Seeking for the help of the Lord, I direct your prayer for attention to the second epistle of Paul to the Corinthians, chapter 4, and verses 17 and 18. For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal. 2 Corinthians chapter 4 verses 17 and 18 Affliction viewed rightly.

The Apostle Paul was called to walk the path of affliction and tribulation, which all of God's children are. Now the Lord said that in the world ye shall have tribulation. These things I have spoken unto you, that ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation, but in me ye shall have peace. especially God's children that are ministers, they are called to walk affliction, and it seems a strange thing that God should so order it, that those that are presenting the gospel and the way of escape from the wrath to come, they themselves are afflicted.

And Paul was very concerned, especially with the Corinthians here, but other churches that he wrote to and that knew him, that they would look upon his affliction and think, well, what kind of a gospel is this if it results in all of this, if your God can't deliver you from these troubles and these afflictions?

He was really, in a way, forced to show how God was using them and that they need not or should not be offended, but rather view it in God's plan. And amazing to tell, we can see in accounts like the case of Naomi in the book of Ruth, that we have one that is in deep affliction. She's a widow, she's lost her husband, she then loses both her sons, and Yet strange to tell, the grace and help that she was given under that was what drew Ruth to cleave to her and want to have the same God as Naomi. And so, instead of pushing away, it drew her to the people of God. We ought not to think, well, we've got to somehow show that if we believe, then we're going to have a good house good job, and we're going to be rich, and we have got an insurance policy, and we're never going to get ill, we're never going to get sick, and somehow recommend the grace of God to others by that way.

There are those prosperity preachers that do just that, and try to play on men's desire for the goods of this world to make them follow after them. But the true faith is otherwise. And it is as God orders and uses affliction and trials for our eternal good. And so this is what the Apostle is setting before them here, he's speaking as a minister, and he explains also in the beginning of this chapter that if their gospel that he is preaching is hid, there is a reason why it is hid. in whom the God of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not.

And as the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them. Again, it can be the thought, well, Apostle, if you are preaching the truth, if you are preaching the gospel, why don't men believe it? Why don't they accept it? Why don't they embrace it? But even our Lord's perfect ministry That did not result in those that believed and that followed, unless they were ordained unto eternal life.

And that also needs, then, explaining as well. There are many things in the Christian faith that need to be seen in the light of the Word of God. Naturally speaking, we might say it stumbles us and will stumble others. They cannot understand it until we see it in the light. of the Word of God and what God is doing and how God is using these things for good. And it's good for us then to know the teaching that is set forth in this passage and in these verses. So I want to look firstly at what Paul calls light affliction, our light affliction. And then secondly, what Paul says of it for us to consider, that it is but for a moment and that it worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal way of glory. And then thirdly, how we will be able under God's blessing to call our afflictions light and it worked good for us.

And that is in verse 18, while we look, not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen, for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal. Firstly, what does Paul call our life affliction? Is it just something that is very small, that is perhaps a little sickness or a little infirmity or some troubles in his life? How is the inspired word used to describe what Paul says is a light affliction?

Well if you look at the previous verses. If we go to verse 7, we have this treasure in earthen vessels, feeling me to be in a body that's like a vessel that is of earth, easy broken. But then he says in verse 8, we are troubled on every side yet not distressed. We are perplexed, but not in despair. You think of what was said in the book of Esther. The city of Shushan was perplexed. Why was it? This decree had gone forth that all the Jews should be destroyed. They couldn't work it out. They couldn't reason it out.

And there may be things in our lives we can't reason out. find most perplexing, most difficult. We go over it and we can't see what God is using, we can't see the purpose of it, we can't see why God's providence has brought these things about, and Paul was in that, he was perplexed, but he says, but not in despair.

Persecuted, there were those that were persecuting him, saying things, doing things against him, making life so difficult for him. But he says, but not forsaken, cast down. And we tend to be so cast down and despondent, disillusioned, really lacking all of the incentives and the invigoration that we should have. in life, just feeling so despondent, and he says that we are cast down but not destroyed, always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our bodies. He paints not a pretty picture but a very vivid picture of the things that he was going through that you would hardly call lines, afflictions, and yet he does. If we were to go to the chapter 6 in the same epistle, then we have in verse 4 how he says that in all things approving ourselves as the ministers of God in much patience in afflictions, in necessities, in distresses, in stripes, in imprisonments, in tumults, in labours, in watchings, in fastings.

Again, a picture that is not light, but a real path of trouble and tribulation. The next chapter, chapter 7, verse 5. He says, when we were come into Macedonia, our flesh had no rest, but we were troubled on every side. Without were fightings, within were fears.

Can we picture that in our lives? Without were fightings, maybe in our families, in the church, amongst brethren, amongst our neighbours, and in ourselves we had fears, What is this going to lead to? What is going to happen? What's going to happen in my life?

These are things that he is telling these Corinthians. If we go through to chapter 11 and towards the end of that chapter, verse 23, he again gives a description of the path. in labours more abundant, in stripes above measure, in prisons more frequent, in deaths oft of the Jews, five times I received, received I forty stripes, save one.

Five times beaten like that. Thrice was I beaten with rods. Once was I stoned Christ, I suffered shipwreck, we only read one account of that. A night and a day I have been in the deep, in journeys oft, in perils of water, in perils of robbers, in perils by my own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren, in weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness.

Then he adds, "...beside those things which are without, that which cometh upon me daily, the care of all the churches. all of those things. We can easily read over them, can't we? But when we start to put that picture into our lives, what if that was us? What if we were going through those things? And we do go through things. We will have tribulation. We will not just have sickness, but we'll have troubles, deep troubles. Tribulation is great troubles.

And Paul has gone through these things, he rehearses these things, that then he calls them a light affliction. How could he do that? Surely he must be viewing something other than the outward to bring that kind of a balance, an assessment of it. They aren't like, naturally speaking, They are deep, they are painful, they are perplexing. It is a most trying path, but somehow He's able to view it and call it our light affliction. It may be with your life in mind, that you look at those things that are troubling you, those things that you're going through, And sometimes they seem like mountains, sometimes they seem impossibilities, you feel I cannot stand.

One more thing, one more thing added. And you look at those things and you say, Paul, can I know your secret? Can I know why it is that you can rehearse these things and look on them and you don't minimize them, you tell them as they are, You say how that you were distressed and how you were cast down, how you were perplexed. You are telling it as it is.

But how you view it, who can save our light affliction? Or may it be a help this afternoon to some of you, to me, to be able to bear what the Lord has laid on us. what the Lord has appointed for us. We must remember this, that really the whole world is under the sentence of death. We deserve nothing at the Lord's hand at all, and trouble, anguish. Man is born unto trouble, we read in John, as the sparks fly upward.

But if the Lord can take that trouble and can make it so that those going through it view it as light and can actually use it for good, what a wonder that that is. Natural man, they can take good things and make them work for good, but God can take bad things and make them work for good.

He can take Balaam's curses and he can turn them into a curse. And he can bring from the fall a wonderful redemption, an eternal redemption. The Lord is able to do that. He's like a builder. If you gave a builder beautiful materials and he made a beautiful house, you'd say, what a wonderful builder. But if you gave him a heap of rubble and second-hand timber and he still made a beautiful house, who's so how much greater builder, that he could turn that into something so beautiful.

And that is what God does. He takes sinners, he takes their lives, he takes the world and all its sin and all its hatred against the people of God, and he turns it and he makes it into something beautiful and good. And really so often the key is to look at our Lord Jesus Christ himself and his sufferings and his death and what flows forth from that and to view the end of the Lord in that. The salvation of all of the people of God came about by ye have taken and by wicked hands crucified and slain.

But I want to look then at what Paul says of him. for us to consider. What does he say of this affliction which he says is light? The first thing he says that it is but for a moment. He has a right view of this world and the length of the world or how short it is. And it is, of course, in the light of eternity.

I often think, I think of my parents, I think of those who have lived on the earth some 60 years, and my mother was 61 when she died. I thought if you were on the earth just before she was born, she wouldn't have existed, no one would have known of her, and then just jump forward 62 years and there's no remembrance but a plaque on the ground, and just in the space of those 60 or so years is her whole life span, everything that has happened and everything that's done, and the place that knew her, knows her no more forever, we all shall be like that. Time like an Indian arrow finds, and it is in comparison of eternity, as in a moment, even in comparison of the history of the world, if we take 6,000 years and all our little life even if we were to live for a hundred, what a small percentage of that time.

And that's our allotted space here below. And so that is the first thing that the Apostle puts immediately after this. It is but for a moment. There is an end to affliction. When the children of Israel were in Egyptian bondage, it wasn't forever, there was an end, they were brought out of it. When Joseph was in prison, he was brought out of it. And even if the deliverance at last is a deliverance through death as the martyrs, there is an end.

There is one thing that belongs to time that doesn't belong to eternity. And so it belongs to where tribulation and trial is, if the Lord was saying there is trouble and tribulation and trial on this earth, but also on this earth there is beginnings and ends. And so the apostle would say here that it is but for a moment, the time of it. Some of us can think of afflictions that we've been through, or our loved ones have been through, there has been that time, maybe a time of depression, maybe a time with ME, and brought through that time, brought out of it, maybe a time that an affliction has gone on for many years and then brought out of it, And we've seen those times that it's been very clear to us the Lord's appointed it for that time, and then there's been a bringing up out of it.

And we know that there will be those afflictions that only death will bring out of it, like Elisha fell sick of a sickness whereof he died. And those things that we know will accompany us to the grave. But the other thing that we are to consider is that it is used by God for our eternal good.

He says, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. He's not even looking at time, he's not looking at the benefit in time, but he's looking at eternity. And this affliction itself is being used by God for this end. Worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal way of glory.

Now I say on this, as well as the Apostle being able to view his afflictions as light, that the only way that these things work for us good is under the Lord's blessing. We're not to think that automatically sickness and afflictions will work for good.

They don't. In fact, often they work the other way, make men's hearts really hard. They say, if this is God, then I'm not having anything to do with Him. and to reply against him and we often feel that in our own souls. Those times that we kick and rebel and we fret and we blame God and we struggle under our afflictions, they are very real times.

We get to prove what we are of ourselves. But the end is that we see what God is able to do and does in our lives which in a way is opposite to sense and reason. Now if Laban and Bethuel could say the thing proceedeth from the Lord, well this is the Lord's doing and is marvellous in our eyes. It's a marvellous, it's a wonderful thing.

When the Lord takes that of which men would take and say is the worst and the troubles and he turns them about and he makes them work for good. far more exceeding an eternal weight of glory. It's almost as if the Apostle would say there is actually a weight of glory that's associated with bearing this affliction and these trials. But there's a greater glory, and again we come back to our Lord Jesus Christ, the glory of the cross. His sufferings and what He bore, His death. But then we see His exaltation, His rising again, His ascension into heaven, His glory there. And there is the glory that was evidenced in the cross and His sufferings, but then there's the glory that follows, so much greater. And so the picture is the same here.

And we have to consider this for ourselves, for our afflictions. Consider this thing, this burden, this trial, this affliction is but for a moment. And it is these things that God uses to work for our eternal glory and good and salvation. Often in verses like this we must say, there's something here I cannot grasp, I cannot really enter into, but the language that is used is something great, and something wonderful, and something that's to bring before the Lord. Lord, show me the secret of this. Show me what Thou art doing in my own life and own case, through these things. and through these trials. There's another thing to consider.

It says, worketh for us, which gives the idea that this is something not instantly done, but works over time. We're used to the idea if someone is doing a work, there's a time factor in it. they're building a house, it takes a while. If someone is being sanctified, if someone is being prepared, as Moses was being prepared for leading the children of Israel through the wilderness, he must have 40 years in Pharaoh's household, 40 years in the desert. In those trials and tribulations that he went through, there was a work being done, it wasn't wasted time. The same with Joseph in prison, it wasn't wasted time. The Lord was preparing is doing things.

So we have to remember this as well and not look for instant results or look immediately and think well today or yesterday or last week it didn't seem to work much for good but over a period of time then it does. When we think of seeing a plant growing you can't sit and get a chair and watch a plant grow but if you were to go out and look at it once a week or perhaps a few weeks' time, then you would see it growing. And you'd say, well, there is a work there. It is having an effect. Something is being done. And the work of grace is like that. God's work in sinners is like that.

Line upon line, here a little and there a little, very gradual work, despise not the day of small things, where to be patient that the Lord will work and will do what he is doing. He says to his disciples, your time is already but my time is not yet.

And we are then to let the Lord work and let him have that done which needs the time to actually perform it and to do it. These things then we are to consider. For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. On to look then lastly at how, how we will be able, that is under God's blessing, to call our afflictions, like the Apostle did, our light affliction.

The answer is in verse 18. I always like to remind ourselves that God's prescriptions are right ones. You know, we might get a doctor and they prescribe certain things to address a situation. Maybe it won't be right and it doesn't work, But when we have in the Word of God what God prescribes as the way to bring something about, a path that we are to walk, we are to trust in the Lord. We are to look at those directions and believe that these are right, that following those things, following those directions, we shall receive the benefit and blessing that is set before us. And so here, the way that we, like the Apostle, can look upon our afflictions as being a light affliction is set forth in verse 18. There's four things really that's set forth here. The first is we look not. We look not of the things which are seen.

We think of Peter and he's going to the Lord over the sea and he begins to walk on the sea and then he sees the wind and the waves and the billows and as he looks at those then he begins to sink. We think of Peter in prison If you're looking, he would look at his shackles, and he would look at the sentry, and he would look at the closed doors, and we look at the fact that James had already been slain with the sword, and the Lord hadn't preserved him.

And everything outward is all against him. But he had one thing, I believe, that he remembered, and he held on to, The Lord had told him, and we read in John, thus first signifying by what death he should glorify God, and it wasn't by the sword. It was by crucifixion.

Stretch forth his hands, and others shall carry thee whither thou wouldst not. And there is Peter sleeping. I often looked at that as a marvellous thing, a wondrous thing. How could you sleep when you've got, as it were, almost certain death awaiting?

But faith, he knew what the Lord would do, able to rest in the Lord's work, but to actually look at what was around him. Paul's prison, how was it that Silas and Paul, that they should sing praises to God and bless God when they were locked up in prison? But they were not looking or not bearing all of their thoughts, all of their attentions on their outward circumstances.

Abraham, we're told that he, by faith, that he did not consider his own age or the deadness of Sarah's womb, but he is strong in faith, giving glory to God. Looking at natural things, we say it's impossible, it cannot be so, and it's easy to do that. Easy to look at natural things.

And it's a very personal thing. I remember with myself the exercise of coming back here to the UK, and that it would be to a pastor. And my dear wife knew that. She said, that's impossible. I don't say it to be against her, because she knew the situation over here, I didn't. You see, there are many ministers, they've been years in the ministry, they've never been called to a pastorate, you'll never be called from one side of the world to the other. The first sermon I ever preached in this country was in my pulpit at Cranbrook, and that first sermon has laid upon the friends that I should be their pastor.

And the Lord did bring it about. There's many things like that, that naturally speaking, seem impossible. And we're told in the scriptures that that which is impossible is not impossible with God. But for us that are walking through these things, that we are not to be looking at all of our attention, all our bearing is upon these things which are seen. Those real things. Things that the devil would say, things that we would say, But they are there, they are real things. And we need to acknowledge, yes they are there, but we're not dwelling upon them. We're not fixing all of our hopes, all of our looks upon those things that are actually seen. Many times we can make a false assessment of what we see.

Years ago in Australia there was a dear aged chap that I used to visit in a nursing home and one time I visited and he was in great distress and he pointed out to the window and looked out to the bay, Port Phillip Bay and there was boats out there and he said those boats He said, they are waiting to nightfall, they are going to come in and they are going to capture me and they are going to take me away and they have been paid certain money to take me. And he was in distress. He said, my nephew has come in and said, no, no, no, they are not there, that's all wrong. He said, but the boats are there. And you could look out, you could see them. You had to say to him, I had to say to him, yes, I can see those boats. that they're fishing boats, they're not coming to get you at all.

But his view of it and his distress was what he had put on that. And other things as well he was distressed with and it was not a true interpretation. The nurses in the nurse's station at night, they were laughing, they were having fun together, speaking together of things. He said, they've been coming in and taking compromising pictures of me and now they're laughing at me, they're looking at the pictures. And the poor man was so distressed like that.

But we can be. We can say, I can see these things, they are there. And we put our construction on them. We put what God is going to do with them and how it's going to completely crush us. And so the first thing here, while we look not at the things that are seen, maybe with some of you here this afternoon who see us, you've got to stop dwelling upon, stop looking on, stop keep on pondering and looking and going over and over and over those things I know we're doing. Many of us in our lives, you know, might set off on a journey and you spend part of that journey with your wife going over and over things that have happened. You find it with other brethren as well, troubles and trials that they've had maybe years ago and they come up and they're still a trouble, they're still a burden. Think how much time is spent looking at those things, dwelling upon them, concentrating on them. we look not at the things which are seen.

Then secondly there is what we are to look at, but at the things which are not seen. That is by faith. That is those things that are set before us in the word of God. The work of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, received up into heaven, not seen, but seen by faith, that place it is prepared. I go to prepare a place for you. If I come again, I'll receive you unto myself. I will come again, receive you unto myself, that where I am, there you may be also. And to realize we live in a world that there are many things unseen. We think of the angels, We know they're in the assemblies of the saints of God's people. Are they not all ministry spirits sent forth to minister to them that are the heirs of salvation?

He shall give his angels charge over thee, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone. You think of Jacob, he leaves home. He's got his brother seeking to slay him. And he lays with the stones for his pillow, and the Lord appears for him. And he shows him the ladder set up on earth, angels ascending, descending. He waits, he says, surely God is in this place.

And I knew it not. He hadn't seen, he didn't know, until it was open. You think of Elisha and the hosts of the enemy around about them. And his servant says, alas, What shall we do? And he prayed, he said to the servant, they are more with us than with them. The servant couldn't see that, all he could see were the hosts. And so Elisha, he prayed, Lord open the young man's eyes.

And he then saw, he saw the chariots of fire, horses all the way round them, God's hosts, things that were not seen. with the natural eye. And God's people are to know this, they are to realise this. We live in a spiritual world and God's presence is everywhere. He is everywhere.

And we are to walk by faith, not by sight. The Apostle Paul, God's dear people, the first thing God gives them his faith. Faith is that which looks not on that which is seen. We think of the description of faith in Hebrews 11. Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

Not seen. So he's looking at those things. We look by faith at the things not seen. The third thing is that we are to view the things seen as temporal things, for the things which are seen are temporal. It ties in with what he said that these things are but for a moment. This is an important part for us to realise this. That which is seen is a temple. It will not last forever. It will not endure forever. Natural man, he sets his sights on things that are seen. He builds his dominions here below. But for God's people, the Lord said, this is not your rest. It is polluted.

When we come to die, all these things that are seen will not be seen anymore. We shall not see them at all. And we are to know this and really lay this to heart. And then the fourth one is that the things which are not seen are eternal. And we are to know that. that that which is the exceeding and eternal weight of glory is not seen by the natural eye, is seen by faith, and so real, so real as to move Noah to build an ark, so real as to move Moses to choose rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season. So real that it brings the Apostle Paul to look upon what he is going through and say this is but a light affliction.

Because God has appointed this, He's used this, He's using it to shape my character. He gave me this thorn in the flesh that I should not be lifted up in pride. When I wanted it taken away, he gave me grace. My grace is sufficient for thee. And where that grace worked, then he said, much rather will I then glory in my infirmities, that when I am weak, then am I strong. And he could see in his life how these things had been working for good. I wonder how many of us here can identify one or two, or maybe more, things in our lives, and so that bitter cup, that hard part, it did work for good.

Not temporal, not in natural things, but it humbled me. It made me see my sin. It made me see something that I hadn't seen before in the sufferings of the Lord Jesus Christ. It opened my eyes a little to the vanity and emptiness of time and brought me to look for things above.

And the benefit is realizing spiritual blessings, not natural ones. It's a great thing to make intercession one for another. When one is in hospital, when one is in a trial, to pray for them, yes, for their healing, but above all that it might work for their spiritual good, their spiritual blessing, that the Lord will use it for this which is eternal, that it won't be wasted, it won't be a thing that we've had to go through and that we've never been able to see, that the Lord has worked it for good, ye meant it for evil, But God meant it for good, says Joseph, clearly able to see. And it was quite a few years before he was able to see that, able to say it. It might be the same with us. But that should be our desire.

What is the Lord doing in our lives for our eternal good? And bound up with this is a beautiful token, an evidence of being a child of God. Sometimes it's very sweet to realise even though the chasing might be bitter, to realise this is a token of being a child of God.

And to realise that the Lord is not leaving us as a child left to itself, bringeth his mother to shame, but we have the reins, we have the Lord, using these things for our eternal good. Remember when first being called, first walking in the Way, and I proved several things did work in a temporal way for good. But then the first trial the Lord really gave me, brought into it and out of it, and there wasn't any temporal good. But when I discerned there was spiritual good and good for my soul, I still remember how it so humbled me, filled me with awe, filled me with thankfulness. that the Lord should have done this, not for any temple good, for my eternal good. And the sense of realisation of that is so comforting, so much to give assurance the Lord is our God and He is dealing with my soul.

When we read in Romans 8 verse 28, we know that all things work together for good to them that love God. for them that are called according to His purpose. That cannot be interpreted if we just look at the things that are seen. But when we think that this is working for our spiritual good, it's working for our eternal weight of glory, and it's those things that are not seen, but they're realized by the soul, they're realized by one whose eyes are open, that this is God's work, I am His child, and He's using these things in this sinful world, and me a sinner, for my eternal good, and one day I shall be with Him forever, and then there shall be no tribulation, then there shall be no affliction, the contrast there shall be so great. What a mercy to have this work here below, And have this to look forward to, when this says, John Newton, lisping, stammering tongue, lie silent in the grave, then with a more noble tongue I'll sing thy power to save. And may we have that same prospect and hope set before us. Amen.