose faith might be wavering and those outside the church whose attention might be turned towards God for the first time.

“So also through Christ our comfort overflows”. Jesus intends you to be beacons of comfort to one another and to others in times of trouble. May God bless you as you do it.

 

Alex White