The following sermon was delivered
on Sunday morning, June 29, 1997, at the Trinity Baptist Church
in Montville, New Jersey. May I encourage you to turn with
me in your Bibles to the first chapter of Paul's second letter
to the Corinthians, 2nd Corinthians, and chapter 1. Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus
through the will of God, and Timothy our brother, unto the
church of God which is at Corinth, with all the saints that are
in the whole of 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, that we
may be able to comfort them that are in any affliction through
the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God. For, as
the sufferings of Christ abound unto us, even so our comfort
also abounds through Christ. But whether we are afflicted,
it is for your comfort and salvation. Or, whether we are comforted,
it is for your comfort which works in the patient enduring
of the same sufferings which we also suffer. And our hope
for you is steadfast, knowing that as you are partakers of
the sufferings, so also are you of the comfort. For we would
not have you ignorant, brethren, concerning our affliction which
befell us in Asia, that we were weighed down exceedingly beyond
our power, insomuch that we despaired even of life. Yes, we ourselves
have had the sentence of death within ourselves that we should
not trust in ourselves, but in God who raises the dead, who
delivered us out of so great a death and will deliver, on
whom we have set our hope that he will also still deliver us. You also, helping together on
our behalf by your supplication, that for the gift bestowed upon
us by means of many, thanks may be given by many persons on our
behalf. Now let us again seek the face
of God in prayer for the blessing of the Spirit upon the preaching
and hearing of the Word of God. Let us pray. Our Father, we draw near again
Encouraged by your own word of invitation to draw near with
boldness unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and
find grace to help in our time of need. And our Father, we know
that our lives are a constant display of human need and weakness,
but we come this morning conscious of special need, special need
that we may be given light and understanding in the Scriptures,
that the one who speaks may handle your word with accuracy, and
that we who receive that word may receive it with discernment
and understanding. O Lord, we ask that it may be
evident to each one gathered in this place that You, the Living
God, though unseen, are known in Your felt presence through
the preaching of the Word this morning. Hear our cry and meet
with us, we plead, for the good of our souls and for the glory
of Your name. Amen. You can mark it down as an indisputable
fact that no true servant of Jesus Christ preaches himself
or his experience as the substance of his ministry. If you ever
hear any man claiming to be a true servant of Christ in whom his
own person and his own experience form the substance of his ministry,
you will know that he is a false minister of Christ. For the apostles
said in 2 Corinthians chapter 4, we preach not ourselves, but
Christ Jesus as Lord, and ourselves your bond slaves for Jesus' sake. Now while no true servant of
Christ ever makes his own person or experience the basis or the
theme of his ministry, every true servant of Christ preaches
Christ out of the context and the matrix of his own experience
of Christ. As surely as he preaches Christ
and not himself, he preaches Christ out of the context of
his own experience of Christ. And in a very focused way, that's
what I will attempt to do this morning. As most, if not all
of you know, at 9 a.m. tomorrow morning, I will be wheeled
into an operating room at Chilton Hospital for major surgery, the
goal of which is to remove a cancerous prostate and any other cancerous
tissue that may be found in the surrounding areas. The events
of tomorrow morning are the culmination of issues that began to unfold
on April the 15th of this year. when, during my first visit to
a specialist, I was told, there is something suspicious going
on in your prostate gland. And in the ensuing eleven weeks
that have followed, God has wonderfully manifested His grace, His love,
His nearness, and this morning I am constrained to set before
you some of the particular ways in which this has been true. And in order to set our study
of the Word of God in a thoroughly biblical setting, I want you
to look with me for a few minutes at the statements of the Apostle
written on behalf of himself and Timothy as found in 2 Corinthians
1, verses 3 and 4. You will notice that verse 3
begins as a eulogy. Whenever you read in the scriptures
someone saying, Blessed be God, blessed be the God and Father
of our Lord Jesus, such as you have here and in Ephesians 1,
this is a eulogy. This is speaking well of God. And as the apostle, under the
guidance of the Holy Spirit, begins to speak well of God,
he begins by blessing God for what he is in himself and in
his revelation of himself through the Lord Jesus. Notice the language
of the text. Blessed the God and Father of
our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort. As the Apostle speaks well of
God, as he blesses God for what he is in himself, you will notice
that that blessing of God is not some mindless enthusiasm,
throw up my hands and just praise God, bless God, bless Jesus for
nothing in some kind of a mentally convoluted way. No, there is
the clear light of perception as to who God is in himself. And you will notice that that
speaking well of God has two focal points. First of all, Paul
blesses God for what he is in himself as the God and Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ. That is, when he speaks well
of God. He is not speaking well of God
primarily in terms of what God has always been in himself, the
mysterious one in three and three in one. The God referred to in
Genesis 1.1, in the beginning God created the heavens and the
earth. but he is blessing God particularly
in terms of who he is since he has revealed himself in the person
and work of his Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. He has always been
God, but technically He was not the God and Father of our Lord
Jesus Christ until the second person of the Godhead became
incarnate in Mary's womb, and there was one who could refer
to Him as My Father. While there was an eternal relationship
between the pre-incarnate Son and the Father, it awaited the
incarnation for that truth to be made patent and clear in space-time
history. And so when the Apostle speaks
well of God, he is not just throwing out indiscriminate terminology. He is condensing into that terminology
all of the glorious revelation of God in the person and work
of our Lord Jesus Christ, and therefore refers to Him as the
God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. And until the incarnation,
there was no Jesus. The second person of the Godhead,
according to John 1.1, existed from eternity. In the beginning
was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. But it was in conjunction with
the incarnation that the angel said to Joseph, Thou shall call
his name Jesus, for he it is that shall save his people from
their sins. And so as the apostle blesses
God for what he is in himself, he blesses him that he is the
God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ, the God of manifested
redemptive grace and love, that God revealed and exegeted in
our Lord Jesus. But then he refers to him secondly
as the Father of mercies or compassions and the God of all comfort. That is, he is the God who manifests
his disposition of compassion, who ministers comfort in a way
consistent with his nature and his being. so that referring
to Him as the Father of mercies or compassions and the God of
all comfort, He is clearly indicating that God manifests and exercises
compassion and confers comfort because it is of His very essence
to manifest compassion and comfort. As a lion always acts like a
lion because in his nature he is a lion, a lamb acts like a
lamb because in its nature and disposition it is a lamb, so
God is the God who can be called Father of Mercies. and God of
all comfort, because it is in His very essence and nature to
be a compassionating and a comforting God. And Paul blesses God that
he is these things in himself. But then secondly, he blesses
God for what he has been doing to his servants. Look at the
text. This God is described in verse
4 in terms of what he has been doing for his servants, who is
comforting us in all our affliction. And while that term, according
to the analogy of scripture, could be applied to all Christians
indiscriminately, that God is the comforter of his people,
in this context, the us is Paul and Timothy. And he refers to
this activity of God as the one who has been comforting them
in all their affliction. And that he is thinking particularly
of their afflictions is clear from the context when we read
in verse 8, We would not have you ignorant, brethren, concerning
our affliction which befell us in Asia, that we were weighed
down exceedingly beyond our power, insomuch that we despaired even
of life. And he gives broad-stroke descriptions
of this particular combination of afflictions to which he makes
reference in verse 4 when he blesses God for being the God
who is ministering comfort to his afflicted servants, afflicted
in these particulars that are further described with a comfort
that was tailor-made to those particular afflictions. And the
word that is used for affliction in verse 4, and again in verse
8, is that general word for pressured circumstances. Pressure cooker
circumstances that press in upon us. And the apostle who blesses
God for what he is in himself, God and Father of our Lord Jesus
Christ, Father of mercies or compassions, God of all comfort,
he now addresses by way of speaking well of God the fact of what
he has been doing for his servants. He has been comforting them in
all of their affliction. But then notice thirdly in the
text that Paul explains the purpose for God's dealings with his servants. For what purpose has God been
comforting his servants? Verse 4 tells us. He says that
we may be able to convert. And he uses a construction, ice
tall, with the infinitive, which has the very clear pressure of
purpose. Here is the purpose for which
God has been comforting us in our afflictions. comforting us
because it is in His very nature to do so. He is the God of Compassions. He is the Father of Compassions,
the God of all comfort. He has been comforting us in
our afflictions, but He has been doing it, according to this text,
not primarily to take the pressure off us. Notice what the text
says. He has been doing this not to
make life more comfortable for us, but He says God has been
doing this in order that we may be able to comfort them that
are in any affliction through the comfort wherewith we ourselves
are comforted of God. In other words, the Apostle recognized
that God's dealings with him and Timothy in their particular
afflictions, those dealings consistent with who he is as the God and
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the God of manifested redemptive
love, who is, in a particular way, the God described in the
text as the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort, in
acting consistent with His very being and nature in continually
comforting us in our affliction, what has His purpose been? Not
primarily to make things easy for us, but rather to make us
more fit to mediate the comforts of God out of the matrix of our
own experience. Isn't that clearly the significance
of His Word? That we may be able that we may
be given the ability to comfort them that are in any affliction
through the comfort, notice, not the comfort that is inherent
in God as the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort, though
that is true, but he says through the comfort wherewith we ourselves
are comforted of God. Now you see the basis of my statement? Though no true servant of God
preaches himself or his experience as the basis of his proclamation,
every true servant of God will preach Christ out of the matrix
and the context of his experience of the grace of God. And in this
very passage, and I commend it to you for your meditation, you
will see that in five verses, verses three to seven, no fewer
than ten times, you will find the verb parakaleo and the noun
paraklesis, and we had some rooting around in those words in our
studies in the Upper Room Discourse, to comfort the verb, comfort
the noun, ten times in five verses. The great thrust of this passage
focuses upon the reality that God is indeed the God of all
comfort. And that's not just a pious notion. Catchy little phrases to go on
wall plaques, it is the reality that Paul and Timothy had come
to experience in an unusual way in the combination of pressure
cooker circumstances that caused them even to despair of life
itself. And they said, the only reason
we're alive and communicating now is we serve the God who gives
life to the dead. We were as good as dead. But
God came to us in grace and mercy, ministered His comfort, His consolation,
and now we recognize that He did this, that we, out of that
crucible of the provenness of God, as the Father of mercies
and the God of all comfort, might be competent to minister that
comfort to others. Well, with that passage as a
framework for what I'm going to attempt to do in the remaining
time, I want to address the question, what are the peculiar comforts
wherewith we, and when I say we, I'm speaking particularly
of my wife and me, have been comforted in these days. From April 15th, when the first
dark cloud began to form on the horizon with the urologist's
assessment that there's, quote, something suspicious that will
demand a biopsy, to the moment when we sat in his office and
we heard the dread C word you have prostate cancer. And from that moment till now,
what has been our experience of the comforts of God. And I
have pleaded with God that I would not, even in the interest of
magnifying His grace, speak beyond the reality of our experience
and thereby break the ninth commandment. I beg God, Lord, help me to be
honest in all that I say this morning, but I have also begged
Him that I would not rob Him of any glory due to His name
by a false modesty that would understate the measure of His
grace. What are then the comforts wherewith
we have been and continue to be comforted? Well, as time permits,
I want to set before you four of those distinct comforts. Number
one, the comfort of the sovereign will of God. The comfort of the
sovereign will of God. From the very beginning of Trinity
Church, when we composed our first official letterhead, We
wanted to put a text on the letterhead that embodied at least one of
the major concerns of our life and ministry as a church. And
some of you will remember that from the very first letterhead,
a specific text has been printed up till perhaps just recently.
I'm not sure if it's on the present letterhead. I think it may be.
That text is Romans 11 in verse 36. Romans 11 and verse 36, where
the Apostle, after opening up the grand scope of salvation
in Jesus Christ, a salvation that takes within its scope not
only individual sinners, but even the disposition of nations,
he closes with this tremendous statement, for of him and through
Him and unto Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever. Amen. Of Him, in sovereign will
and purpose, through Him, by sovereign, imminent, all-encompassing
providence, and unto him in praise and honor and glory are all things,
every created reality, in its largest and smallest motion and
disposition, from the farthest yet undiscovered galaxy to the
subatomic particles with its quarks And all of the other terms
that people give to them are all things, all things. For in the language of Ephesians
1 in verse 11, He is the God who is working actively, imminently,
powerfully, infallibly. He is working all things after
the counsel of His own will. The all things of the familiar
text in Romans 8 in verse 28, and we know that all things,
all things are the cells in a man's prostate things. When some kind of funky histological
change goes on and the people in the labs say, that's a cancer
cell, is that a thing? I ask you, is that a thing in
God's world? Then all things are working together,
not just working, but working together, and not just for some
undescribed end, but for good to them that love God, to them
who are the called according to His purpose. Psalm 115 and
verse 3, our God is in the heavens. He has done whatsoever He wills. You see, the doctrine of God's
sovereignty is not some theological abstraction, nor was it ever
intended to be an arena in which people slug it out and somehow
come to blows over theological issues. Either God, who made
this world and everything in it, rules it and everything in
it, or if you rule him out of one sub-atomic particle, you've
ultimately ruled God entirely out of his world. all things, all things. And it's amazing how when we
preach certain things, God holds us to what we've preached. From
time to time, I make a point of listening to one of my sermons,
not to admire it, but to criticize it, to see if I've fallen into
patterns of verbal expressions that are trite and unusually
or unnecessarily repetitive and the rest, and I listen with a
critical ear And a couple of months ago, after the first visit
in April 15, I was listening to a sermon that I've never preached
here, that was prepared and preached at the Ligonier Conference in
February of 1996. I was asked to preach on the
subject, the sovereignty of God over nature. My outline was God's
sovereignty over nature explicitly affirmed, and we looked at a
number of texts, God's sovereignty over nature vividly illustrated,
and then we looked at a number of examples of this, And then
my third heading was, God's sovereignty over nature practically applied. And I have the notes from that
sermon on the application. I want you to listen to what
I had the nerve to preach back in February of 1996. A present
conviction of this truth lies at the basis of fulfilling the
clear mandate of Philippians 4, 6, and 7. And we'll come to
that in one of the second categories of comfort. My second application
was this. A present conviction of this
reality lies at the basis of drawing comfort from Romans 8.28. How can we have the confidence
of faith that all things are working together for good if
any one thing escapes the control of God? And then I had two specific
illustrations to press. Was God really there at the conception
of that Down syndrome child? My second was this, was God really
there when the processes which caused the proliferation of destructive
cells occurred? And then, what was not in my
notes, and it was uncanny as I listened to it, said, what
will you do when the doctor tells you that the report has come
back from the pathologist? And he says the C word. Yes. Without claiming to be a
prophet, in getting specific in the application, it was in
the very area that God was preparing me to face some months later. And I would be shamefully and
willfully guilty of reproaching God if I did not say that the
doctrine of God's sovereignty better stated the reality of
a loving, gracious, sovereign God has been the sheet anchor
to our souls. As Pastor Carr pointed out in
his masterful sermons on Christian contentment, submission to the
sovereignty of God does not mean painlessness, It does not mean
prayerlessness. It does not mean paralysis. But
it means amidst the pouring out of the pain and the grief and
the fears, amidst the pleading with God, amidst taking every
effort responsibly to address a situation at the end of the
day, either you say from your heart, as did our blessed Lord
amidst His pain, amidst his prayer and amidst his responsible actions,
nevertheless, not my will, but thine, be done. And if we believe
what the Apostle says in 2 Corinthians 1, that God's dealings with us,
particularly as his servants, though there is a generic application
to all of God's people, If we believe that His dealings with
us and bringing us into the crucible of intense affliction is that
we might prove Him experientially to be the Father of mercies and
the God of all comfort, to the end that we may be able to comfort
others by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of
God, then when these intense afflictions come upon us, we
don't ask, why me, Lord? We ask, who then, Lord? You see the difference? Not why
me, but who then? You have brought this upon me
that I might better prove your grace to minister to others. Who then, Lord? Who then is the
candidate for that comfort that you're going to give to me in
this crucible of affliction? You see, we're back to the old
principle. He that will save his life will
lose it. But he that will lose his life
for my sake in the Gospels, the same shall save it. And this
was the passion of the Apostle when he expressed it in Philippians
1. He says, according to my earnest expectation and hope that in
nothing I shall be ashamed but that with all boldness now as
always Christ shall be magnified in my body whether by life or
by death. His great passion was not a smooth
road of comfort into retirement and into a rest home and then
fade off into the sunset. He said, in this bodily existence,
I want my entire being to be one magnifying glass that when
you look at me, Christ becomes big in your eyes. Whether by
life, by death, Christ to be magnified, for to me to live
is Christ, and to die is gain. This past Friday morning, to
God was very gracious, enlarging my heart in a very special way,
and spreading before him all the details of the upcoming surgery,
right down to pleading with God that when I'm in no man's land
and the anesthesia is still affecting my brain and you can babble,
I said, Lord, make me babble like a Christian man. There's
enough sin in my heart and in the memory banks, foul words
that I uttered before I was converted. filthy thoughts and jokes that
I could still tell if I wanted to reach in. Lord, don't let
me dishonor you when I'm babbling, but let me babble like a Christian.
Let your word come out. Let language of hymns come out.
Let everyone who gets near me know that's not a reverend whose
religion is his profession. That's a man who knows his God
and loves his Savior. What comfort has God brought
to us? He has brought the comfort of His sovereign will. After
praying out those things on Friday morning, I came down to share
with my wife that God had met me in a special way and given
a fresh sense of commitment and release and submission to the
will of God. And her words to me were, Dear,
as I've gone about these days, the last words of Romans 12 to
have been going over in my mind again and again and again. the
good, the acceptable, and the perfect will of God. I speak
the truth in Christ, I lie not. The doctrine of God's gracious,
all-wise, all-encompassing sovereignty has been a consolation to our
souls. But then there's been a second
category of comfort. It is the comfort of the promised
peace of God. And here I want you to turn with
me to the familiar words of Philippians 4. You're not going to hear anything
new this morning, folks. You get staring down the gun
battle or something like this, you've got no stomach for novelty.
You want proven stuff. You want proven stuff. And you'll
find yourself going back to the most elementary issues. The comfort
of the promised peace of God. Philippians 4, 6 and 7. In nothing
be anxious, but in everything, by prayer and supplication, with
thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God, and the
peace of God which passes all understanding shall guard your
hearts and your thoughts in Christ Jesus." I've made reference to
the date of April 15th. It was about 7.45 in the evening
when I walked through the garage door and into our family room,
thinking that I was going to be able to tell my wife that
the urologist report was such that we'd scheduled a less radical
form of surgery to just make life a little easier for me in
the years to come, as God would give them. But when I told her,
that after his examination there was some concern that we might
be dealing with something more than a common middle-aged problem,
and I'll speak euphemistically here rather than turn the morning
worship service into an anatomical lesson. And as we then went to
have our regular family worship stuck to our regular pattern,
presently reading through William Jay's Morning and Evening, I
then was pressured in my own mind to sit with my wife and
open up Philippians 4, 6 and 7. And I said, now dear, the
directives of God are clear. Whatever the urologist thinks
he's found, whatever the forthcoming biopsy and ultrasound may reveal,
this much is clear. Almighty God has given a prohibition
in verse 6a. And he says, in no thing be anxious. And we must together repudiate
all sinful anxiety as much as we repudiate a temptation to
curse God, to steal from our neighbors, to be unfaithful to
our marriage vows. Sinful anxiety is out of bounds
for us as Christians. We must not look on it as an
innocent accompaniment of dark news. In nothing be anxious. That's the prohibition. Now,
dear, God's told us what we're to do as the means to neutralize
the power of sinful anxiety. In everything, by prayer and
supplication, let your requests be made known unto God. There's
the avenue of unfettered approach to God, prayer generically, supplications
specifically, requests made known, but mingled with thanksgiving.
We tried to think of everything for which we could give God thanks.
Even that first dark cloud over our shoulder. Give thanks to
God that He has brought things to light. Give thanks to God
for this, for that, the other. We thanked ourselves out. Then
we laid our requests before God, brought all our arguments. as
to why we believed it would glorify God, that the biopsy would come
up showing no real problem, that we'd be able to proceed with
the other procedure, that life would get on. We brought all
our arguments before God. And when we had done to the best
of our ability what this verse says, in nothing be anxious,
took our stand in Christ against sinful anxiety, sought by prayer
and supplication with thanksgiving to let our request be made known
to God, Then we said, now Lord, we don't have the power to do
what verse 7 says. That's your job. And the peace
of God which passes all understanding shall guard, shall set up a sentinel
around your hearts and your thoughts, and your thoughts. Those vagabond,
uncontrollable things that run off in a hundred directions,
God has promised to set this garrison of soldiers around heart
and thought in virtue of our union with Christ. And we said
something along this line as I led us in prayer. Now, Lord,
we can't do the last, but you've committed yourself to do it.
And we are pleading with you to fulfill your promise. And
I stand to testify in this place this morning the best I know
in Judgment Day honesty. Somewhere in the next several
hours, before we awakened in the morning, God sent that garrison
of soldiers around our hearts and minds, and they have not
broken ranks for five minutes over the last eleven weeks. And
that's not because by nature either my wife or this man standing
in front of you has got some kind of Christian macho to just
face the worst. No. By nature and temperament,
I am a timid, tentative, fearful little boy. And if you question
my honesty, ask my dear mother about the son to whom she gave
birth. Let her share the incidents of
that inherently tentative, fearful temperament. I asked my wife
sometime about her convoluted upbringing with no mother and
no domestic stability and all the rest. And God can take two
people who didn't have, either temperamentally or environmentally,
the things that make them strong, and this verse is not qualified
by temperament or circumstances. Its only limit is the grace of
God in Jesus Christ, and that has no limit. And I stand to
bear witness to the glory of God, of the comfort of the promised
peace of God. You say, but pastor, what do
you mean by the peace of God? Well, look at the text. It says
it passes, it surpasses, it exceeds, it goes beyond what? Understanding. Now, what you don't understand,
you can't explain. Now, sometimes you say to someone,
look, explain that to me. We say, well, well, I understand
it, but I can't explain it. You know what my response is?
No, you don't understand it. That's why you can't explain
it. If you understand it, generally you can explain it. But even
granted that there may be situations where you do understand something,
but you can't explain it, there's never a situation where you can
explain something you don't understand. And I stand before you to say,
I don't understand that piece. It surpasses understanding. So how can I explain it? You
can only explain it or attempt to explain it by walking around
it with negatives. What it is, I don't know. But
I know what it ain't. That restive, disturbed, distressed,
lying upon the bed at night. What if this? What if that? What
if the other? What if this? What if that? robbing
the energy of tomorrow by the anxious thoughts of the night.
That's not the peace of God at work. Trying to anticipate a
thousand what-ifs instead of bending one's mind and energies
to the realities of present duty and present responsibility. I
can't explain what it is, but I bear witness, along with my
wife, of the comfort of the promised peace of God. And thirdly, I
want to address briefly the comfort of the prayers and the expressed
love of the people of God. No little part of the comfort
wherewith the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort has
been comforting us to the end that we might be able better
to comfort others is the comfort of the prayers and the expressed
love of the people of God. It's interesting, isn't it, that
in this very passage Paul highlights the place of the prayers of the
Corinthians and he says that in the midst of this gracious
deliverance of God and of his hope of the ongoing grace of
God that he and Timothy and others might accomplish this, bringing
this benevolence gift to Jerusalem. That's the context of the language
of verse 11. He says, you also helping together
on our behalf by your supplication. He was confident that they were
entering in with him by their prayers. And not only was the
Apostle conscious of that consolation and comfort that is mediated
through the prayers of God's people, but by the expressed
manifestations of the love of God's people. Look at the example
in chapter 7 of this epistle, where our words, comfort, are
found again. 2 Corinthians 7 and verse 5,
For even when we were come into Macedonia, Our flesh had no relief. We were afflicted on every side. Without were fightings, and I
love the next phrase, within were fears. You mean there were
times when Paul was afraid? Yes, David was afraid. What time
I am afraid? I will trust in thee. It's what
you do with your fears. That is the difference between
the Christian, the non-Christian, between the Christian acting
consistent with what he is in Christ and acting inconsistently. Within were fears. Nevertheless,
notice, he that comforts the lowly or the downcast, even God,
Here's the God of all comfort, comforted us by a fresh, unusual,
intense outpouring of the Spirit upon our souls. No, He comforted
us by the coming of Titus. One day when Paul was feeling
the pressure of all of these circumstances and his spirit
was heavy, And no doubt, crying out to God for the consolations
of His grace, there was a creak in the hinges. And through the
door came Titus, and the comfort of God was mediated through the
loving spiritual intercourse with his dear brother. And he
came with news of what had happened there at Corinth, and how Paul's
letter that he says further on in this chapter, he said, I was
grieved when I wrote it, not because I wanted to make you
grieved, but because you needed to be called to repentance, for
now Titus has come and he's told us of your response, and our
hearts have been made glad. You see, the comfort of God was
not brought immediately into the soul of Paul. It was mediated through a fellow
redeemed sinner. And when the Apostle says, Blessed
be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father
of mercies or compassions, the God of all comfort, he understood
that what God is in Himself, in what He is in mediating of
Himself to His people, does not always come by the immediate
operations of the Holy Spirit, but is mediated through the members
of His body. And we have known that in a most
precious way in these days. Cards, letters, notes from some
of the kids barely able to frame their ABCs. This morning at nine
o'clock, a telephone call from Germany from our dear brother
Hart. So many expressions of your love. And what does that
do? It mediates the very comfort that God is and that God communicates
to His people. It becomes the conduit through
which we know the comfort of God and the compassion of God. The other day as I thought upon
it and realized that, God willing, tomorrow morning there will literally
be several thousands of God's precious ones from the Philippines,
to Australia, to the Middle East, to the Caribbean, to the UK,
and all points in this country, praying for this hell deserving
sinner. And I said, Lord, among the four
and a half billions of this world's population, how many live and
die and never have one person pray for them? And I'm going
to have thousands of people praying for me And I was swallowed up
with a mingled sense of unworthiness on the one hand and an overwhelming
sense of God being the Father of mercies and the God of all
comfort. The comfort of the prayers and
the expressed love of the people of God My dear wife and I have
known that, and I bear public witness to it. And then the fourth
category of God's comfort, wherewith we have and continue to be comforted,
is the comfort of the redemptive love of God. And this, of course,
is the overarching comfort. Even above the comfort of the
sovereign will of God, the promised peace of God, the prayers and
expressed love of the people of God, is the comfort of the
redemptive love of God. Now, what do I mean by the terminology,
the redemptive love of God? Turn please to Romans, I'm sorry,
chapter 8. Romans, chapter 8. Again, we're
back in the familiar territory. This wonderful chapter, some
regarded as the richest chapter of gospel privilege found anywhere
in the Word of God. Notice how it begins. Verse 1. There is therefore now no condemnation
to them that are in Christ Jesus. The blessed state in which Almighty
God has no legal controversy with men is the state of being
in Christ Jesus. In the face of the ugly reality
of the universal condition of human sinfulness, a reality that
Paul has established in the earlier chapters, he dares to state no
condemnation to a certain group of people. And how are they described?
Not in terms of any external, social, economic, racial, ethnic
privilege, but in terms of this category alone. They are in Christ
Jesus. They have come into union with
Him who took our nature upon Him. And in that nature lived
a life of perfect conformity to the law of God. Died under
the curse of imputed sin. rose from the dead on the third
day. And now by the operation of the
Spirit, men are regenerated, women are regenerated, boys and
girls are made new, and in repentance and faith they lay hold of Christ
and are united to Him. And in that union there is no
condemnation. God's treatment of us is the
treatment of His own Son. Having raised Him from the dead,
vindicated His work, we are accepted in the Beloved One. And then
as the various privileges of the children of God are opened
up, culminating in their glorification, when they should be made like
the Lord Jesus, and even this present sin-cursed world will
be released from the effects of the curse, He cries out in
verse 31, What shall we say then to these things? If God is for
us, who is against us? He that spared not His own Son,
but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him freely
give us all things? What are the all things? Everything
necessary to bring us to the climactic experience of a full
salvation, a renewed body, to dwell on a renewed earth with
all of his renewed creatures, and that forever and ever. And
as he then expresses his own personal conviction, I am persuaded,
verse 38, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities,
nor things present, nor things to come, Nor things to come, all of the
unanswered questions. What will the surgeon find tomorrow?
What will be the results if he finds this, finds that? Things
to come, none of these things present or to come. Nor powers,
nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature. Now notice, she'll
be able to separate us from the love of God, and where is it?
It is not out there, generically, in His kindness and benevolence
to all of His creatures and all of His creation. It is not the
love that is expressed out there in God's general offer of mercy
to sinners. No, look at the text. It is the
love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. That's His redemptive
love. And the exclusive sphere of that
love is in Christ. And if we are in Christ, then
all the benefits and commitments of that love are ours, out of
Christ. There isn't a gram of that redemptive
love. God is committed to vindicate
His justice by bringing every sin to judgment. God is committed
to vindicate His holiness, to vindicate who He is as Creator
and Lawgiver and Judge. But in Christ Jesus, He has vented
His righteous wrath. He has pledged a full and a complete
salvation. And in these days, we have known
something of the comfort of the redemptive love of God. Confident, according to verse
32, that if God has done the greatest work, the greatest demand
upon the Godhead was found in conjunction with the giving up
of His Son to death. He that spared not His own Son,
He's done the greatest work. delivered Him up for us all,
how shall He not also with Him, in that sphere of redemptive
grace and activity, freely give us all things, all that is necessary
that His salvation might be fully experienced in all for whom He
died? And what a comfort to face the
unknown things of the coming hours, the coming days, knowing
that the God who in space, time, history spared not His own beloved
Son, at the point that He loved Him most intensely, when the
obedience of the Son reached its apex in laying down His life
for sinners, at the point when His obedience found its culminating
expression And the Father's heart was never more moved with complacent
love for His Son. At that point, He spared him
not, but brought down the full weight of His unleashed fury,
punishing our sins in Him who died for us. We have the promise,
how shall we not with Him, in that sphere of redemptive love,
be confident that He will give us all things Well, those are
four of the blessed categories of God's comfort that we have
known in these days. And sooner or later, if you're
a child of God, though God's tailor-made plan for your life
may never have in it the dread C-word, may never have major
surgery in the plan, There will be, according to the word of
God, that which Acts 14.22 calls tribulation between now and your
entering the kingdom. The apostle and his companions
preached to the young converts that through many tribulations,
same word, pressure cooker things, flipses, pressures, afflictions,
we must enter the kingdom of God. And I trust as you come
into those intense crucibles of affliction that God will bring
back to your mind this morning when in a way that doesn't begin
to do justice to the realities you heard someone say that there
is a God who takes to himself the terms, Father of mercies,
God of all comfort. who ministered comfort to his
servant to the end, that he might be able to administer that comfort
experientially to those who are in any affliction, and validate
in your own heart that God is indeed the God whom Paul blesses. And as I close, I want to ask
the question of those of you who are not in that circle of
redemptive love, What are you going to do when crunch time
comes for you? You're bopping along without
Christ, without God, filling up that aching void with who
knows what, but crunch time is going to come somewhere, sometime. And you may be a Psalm 73 man
or woman whom God in his sovereign providence spares the ordinary
afflictions of life, but crunch time will come when your appointment with death
comes up in God's calendar. It is appointed unto men once
to die. What comfort will you have? I ask you, what comfort
will you have from the things that now occupy your soul? The
things to which you now give your life, do you want them to
be your companion when you go through the valley of the shadow
of death? What you give your life to in life, that will be
your companion in death. That's why Paul could say, for
to me to live now is Christ, and therefore to die is gain.
For I know that he who is my Lord and the object of my affection
and trust in life will be my companion in death, and therefore
death will be gain to me. But as I said to the young people
Friday night, you fill in the blanks, for to me to live is
What do you fill in the blank right now? To me, to live is. What is life to you? To me, to
live is fun, games, success, career, station, standing, influence. What is it? To me, to live is
children, grandchildren. What is it? My friend, if you
don't want it to be your companion passing through the valley of
the shadow of death and stand with you in the day of judgment,
turn from it. and fill in the blank with Christ.
He's the only one worthy to be there in the blank. To me, to
live, is Christ. Turn from your silly idols! Turn from every blasphemous thought
injected by the enemy of your souls that there is something
to be had out of Christ that's worth anything. Throw yourself
upon the mercy of God in Christ. and know the blessedness of his
presence now in life, his companionship in death, and his vindication
in the last day. From the human standpoint, we
have every reason to be hopeful and expected that the surgery
tomorrow will be God's instrument to put this chapter behind us
hopefully enriched by all the things that God has taught in
so many areas, and that the Lord will continue to exegete in the
days to come. But as the scripture says, we
know not what a day may bring forth any day. When you know
in a few hours the mask is going to be on your face, and you're
off in no man's land, and you know that you're going to be
opened up. And there's the real possibility,
one in a hundred never get off the table. It has a way of yanking
your chain. And you ask the question, am
I really on solid ground? And as a boy who went to bed
every night, scared to death I'd die, how I thank God the
king of terrors has been stripped of his power. And when that anesthesiologist
places that needle in the back of my hand and I float off into
never-never land, to do so in the confidence that if God should
take me, I'll wake up and look upon the face of Jesus. I bless
God for a Savior who has committed Himself to be with His people.
And if I never preach from this pulpit again, I pray, God, You
will remember that a man stood there and told You that Christ
alone is worthy of Your trust. Christ is infinitely worthy of
your whole soul trust in life, in death. May God grant that
His dealings with us may be by His grace the crucible in which
Christ Himself will increasingly become precious to us, and that
some of you who perhaps have been careless, indifferent, the
Lord will use the things shared this morning to be the instrument
to cause you to seek the Lord while He may be found, and to
call upon Him while He is near. Let us pray. Our Father, how we thank You
that amidst the great and ultimate realities of life and of death
and of judgment, You have given us clear light from Your Holy
Word, how we thank You that Your Son and His salvation are suitable
to all of the needs of Your people. And we thank You that You have
pledged that having spared not Your Son, You will with Him freely
give us all things. We plead with You this day that
You will magnify Yourself as the God of all comfort and the
Father of mercies. We pray, O Lord, that your people
will store up the blessed realities that have been set before them
today. We thank you for many that have
proven them in ways that we have yet to prove them. We ask for
those who have been deluded by the God of this world who sit
here today and are not in the orbit of your redemptive love
in Christ. Oh, may they flee from their
sin and their unbelief and cast themselves upon your mercy in
Christ, that they may have that confidence that nothing shall
separate them from your love that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Hear us and seal your word to
our hearts, we pray, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.