Let us turn again to the Word
of God and I want this morning to direct you to words in that
second portion of Holy Scripture that we read in 2nd Corinthians
chapter 2 sorry 2nd Corinthians chapter 1 2nd Corinthians chapter
1 and reading again verses 8 9 10 For we would not, brethren, have
you ignorant of our trouble which came to us in Asia, that we were
pressed out of measure, above strength, in so much that we
despaired even of life. 11 But we have the sentence of
death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in
God which raised us to death, who delivered us from so great
a death, and doth deliver in whom we trust that he will yet
deliver us Paul writes here to the Corinthians he says much
of the bitter experiences that he had to endure as he sought
to fulfill that ministry that the Lord had given to him but
in the midst of all those trials and troubles He also recognizes
how that God was there with his gracious consolations. And so
after the customary words of greeting in the opening two verses,
in verse 3 he says, Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord
Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort, who
comforteth us in all our tribulations, that we may be able to comfort
them which are in any trouble by the comfort wherewith we ourselves
are comforted of God. As he comes to minister again
to the church at Corinth, and he has written of course to them
on a previous occasion, we have the first epistle, this is the
second epistle, and as he comes to again address them, he doesn't
just speak theoretically, is able to speak out of his own
experiences. And it is by and through these
various tribulations that he was able to speak to them so
feelingly of the things of God. At verse 6 he says, Where do
we be afflicted? It is for your consolation and
salvation which is effectual in the enduring of the same sufferings
which we also suffer. or whether we be comforted it
is for your consolation and salvation all that this man has to endure
then contributes so much to the manner of that ministry that
he exercises as one who has the care of all these various churches
and we know that in the church of Corinth there were those who
had crept in and they were false teachers and alas many had become
followers of them, they'd stolen the hearts of the people in the
church there at Corinth and so time and again we see how Paul
must defend himself. He has to assert his authority
as an apostle. He has to speak time and again
of those tremendous cost that he had to endure as he sought
to fulfill that ministry that the Lord had given to him. For example, here in the sixth
chapter we see something of that in the way in which he writes
to these Corinthians. There in chapter 6 at verse 4
he says, "...in all things approving ourselves as the ministers of
Christ, in much patience, in afflictions, in necessities,
in distresses, in stripes, in imprisonments, in tumults, in
labors, in watchings, in fastings, by pureness, by knowledge, by
long-suffering, by kindness, by the Holy Ghost, and so he
goes on, and then he says at verse 11, O you Corinthians,
our mouth is open unto you, our heart is enlarged You are not
straightened in us, but you are straightened in your own powers. How we can appeal to them? And it's not just there in that
chapter, but we see it time and again when we come to the end
of the epistle. We see it, for example, in chapter
11 as he speaks against those who
were the false teachers. He asks at verse 22, are they
Hebrew? So am I. Are they Israelite?
So am I. Are they the seed of Abraham?
So am I. Are they ministers of Christ?
I speak as a fool. I am more in labors more abundant,
in stripes above measure, in prisons more frequent, in deaths
oft. Of the Jews five times received
I forty stripes save one. Thrice was I beaten with rods.
Once was I stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day
I have been in the deep, in journeyings often, in perils of waters, in
perils of rubbers, in perils by mine own countrymen, in peril
by the heathen, and so on and so forth, as he speaks then of
himself and all that this ministry had cost him. And yet, none of
these things were were in vain. This was part and parcel of that
ministry that the Lord had first given to him. We have the record
of course back in Acts chapter 9 about how Christ arrested him
there at the very gate of Damascus and he's blinded, he's led into
the city and then that faithful disciple of Christ Ananias is
told he must go to the street called Strait and he will meet
with this man Saul. Saul of Tarsus, this great persecutor
of the Christians. And what is Ananias to do? In
a sense, he is commanded to go there and to tell Saul what his
commission is, what the Lord would have him to do. He's reassured
that there's been a change. The Lord says to him concerning
this man, when he meets him, he will be a praying man. Behold,
he prayeth. There in Acts 19.15, the Lord
said unto Ananias, Go thy way, for he is a chosen vessel unto
me. to bear my name before the Gentiles
and kings and the children of Israel for I will show him how
great things he must suffer for my name's sake." The great things
he has to suffer then as he fulfills his ministry as the apostle to
the Gentiles. And this is what he is speaking
of here in the words that I read just now for our text, in verse
8, he speaks of those things that had taken place when he
was in Asia or Asia Minor, modern Turkey, that's where Ephesus
was and he says to them here at verse 8, we would not brethren
have you ignorant of our trouble which came to us in Asia that
we were pressed out of measure above strength in so much that
we despaired even of life but we had the sentence of death
in ourselves that we should not trust in ourselves but in God
which raiseth the dead who delivered us from so great a death and
doth deliver in whom we trust that he will yet deliver us. He's speaking then out of his
experience, he's instructing these Corinthians what is it
that he is saying here in these verses? Well he speaks of two
things principally truths that he had to learn truths that they
also must learn that there is nothing but death in self, but
there is deliverance, and there is salvation, only in the Lord
Jesus Christ. And I just want, for a while
this morning, to follow that twofold division. First of all,
to say something with regards to this death that is in self. He says in verse 10, who delivered
us from so great a debt. And see how personal it is. It's
a deliverance that he himself had experienced. Delivered us,
he says. That's himself and those who
are associated with him, be it Silas or Timothy or Erastus. They were those who were his
companions. in the ministry as we saw in that reading in Acts
chapter 19 but he speaks here of a great death and he is speaking
clearly of something of those things that we read of there
at the end of that 19th chapter in the Acts the uproar at Ephesus
and the silversmiths Demetrius was making these images of the
goddess Ephesus that stirred up his fellow craftsmen because
of the ministry of Paul. If we'd have read earlier in
the chapter, the former part of the chapter, we see there
something of the effect of all that Paul had been saying. Verse
19. Many of them also which used
curious arts brought their books together and burned them before
all men. And they counted the price of
them and found it fifty thousand pieces of silver. They were turning
from their idolatrous ways their superstitious ways. And this
is what so concerned Demetrius and caused all that terrible
uproar. And although the apostle himself
was willing to venture forth, he had to be restrained. We read
there at verse 29, the whole city was filled with confusion
and they caught Gaius and Aristarchus, these companions of Paul and
rushed with them into the theater and Paul would have entered in
onto the people but the disciples suffered him not. and then they
desire that he must in no sense venture into the midst of this
raging mob. Surely he is mindful of these
things now as he is writing here in the words before us this morning,
our trouble which came upon us, he says, in Asia that we were
pressed out of measure above strength insomuch that we despaired
even of life. Again, on another occasion he
speaks of those experiences that at Asia, at Ephesus, he had to
fight with beasts. That's how he describes his experience. After the manner of men, he says,
we fought with beasts at Ephesus. or how they raged against him.
This is the great death thing. He's speaking of his own experiences
very, very fully. We know when we read through
the Acts time and again what that ministry cost him. Remember
how when he was at Lystra in Acts chapter 14 they stoned him
and they left him for dead. He despaired at times and even
of his life, wherever he went. It was the same experience everywhere.
Was that the trouble when he was in Asia? Well, when he moves
into Macedonia, what is the situation as he goes there? Well, he mentions
these things, he speaks of these things later in this epistle,
in chapter 7. Verse 5, when we were come into
Macedonia, he says, our flesh had no rest, but we were troubled
on every side, without were fightings, within were fears. All Paul is
clearly speaking of very real situations, terrible circumstances,
that he found himself being brought into. But it is Interesting to
observe the language, the vocabulary he is using in the words that
I've read for our text. At the beginning of verse 9 he
speaks of the sentence of death. We have the sentence of death,
or the answer of death, in ourselves. Amidst all of these troubles
that come upon him, you see, he is very much aware of his
own mortality. He's not going to live forever.
Maybe at some time he will suffer that martyrdom that he had witnessed
in the case of Stephen. Remember back in Acts chapter
7 he was there, he was a persecutor there and he was a hater of the
Christians. He was seeking to destroy them.
He was approving when they stoned Stephen to death. Maybe Maybe
the time would come sooner rather than later, and that would be
his own personal experience. And so we can speak of this sentence
of death in himself, that sense of mortality. All we know, if
we're those who read the Scriptures that it is appointed unto men
once to die, that God himself is that one who is sovereign
with regards to all the details of our lives, We know that there is a time
to every season under heaven. There's a time to be born, there's
a time to die. These things cannot be avoided.
And Paul says, you see, we have the sentence of death in ourselves.
Even as we're living our poor lives here in this world, we
should be conscious then of the reality of our mortality. But can we not see something
more in what Paul is saying here in these words when he speaks
of that sentence of death in ourselves? Is there not a spiritual
significance to the words? He knew that of himself he was
one who was helpless. He knew that all that salvation
that he'd experienced was only by the grace of God. Though he
was a persecutor, yet he had found grace in the eyes of the
Lord. The Lord had come and had blessed him with that great salvation. And so on occasions we see how
he speaks so clearly and so plainly of that salvation which is altogether
of the Lord. When he writes to the Romans
he says, I know that in me, that is in my flesh, there dwelleth
no good thing." Or the sentence of death, the answer of death
in himself. He'd been brought to that. He
was once a Pharisee, and a very zealous Pharisee. He was a son
of a Pharisee. He'd been brought up at the feet
of that great Jewish leader, Gamaliel. Or touching the righteousness
which is in the law, he considered himself to be blameless. He thought
he could make himself pleasing and acceptable to God. He had
a Pharisaic religion. But all that had gone now. Oh
no, now he had this sentence of death in himself. He knew that of himself he could
do nothing. Not sufficient, he says, of ourselves
to think anything as of ourselves. He couldn't even fashion a right
thought, a thought that would be pleasing and acceptable to
God, left to himself. He knew the impossibility of
himself coming to true faith and saving faith in the Lord
Jesus Christ. And how others have proved the
same truth. John Newton, or could I but believe, says Newton, then
all would easy be I would but cannot Lord relieve my help must
come from thee. Isn't this what is to be understood
by this sentence or this answer of death in ourselves, that we
should not trust in ourselves but in God which raises the dead. This is how God deals with the
sinner. This is how God had dealt with
this man Saul. He brought him to that place
where he was at the end of himself. All his pharisaic religion had
gone now. He knew that he could do nothing
to help himself. He must look only to the Lord
for all that salvation, for every deliverance. And it is the same
truth that you and I have to learn. And this is what we see
time and again in the writings of Paul. But not only in Paul,
we see it in every part of Holy Scripture. Remember how the man
Moses speaks of it, there in Psalm 90, that prayer of Moses,
the man of God. What does he say? Verse 3, Thou
turnest man to destruction, and sayest, Return ye children of
me. Is it not the same truth that
we have here? in verses 9 and 10, the sentence of death in
ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves but in God
which raised us to death, who delivered us from so great a
death. Or when God deals with us, you
see, he makes us to understand that there's nothing but destruction
in self. He turns us to that. That's our
condition. That's the condition of all men,
but of course the multitudes are blissfully unaware They live
their lives, they have no thought of God. They're dead in trespasses
and sins, that's all of us. But when that spiritual life
comes into the soul, there's that sense now of our real needs. Oh, we're awakened now to feel
what we are by nature. That God, you see, concludes
all in unbelief. And why does he conclude them
in unbelief? That he might have mercy upon all. all that he concludes
in unbelief, all that he shuts up to what they are. I am shut
up, says Haman, and I cannot come forth. Where are we before that saving
faith comes? We have to learn from the Word
of God, we have to learn from the Lord of God. We know that
what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under
the law. that every mouth may be stopped,
and all the world become guilty before God." Paul knew it. His
mouth was stopped. He could speak of his own righteousnesses
when he was a Pharisee, but no more. He had nothing to plead,
only to acknowledge, only to confess that in himself that
was in his flesh there dwelt no good thing. all before faith
comes were kept under the law, shut up to the faith which should
afterward be revealed. But oh, that is a great trial, an unpleasant experience when
the Lord God brings a man to the end of himself, when the
Lord God shuts that man up to the awful reality of his lost
condition and he's made to feel something of what it is to be
dead in trespasses and in sins unable to help himself, wanting
to believe or wanting to believe, longing to believe and to know
that that faith is real faith, saving faith and yet unable to
believe think of that man that we read of in the gospel, Lord
he says I believe Help thou mine unbelief. Or to know something
of that helplessness. Because we say that it is the
Lord God Himself who is the helper of all such characters. Why that
person who feels he needs the Lord's help is declared to be
a blessed man and a happy man. Look at the language of the psalmist.
There in the 146th Psalm, verse 5, happy is he that hath the
God of Jacob for his help, whose hope is in the Lord his God.
That's a happy man. Jacob's God is his helper. All
his hope can only center now in the Lord his God. God our
refuge and strength, says the psalmist, I very present help
in time of trouble. Now didn't Paul prove that? In
time of trouble, in the midst of all of those dreadful things
that came upon him, the things that he speaks of here, in the
8th verse, those things that came at Ephesus in Asia. Pressed, he says, out of measure,
above strength, insomuch that we despaired even of life. And the language that he uses suggests a beast of burden that
has been laden with a weight that's too great for it to bear. It's pressed out of measure now. It's loaded with something that
is really above its strength. It's being crushed under this
awful weight. And Paul says we're despaired.
even of life, or we have the sentence of death in ourselves.
Where does His help come from? God is our refuge and strength,
a very present help in time of trouble. He's not just a help,
or He's a present help. Yahweh says David is a very present
help. And who is that one who helps?
It's the Lord Jesus Christ himself. God says it again in the psalm,
Psalm 89. I have laid help upon one that is mighty. I have exalted
one chosen of the people. I have found David my servant
with my holy oil, and I anointed him. And David, of course, there
in that psalm is a remarkable type of the Lord Jesus Christ.
It's Christ that's being spoken of. This is the one that God
has laid help upon. O thou art my help and deliverer,
says David. Make no tarrying, O my God. O to know those feelings then
where we are brought to despair of our sounds, the end of our
tether, despairing even of life, it says at the end of verse 8.
But, there was a reason, you see,
why God brought the Apostle into these circumstances, into this
situation. All the Lord knows the end from
the beginning. And the God we have to do with,
He doesn't make mistakes. This man is having to learn lessons,
as I said at the beginning. He's not just theorizing about
matters when he writes to the church at Corinth. He is speaking
out of the fullness of his own experiences of God and the ways
of God, and all those circumstances that God in his sovereign providence
had brought him into. And so he says, but, and it's
an important connection between the verses, is it not? There's
despairing even of life, but there's a reason. We have the
sentence of death in ourselves, he said, that we should not trust
in ourselves, but in God, which raises the dead. Oh, God is able
to raise even those who are dead in trespasses and in sins. That is the great salvation.
that was accomplished by the Lord Jesus Christ. It's a full
salvation, it's a free salvation. And when the Holy Spirit comes
and has dealings with the individual, it makes that salvation such
a necessity in their lives. Or when they're despairing of
themselves, then they have to look away from themselves. Where
are they to look? They have to look onto Jesus,
the author and finisher of our faith. And you know the force
of that verb, to look, there in Hebrews 12, too. As we've
said so many times, it literally means to look away onto Jesus. To take the eye off every other
object. There is just one object alone. It is looking only onto Jesus. the author and the finisher of
our faith. Oh yes, there's death in self.
And this is what Paul has been brought to experience. This is
what he is recognizing here in the words of the text. There's
death in self. There's that despairing of any
hope in self. But then there are these deliverances. which are found only in the Lord
God and so in the second place to say something with regards
to the deliverances and you will observe that there are many in
verse 10 their past, their present, their future who delivered us
from so great a death and doth deliver in whom we trust that
he will yet deliver us Oh, how remarkable! How gracious
the ways of the Lord! Now, he speaks, of course, of
so great a death there in the middle of the 10th verse and
we might say that that so great a death in a sense is when the
Lord first begins to deal with us. We have to learn the truth of what man's condition is by
nature we have to learn in our souls experience the dreadful
doctrine of the sinners total depravity or we can trot off
our tongues that word tulip in which we are reminded by each
of the letters of the five points of Calvinism
total depravity Unconditional Election, Limited Atonement,
Irresistible Grace, the Perseverance of the Sights. We can remember those doctrines,
but we have to experience those doctrines. We have to even experience
the truth of that first of those doctrines. And that is the so-called
right to death, the wages of sin, death. O curse is every
one that continueth not in all things written in the book of
the law to do them. That's the curse, that's the
death that is upon us by nature. And then we have to be brought
to see that it is only in Christ that there is redemption. Christ
has redeemed us, saith Paul, from the curse of the law being
made a curse for us. For it is written, Cursed is
every one that hangeth on a tree. O in his Crucifixion there is
the death of death. That's the first great deliverance.
But see how here in verse 10, Paul is really speaking of a
continual experience of deliverances. We don't just look back to the
beginning. Certainly we must have a right
beginning, a proper beginning. But if we have a testimony, we
won't just speak of what the Lord did for us so many years
ago. We're to be those who know what
it is to have a living experience, even a daily experience of the
grace of God. Or the psalmist cries out in
his prayer and says, Oh God, command deliverances for Jacob. Jacob, that's Israel. He needs
many deliverances. He needs to be delivered again
and again and again and again. And I'm with those friends who
feel that. We need to know the Lord daily. Or we need to know the Lord hourly. I need Thee every hour. Every
hour I need Thee, says the old hymn. Many are the afflictions
of the righteous, but the Lord delivereth them out of them all. You see, we cannot avoid the
afflictions. In the world ye shall have tribulation. That
is the lot of the people of God. The Lord Jesus says, In the world
ye shall have tribulation, but be of good cheer. I have overcome
the world. And what is it that the Lord
is teaching us in these afflictions and tribulations, in these trials
and in these troubles? Well, it's what we have there
in that 9th verse. That we should not trust in ourselves. Oh, it's a lesson that we have
to keep learning over and over and over again. And you know,
Literally, the force of the clause that we have there is this. We
have the sentence of death in ourselves, in order that, it's
in order that we should not trust in ourselves. Again, in Psalm
22, David says, none can keep alive his own soul. once we've
known the grace of God, once we've experienced the blessings
of salvation we can't of ourselves preserve that spiritual life
in us we have to keep on learning the
lesson that we're not to trust in ourselves
for anything in order that we should not trust in ourselves but in God." Oh, the importance
of these little words, you see. And that word, but, at the end
of that ninth verse, but in God, which raiseth from the dead. This is the one. Oh, this is
the one that we have to look to constantly. These deliverances
are a constant, a continual experience in the lives of the godless.
And this is the message that Paul is seeking to convey to
these Corinthians. He knew it. And what he was experiencing,
they must also experience. Look at what he goes on to say
later. Verse 11 in chapter 4 he says,
We which live are always delivered unto death for Jesus' sake. that
the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal
body. The same truth as we have in
that great verse in Galatians 2.20, I am crucified with Christ.
Nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me. And the life which I now live
in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved
me and gave himself for me. That's the truth, and that's
the truth that we have there in chapter 4 and verse 11. All
our life is to be found only in the Lord Jesus Christ. All
this is the constant experience of the godly. Again, going back
to that fourth chapter, the previous verse, verse 10, always bearing
about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus. that the life
also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body. Or do we know what
it is to live that life of complete and utter dependence upon the
Lord Jesus Christ? The constant experience of the
children of God, or we see it, do we not, in the testimony of
that godly king, Hezekiah, And there in that great prayer of
thanksgiving in Isaiah 38, what does he say? By these things
men live. Always speaking of his own experiences. He was the king in Judah. The
Assyrians had come, they'd overrun the northern kingdom of Israel.
They'd scattered those ten tribes. And here is Judah and Benjamin
in the south. Here is Jerusalem, the capital
of Judah. And all the walled cities throughout
Judah and Benjamin have fallen and Sennacheribs at the very
gates of Jerusalem. And God grants a remarkable deliverance. Oh God confounds the Assyrians. And Jerusalem is delivered, but
then, alas, in the midst of all this, the poor king himself is
struck down with a disease. And the prophet tells him that
God's message is that he is to set his house in order. He's
not going to live, he's going to die. And remember how Hezekiah
turns his face to the wall. There on his sickbed he turns
his face to the wall, and I like to think he was looking to Jerusalem.
or he was going to look to Jerusalem. Surely when first the Assyrians
had come with that threatening letter, he'd taken that letter
to the temple, he'd spread it before the Lord. And the Lord
had heard him. But now he cannot rise from his
sick bed, his deathbed. He turns his face to the wall.
And before ever the prophet has left the royal court. God's message
comes back to Isaiah and he turns around and he has to tell the
king that God has heard his prayer. And 15 years are being added
to his life. All before they call I will answer,
says God. While they are yet speaking I
will hear. And then you know, there in that 38th chapter we
have that wonderful prayer, that prayer of thanksgiving. And he
acknowledges by these things men live. And in all these things
is the life of my Spirit." This was his religion. It was so real. Just as we see here with the
apostle Paul. There at Ephesus, "...or we would
not, brethren of you, ignorant of our trouble which came to
us in Asia, that we were pressed out of measure above strength,
insomuch that we despaired of life, but we have the sentence
of death in ourselves that we should not trust in ourselves
but in God which raiseth the dead who delivered us from so
great a death and doth deliver in whom we trust that he will
yet deliver us it's a it's a continued experience it's a life of the
god but in the midst of all these things how Paul knows all those
great consolations of the Gospel. And that's there at the very
beginning, as we said, the very first thing he does as he addresses
his church is to bless God. Verse 3, Blessed be God, even
the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies,
and the God of all comfort, who comforteth us in all our tribulation,
that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble,
by the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted of God." Well, it all contributes, you
see, to his ministry. He can now feel for those who
are in trouble. He can weep with those that weep,
as well as rejoice with those who are rejoicing. whether we
be afflicted it is for your consolation and salvation which is effectually
in the enduring of the same sufferings which we also suffer or whether
we be comforted it is for your consolation and salvation remember
what he says on another occasion right into the Thessalonians
he says comfort one another with these words there in the end
of that fourth chapter in 1 Thessalonians he's speaking or has spoken of
the the coming again of the Lord Jesus and he says wherefore comfort
one another with these things and we are to find comfort in
those things that are written in the Word of God the promise
of the Lord's appearing He will come again the second time without
sin unto salvation And it will be a personal coming, of course,
at the end of time. But doesn't the Lord come to
his people time and time again in a spiritual sense? Or can
we not find comfort in what Paul says here concerning the God
of deliverances? Has he delivered you in the times
past? Has he saved your soul? Will
he not come and save and deliver you again? This is what Paul
says, it is God which riseth the dead who delivered us from
so great a death and doth deliver in whom we trust that he will
yet deliver us. Then he goes on to acknowledge
his dependence upon them in some measure. Do you also help him
together by prayer for us? O God help us then as we experience
these things that we might be such as would desire to pray
for one another that the Lord might bless to us each these
great truths that we find here in His Word. Oh, the Lord bless
this Word to us today. Amen. Now let us sing our concluding
praise. The hymn is 326, the tune Mainzer, and 64. Let me but hear my Saviour say,
Strength shall be equal to thy day, then I rejoice in deep distress,
leaning on all sufficient grace. The Hymn 326.