Alright, let's open our Bibles
to 2 Corinthians chapter 1. 2 Corinthians chapter 1. I want to just read verse 9.
This is going to be our text. Verse 9. 2 Corinthians chapter 1 verse 9. But we had the sentence of death
in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in
God, which raiseth the dead." Now, have you ever suffered any
trouble so that you felt like there was just absolutely nothing
that you could do? The kind of trouble where you
just can't do anything about it. Some may be suffering that
kind of trouble now. Here's what I want us to get
from this message this morning. If we're a child of God, God
gives us the sentence of death in ourselves to teach us not
to trust in ourselves, but to trust in God. It gives us the
sentence of death in ourselves, not to trust in ourselves, to
trust in God. I've titled this, Blessed Sentence
of Death. Blessed Sentence of Death. Let's
go back up to verse 3 and just make a few comments before we
get to our outline. In verse 3 it 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 tribulation,
that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble
by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God. As believers
we ought to regard all our trouble as a great privilege given to
us from God. Because when He gives us trouble
and then He brings us to the end of ourselves and He shows
us that He is all our strength and that His grace is sufficient
for us, He's doing it so that we can speak from experience
to somebody, a fellow brother or sister who's in trouble that
we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble by the
comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted. So that's a great
privilege that God gives us in the trouble. Look at verse five.
For as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, as the sufferings
of Christ abound in us, so our consolation also aboundeth by
Christ. We're made to really know Christ,
really know Christ by tasting a little bit of the things that
he suffered. Our affliction is very light,
but we taste just a little bit of sufferings like he suffered. And then we get the spiritual
reality of the gospel down in our hearts. We get the truth
of it and experience of it to know that our doctrine is not
just a dead letter doctrine. Our salvation is real and God
is working in our lives and in our hearts. And then His consolation
always abounds toward us much more than our light affliction.
It seems like it's going to kill us when it comes on. It seems
like it's the worst thing we've ever faced, but the consolation
always abounds much more than the trial itself. Verse 6 says,
And whether we be afflicted, Now watch this, whether we be
afflicted, it's for your consolation and salvation. Now look at the
last part of the verse, or whether we be comforted, it's for your
consolation and salvation. Paul's speaking about his own
affliction and his comforts, and he's talking about those
afflictions and comforts of his fellow preachers. You ever hear
of pastors who come into some great trial, or their family,
their wives, their children, something like that, and it's
great suffering, it's great affliction for that pastor. Christ comforts
that pastor. He gives him strength. He teaches
him what we're talking about here by experience, that God's
grace is sufficient. And so doing that, pastor can
teach the congregation that God's given him to minister to, and
he can teach them because it's for their consolation and their
comfort that he does it. Just like Paul suffered for the
consolation and the comfort of those saints to whom he ministered.
Look down at verse 6 at the middle part there, which is effectual
in the enduring of the same sufferings which we also suffer. In other
words, if you're going to get this consolation, you're going
to get this comfort, we're going to get the reality of Christ's
abiding presence with us, then we're going to have to endure
this suffering. We're going to have to go through some trials.
We're going to have to suffer some things to experience this. One of my brethren here has suffered
for a long time with something that was burdensome to them.
And so recently I was telling them about something God taught
me in a trial that happened to me a long time ago. And I was
talking to them about it and God blessed it to their comfort.
He blessed them with it. And they responded to me and
they said, I'm so thankful and blessed to have you for my pastor.
And I thank God for that. You're just such a great comfort
to me. Well, when they wrote that to me, this scripture came
to mind. This scripture right here. Because
what it brought to my mind was, is it made me realize that the
trouble that I came into all those many years ago, God did
it, and he comforted me in that trial for the very purpose of
all these many years later, so I could comfort this one that
was in trouble now. And then to have that kind of
a thank you come back and to say thank you, I was comforted
all over again. It brought all of this to me. And none of this would have happened
for me personally had my fellow brother not suffered and had
I not suffered a long time ago. So it caused me to think about
it. It caused me to remember that. It caused me to have to
go back and really think about what the Lord taught me. And
then the Lord used that whole situation to bring it all back
to me. Thank you is needful. A thank you is very needful.
That's a needful thing for us to express thank you. It makes
us realize, just like that made me realize that God is bringing
glory to himself. That's what it is. You remember
how Paul said to the Corinthians, he said to them about providing
an offering, and he said, when you provide this, it's going
to redound to God's glory because of all the thanks that's going
to go back to Him. And so when somebody, the Lord
uses you to comfort one of your brethren, and they turn around
and tell you, thank you, it blesses you because not just simply because
they said thank you. It's nice to know that you're
appreciated for your labors and all that. That's always nice.
But it's it lets you know that that person was blessed of God
by and they thanking God for what, what, what happened. And
they're thanking you, but they're thinking they have thought they
have thanked God already for you. And so that that's a blessing
to you. Well, And the Lord did all that
through trial. He did it through my trial. He
did it through this person's trial. But none of that would
have came about had we not endured that, had we not suffered that.
So we have to suffer trials. We have to. This is how God makes
this gospel real in our hearts. Look at verse 7. And he says,
And our hope of you is steadfast, knowing that as you are partakers
of the suffering, so shall ye also be of the consolation. Our
hope that God's going to give this comfort to His child is
sure. There's just no doubt about it. And He's steadfast in it.
He will do this. As you partake of the suffering,
so you also shall partake of the consolation. And it's all
for the purpose of God receiving praise. It's for Him to receive
the glory. He's bringing glory to His own
name. And when you can give comfort to somebody, through the gospel,
through the word, through something that you have a similar experience,
do it. And when you're on the receiving
end of receiving this comfort, this word of encouragement, or
whatever, however else it's given, receive it. Receive it. We tend
to get very proud in the middle of a trial, and pride makes us
hard, and it makes us bitter, and we miss out on what the whole
meaning of the trial is about. Pride will make us separate ourselves
from hearing the gospel. Pride will make us separate ourselves
from our brethren. And the purpose of the trouble
that we come into if we're God's child and He brings us into it,
it's not to lift us up in pride. It's not to harden us in pride.
It's to humble us under God's hand. That's the purpose of it.
God resisted the proud but giveth grace to the humble. The Lord
is near unto them that are of a broken and a contrite spirit,
a broken heart, and save us such that we be of a contrite spirit.
Now look at this next. Paul gives a personal example
here in verse 8. 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, insomuch that we despaired
even of life. You see what a blessing that
is? That's a blessed place to be. We had the sentence of death
in ourselves. We despaired. We were pressed
down beyond strength. Why is that such a blessing?
Why is that a blessed place to be for a believer? Verse 9, but
we had the sentence of death in ourselves that we should not
trust in ourselves, but in God which raiseth the dead. Now I
want to look at these three divisions. First of all, the sentence of
death in our sins. Secondly, the purpose of God
toward us, which is that we should not trust in ourselves. And then
thirdly, we'll look at the purpose of God toward God, and that is
that we should trust in God who raised us to death. Alright?
2 Corinthians 1 verse 9. the sentence of death in ourselves.
We had the sentence of death in ourselves. We think we have
strength in ourselves. Sinners come forth into this
world and we're taught, we're taught and we learn and we grow
and we think, we grow up thinking we have some power, we have some
strength, we have some wisdom. And a believer thinks we have
strength. We think we have strength. We think we have wisdom and life
and so on. We get lifted up in pride, even
pride of grace. We get to thinking that we know
how to manage our own affairs better than somebody else manages
their affairs, and we'll start looking down on them. And there's
a number of other ways that we get too strong and too mighty
and too proud and too puffed up. So God graciously brings
us into a situation beyond our control. He brings us into a
situation totally, completely, thoroughly beyond our control.
And the first thing we do when He does that is we start trying
to fix it. We start trying to fix it. And
we choose some foolish, foolish ways to try to fix it. Sometimes
we will even separate ourselves from the gospel. Sometimes we
will separate ourselves from our dearest loved ones. from
our brethren. Sometimes we'll look to some
worldly pleasure, something that we can get some temporary comfort
from so that we can just put it out of our mind and try to
get over the pain that this trial and this affliction is causing
us. But if it's God's hand, if it's God's hand, if we're God's
child and it's God's hand causing us the trouble, we can try to
run all we want to. You know how sometimes you children
try to get out from under your hand? Well, we can run all we
want to, but we're not going to get out from under His hand.
He's got a big hand, a mighty big hand. Everywhere we're going
to run, God's there. Every time that we take our little
hands and we start trying to build us up some refuge and build
us up some way to fix it, God just tears the whole thing down
for us. And he just keeps on doing it
and keeps on doing it so he makes it so that we cannot find any
peace, any comfort, any deliverance, any way out of this situation,
out of this trial whatsoever by our own wisdom and our own
way. And we'll work hard, we'll scratch
and claw to do it, until He just finally brings us to the point
where we have the sentence of death in ourselves. Sometimes
it gets so bad, we even feel like we're spiritually dead. Sometimes we can't make His Word
speak to us. We'll go to it, we'll start reading
it, and we can't make it speak to us. We'll hear the preacher, he'll
say, seek Christ, seek him, seek Christ in his word. We can't
make ourselves do it. We can't make ourselves feel
any of the comfort and any of the consolation that we once
had in Christ. We can't make ourselves seek
mercy. We may have prayed through the
whole situation and the whole trial, but really and truly,
all we really have done is just gone through the motion and just
said words. Our heart wasn't in it, because
we're still trying to fix it. Sometimes it's like we've become
lost all over again. The surgery I had on my elbow
was very, very painful. I mean, it hurt really bad. But
it was needful. I had to have it done or I was
going to lose all the grip in my left hand. Well, this surgery
that God does in bringing the sentence of death on us, it's
very, very painful. But it's needful. It's very needful. It has to be done. It's for our
good and it's for God's glory. Now you listen to me. Listen
very carefully. If you're a child of God, I want
you to hear this now. If you're suffering from something,
if you're in a trial, you're in a situation, you're looking
at your life and you're thinking, I just don't know how I got here.
I don't know. I can't do anything about this.
I cannot fix this. There's nothing I can do. Well,
then you listen. Don't just let this go in one
ear and out the other. Listen. If you're a child of God, God
does this on purpose. God brings us to this place on
purpose. It's called the sentence of death
in ourselves, to where we can't fix it. This took place with
Paul, you remember, when he was in Asia, when they were in Ephesus,
and I believe it's the camp where he was thrown in, they were gonna
throw him into the pit, maybe they did, I think, with lions
or whatever, and he was, they wanted to kill him and everything
else, I mean, it was just a, he thought he was gonna die,
he really did. Well, that's the sentence of death. That's a description
of the sentence of death. Now secondly, let's consider
the purpose of God concerning us. Why he brings this on. Verse 9 says that we should not
trust in ourselves. That we should not trust in ourselves.
If we're God's child, God does this to make it so that we do
not trust in ourselves. He's teaching us. He's weaning
you and I from this world. He's weaning us from us. He's
teaching us not to trust us. That's what He's doing in all
these trials. Our salvation, both spiritual
and temporal, our salvation, spiritual and temporal, is of
the Lord, brethren. It's of the Lord. I sometimes
think we somehow more easily enter into
the fact that it's our spiritual salvation is all of Him because
we know we can't fix that. Or at least you that have been
taught grace know that. But we have a difficult to understand
our temporal salvation is of the Lord too. Alright, let's
look. God keeps His chosen love child
separated from self-trust by always keeping us in His hand.
He keeps us separated from self-trust by keeping us in His hand. We
were in His hand when God the Father chose us in Christ before
the world was made. We were in His hand then. That
same hand that Isaiah 40 says that He held the waters in the
hollow of His hand. That hand that He said the heavens
are a span, that right there is a span between His forefinger
and His thumb. Not that God has hands, but He's
given us an understanding of how big God's hand is. How big
His control over this world and us and all things is. It's big. He had us in His hand when He
chose us before the world began. And He entrusted us into the
hands of His own Son, God the Son. He entrusted us in His hands. And He became surety for us. If He loses us, brethren, and
doesn't bring us to God, then He's failed the Father.
That's not going to happen. That's just not going to happen.
He come, it's so important and it's so vital that He come and
fulfill everything He promised the Father. He came to this earth
and laid down His life for His children. He came to this earth
and redeemed us by shedding His own blood for us. And His hands
did all the work. His hands were in full control
when He had His hands nailed to the cross. His hand was ruling
everything in the whole work, in the whole operation. And now
He's risen to the right hand of the Father and all power in
heaven and earth has been given unto Him. And He's ruling and
reigning everything by His hand. And He's called God the Holy
Spirit and sent Him forth and we're in His hand. And He sent
Him forth to teach us. He brought the Gospel to us.
We didn't do that. We like to start thinking about
all the pathways and all the things, and we somehow want to
start trying to think we brought ourselves under the sound of
the gospel. He did that. He did that. The Spirit of God
regenerated us and gave us life. We didn't do that. We couldn't
have done that. He did that by His hand. The
Spirit taught us. He taught us the gospel, not
we ourselves. The Spirit of God guides us into
all truth, continually keeps guiding us into all truth. We
don't do that ourselves. The Spirit renews us and makes
the confidence of Christ abound in our hearts, so we have this
consolation in our hearts. We don't do that ourselves. If
you've been around, been called of God very long at all, been
a believer very long at all, you know that's true. Because
this is what I'm talking about when you brought in that sentence
of death. You can't make yourself even look up to God. You can't
make yourself call on Him. You can't make yourself see Him
in His Word. You believe this Gospel. Everything
I just said about what God has accomplished for us, you believe
this Gospel? Look over at 1 Peter 5. You believe
that you are saved eternally by the mighty hand of God and
not by the strength of your own hand. Do you believe that? Well,
then right now, right here, right where we are, right here, right
now in the trial that you are in, listen to this, 1 Peter 5,
6. Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God. that He may exalt you in due
time, casting all your care upon Him, for He careth for you."
Do you see that? If we really trust that we've
been in His hand from eternity, and that He's done all this work
by His hand, then He says, then submit yourself unto His mighty
hand. And He'll exalt you in due time.
What's it mean He'll exalt me in due time? Well, concerning
this trial right now, He'll lift you up out of this in His time. In due time. When He's fulfilled
His purpose in bringing you to trust Him alone and not trust
yourself. He will do that. He will do that. And then eventually He revives
our inner man and He strengthens us by His Spirit. We start crying
out for mercy. And we really pray. We went through
all the motions, but we didn't really pray before. Now we really
pray. He gives us a heart and we really
cry out to Him for mercy. And this might, this power of
prayer, it's not in us. It's not because you and I are
some kind of mighty prayer warrior. That's what they call them down
south, prayer warriors. It's not anything like that at
all. What it is is real prayers when you have the sentence of
death in yourself so that you cease trusting yourself and you
come to God confessing to God you're utterly nothing and totally
unable and you cast all your care in His hand to do with you
what He will. That's what really praying is
about. Because God alone is able to
save us from us. That's it. And our flesh is so
deceitful though, even after we've experienced this and he's
brought us back to trust him, then we'll end up doing it. We'll
end up saying things like, well, I'm not going to let that happen
again. I'm going to start watching. I'm going to be cautious. I'm
going to walk better. And I'm just, I'm not going to
get myself back into that situation again. And we start looking to
us. The flesh comes right back again.
We start looking to us. By all means, do those things. By all means, watch. By all means,
be cautious. But do it, not by looking to
ourselves, but looking to Christ. He's given it to us that we should
not trust in ourselves. And be on guard of this religious
world. This religious world plays on
that deceitful heart. In this religious world you hear
speaking of man's faith, man's hope, the love of the believer.
They focus on man getting it, on man sustaining it, on man
growing it, on man expressing it in his daily life. So the
poor sinner is always looking to himself. The Lord said, you'll
know them by their fruits. The men gather grapes of thorns
or figs of thistles. Believer, we're never going to
find the fruit of grace looking to this thorn tree called the
body of our flesh. It's just not going to happen.
We're going to have to look to Him. Look to Him. I have a bunch
of sermons finished and about three times that many started.
A bunch of them. And you would think I would be
able to just go to them and pick them up and take off and preach
them at any time. And I'll go to them, and I'll
look at them, and I'll read through them, and they're just this cold,
just dead letter on a page is all they are to me. Somebody
laughed at me one time, and they said because I spend all night
Saturday night into Sunday morning trying to prepare, and they made
fun of me like I was waiting till the last minute. But that's
not it at all. That's not it at all. It doesn't
have anything to do with that whatsoever. Each week, God forces
you to beg God for the message. He forces you to give the very
Word, forces you to ask Him to give the very Word that only
He can give, that only He knows is necessary for the hour, that
only He knows that His people need for that hour. And you ask
Him to make the Word alive in your own heart. You ask Him then
to deliver you to the firehouse. And then you ask Him to use you
to deliver the message. And then you ask Him to bless
the message to the hearts of those that hear it. Why? Why
does God not let it get any easier? Why does He do it like that?
that you might have the sentence of death in yourself, so that
you don't trust in yourself, so that you're constantly having
to ask God to do this. You're constantly seeing the
nothingness in you, and it constantly reminds me of you to whom I preach
and the need that's there for you, so that you're constantly,
constantly, constantly crying out to God, both for your own
heart and for the hearts of those you preach to. And somebody that's
never done it just don't have any idea. I preached for seven
years, preparing messages and going someplace and preaching
and getting in the car and going home when it was over with. And
that was pretty easy. And going back to work the following
Monday. But when you've got people you're
trying to pastor and minister to, and you know their trials
they're expressing to you, and you've got your own trials, and
you're trying to seek a word from God. and you got your own
infirmities and all these things. I mean, God puts you in a...
You ever take a dish rag and you put water in it and you just
wring it as hard as you can to get the water out of it? That's
what God does with you. That's how He gets the Word out
of you. But that's so that we don't trust
ourselves. Here's the last thing. I want to show you this. And
I'll be brave. Here's the purpose of God toward
Himself. that we might, verse 9, that
we might trust in God which raiseth the dead. There's absolutely
no better way for us to really learn, to really be brought to
believe God than for Him to raise us up inwardly, inwardly, and
give us, restore unto us the joy of His salvation after we
have become just dry bones, broken and scattered about. No better
way for us to learn God really is doing what He says He's doing,
that He really is saving us than for us to become dry, dry dust
and have to depend on God to raise us from the dead, to raise
us inwardly from the dead. There you are, you have the sentence
of death in yourself and you're just dry bones. That's all you
are, you're just dry bones. Just completely, thoroughly dry. You can't give yourself any moisture.
You can't do anything. You cannot do anything to give
yourself life. But God does what He showed Ezekiel.
Let me just read you some of this. Ezekiel said, Thus saith
the Lord God unto these bones, Behold, I'll cause breath to
enter into you, and you shall live. And He said, And then you
shall know I am the Lord. And you'll know I am the Lord.
And he said, so I prophesied, Ezekiel said, so I prophesied
as I was commanded. I preached as I was commanded.
And as I prophesied, there was a noise. And behold, a shaking,
and the bones came together, bone to his bone. Here we are together. How'd we get here? How'd we come
together? How did we get here? Each one
members one of another, bone joined together, his body. How
did we get here? I didn't bring us here. He brought
us here. And then he said, but there was
no breath in them. Then said he unto me, prophesy
unto the wind, prophesy, son of man, say to the wind, thus
saith the Lord God. And he told him, you know what
he told him to do? He told him, get up and preach the gospel.
He said, get up, preach thus saith the Lord. Get up, preach
what God said. And he says, preach thus saith
the Lord God, come from the four winds, O breath, breathe upon
these slain that they may live. So I prophesied as he commanded
me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood
up upon their feet an exceeding great army. You see, no man can
bring the dry bones together. And no man can bring breath of
life into the dry bones. You say, well, that's a picture
of us when we're regenerating. Yeah, it is. And it's a picture
of us when we become this dry, dusty bone, just scattered and
broken in all these trials too. He breathes the life in us. He
breathes into our hearts and gives us this word in our hearts.
He does that. He does that. I'd like to help,
but I can't raise you to life. But God can. And through His
Gospel, He draws us to, through His Gospel, the living Word breathes
life. He becomes the life in our hearts
and once again He comforts us and His comforts abound and they
console us and we really then enter in once again to the truth
that He really is life and He really is saving us. He has,
He is and He shall. And that's how we're brought
to eat and drink His flesh, drink His blood and eat His flesh and
have life in us. We can hear it preached, we can
understand it with our intellect, but we gotta be made to sweat,
we gotta be made to bleed, we gotta be made to suffer, we gotta
be made to taste the dust, we gotta be brought down to where
we live and find out what we really are and then have him
breathe his life into us to find out what he really means by eating
and breathing and living upon him. It's how He comforts us
in all our time of need. It's how He becomes our strength,
how He makes Himself our strength, how He proves to us His grace
is sufficient for us. It's how He makes us to know
His presence is with us. It's how He brings us to give
Him all the glory for making us to trust in God rather than
ourselves. All anybody's got to do is tell
me, start telling me about everything that they did in their salvation
and how much they keep doing for the Lord and how, I, I, I,
I, I, I, I. And all they're doing is, they
might as well be saying, God has not done one thing for me. That might as well be what they're
saying. Because this is how He brings
you to confess He's done it all. He brings us to nothingness.
And He does it Then we say with Paul, like verse 10 there, who
delivered us from so great a death and doth deliver in whom we trust,
he will yet deliver us. I don't know how to say it. It's
a paradox. But a sinner cannot know our
need of Christ. We cannot know our need of Christ.
And we cannot know Christ is all sufficiency for that need.
unless we have some feeling of it in our hearts. We have to. We have to be made to know that
need in our hearts. And yet, we don't ever, ever
trust any of our feelings. So, this feeling that's true,
this feeling that really is of God, that really is true, is
the feeling that makes us to see there's nothing in us worth
trusting. and forces us to cast all our
care upon Him. That's what true grace does. That's when it's really been
worked in the heart. That's when it happens. And a
believer is a complete and thorough paradox. I know that the young
people especially come and This world's trying to make you think
that everything's so happy and joyful and everybody in music
loves one another. They hate one another. I've been
in the business. I can tell you, they hate one
another. Behind the scenes, the other one is just stealing their
record sales. That's all it is. And they don't
like each other. They really don't. They sit beside each other
for you to see them and clap and act like they love each other
and get behind one another's back and talk about each other
like they're scum. They don't like each other. But
you hear us talking about this pain and the suffering that we
go through. And you think, well, why in the
world would I want to believe on the Lord? I don't want to have
any part of that. That just sounds like a bunch of pain and suffering.
I know it does sound like that, but the believers are paradoxed
because when we're nothing, Christ is all. And when we're mourning,
we're full of joy in Christ. We're just rejoicing in Him.
And when we're weak, Then we're strong. I mean, you just can't
know it till you just know it. So brethren, pray for one another.
Comfort one another with the comfort wherewith you are comforted
of Christ. That's like I said there, when
that experience just came to me of years ago. And I realized,
for nothing else, God did that for me back then, for right now. So I could just express this
to somebody that's hurting right now in a similar situation. Comfort
them with the comfort wherewith Christ has comforted you. And
by His wise working, God brings many thanksgivings to Himself.
Don't ever be afraid to say, thank you, thank you. He does
it for His grace towards us. That's what we're thanking Him
for, for His grace towards us. And He does it by making our
brethren, who He used to minister His grace to our hearts, thank
God for us. That's what Paul said. That's
an amazing God. that can use a trial and a pain
and suffering to bring us to great joy and to trust Him alone
and to bring all this praise and glory to His name. He does
it for this reason, verse 9. We have the sentence of death
in ourselves that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God. Amen.