2 Corinthians chapter 1. The lesson this morning is trusting
in the deliverer. To be saved is to be delivered. Delivered. Delivered as a child
from its mother's womb into the loving arms of its father. Delivered. Delivered as a pardoned criminal
from a sure and certain doom. Delivered. Delivered as one brought
to the Savior. Delivered. You remember the man
they brought out, couldn't get through to Christ for the press,
and they went up on the roof and cut a hole in the roof and
lowered the man down. He was delivered. Delivered as one banished into
obscurity, but delivered into full citizenship with the household
of God. Delivered daily from the temptations
of this world and snares of the devil. Lead us not into temptation. That's how the Lord gave us that
outline to pray. He said, lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil, that is, from the evil one. Deliver
us. Salvation is deliverance. its
deliverance. Now let's read our text here
in 2 Corinthians 1 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 as we despaired
even of life. Now Paul wanted the Corinthians
to know by his own mouth what had befallen him in his journey
to Asia. And he wanted them to know this
for three reasons. First, he wanted to encourage
them by his own deliverance to persuade them to trust in God
who enabled him to overcome these obstacles. He wanted to persuade
them by his own deliverance. He wanted to tell them firsthand
of what God had done for him when he was in Asia and what
trouble he'd been through and what a great deliverer that God
is who caused him to overcome these great difficulties. Secondly,
he wanted them to hear this testimony firsthand because of the false
apostles who were quick to spread rumors about him. distort the
truth and make false accusations concerning his sincerity and
concerning his love for the church. You see, Paul had told them when
we left off in 1 Corinthians, he told them that he was going
to be back and see them in just a few months and hope to winter
with them. Well, it wasn't a few months,
it was three years before he got back. But when we say things,
you know, when we get done building this church up here, we want
to have a conference. We'd like to have a dedication
service and have several preachers down and have a pretty good-sized
conference up here. But I don't know what's going
to happen between now and then, you see. You see what I'm saying? And this is what Paul, in his
heart, in his mind, looking at everything that was around him,
he saw no reason why he wouldn't be able to come and visit with
these people in just a few months. And he loved them, and his heart
was there, and he wanted to be there. But things happened, and
he couldn't be there. And nearly three years had gone
by. And these false apostles were
telling him, see, I told you. I told you he wasn't going to
be here, didn't I? I told you he wasn't sincere. He just wanted
your money. He just wanted your support. That's all he was after. He could
care less about you. And this is why Paul said, I
want to tell you by my own mouth what happened because of these
false apostles. Now, we're never really told
what the trouble was except to say it was severe. And most of,
and I categorize men, maybe I shouldn't do that, but most of the better
interpreters of the Word of God that I read, most of them that
I have the most confidence in, all agree that it was no one
thing, that it was a lot of things that happened to him. And if
you go back in the Book of Acts, and there it is, there's the
account of it, as it happened, you can pick up on all these
different things. But Paul uses the strongest expressions
to emphasize the severity of the trouble that befell him in
Asia. He said he was pressed beyond
measure. No measurement, no words, he
said, could I use to describe what a pressing thing this was,
what trouble this was. He said, I don't even know how
to describe it to you. It was beyond measure, and it
was above strength. It's not due to me. Oh, man,
he's a strong-willed man. Maybe he is, but he ain't strong
enough. He ain't strong enough. It was
above strength, and yet grace overcome. Now, brethren, most
things concerning the ministry are beyond our ability. Totally
beyond it. Totally beyond it. Now we can
give to support it. Those are things we can do. We
can give to support it. We can sacrifice our time to
it. We can do that. We can even suffer
persecution because of it. There's lots of things that we
can do that we do have the ability to do. We can study our language. Brother Mahan told boys one time,
he said, bad language can offend men,
but good language won't offend them. Good language, people get,
he's just ignorant. One guy wrote a letter to me
after he heard me preach here and said that preacher don't
even, well he actually wrote it to the church and he was talking
about me and he said he don't even know how to conjugate a
verb. Well, I say that to my own ignorance. Maybe I don't.
Maybe I don't. But I'm not trying to conjugate
verbs up here. I'm trying to tell you the truth.
And I study our language. And believe me, I'm a lot better
off with the language today than I was 30 years ago. I do give
time. And we can do that. We can study
our language. We can study our Bibles. We can
study our doctrines. But there's forces at work against
which we are no match. You're no match for them. There's
principalities and powers and rulers of the darkness of this
world who never sleep. They go 24-7. They never sleep. And no one is beyond their reach,
and there's no end to the trouble that they can stir up. In Matthew
chapter 12, our Lord gave a parable about a man And what this parable
was about was about men who make professions of faith and decide
to turn over a new leaf and clean up their life. And he gave this
parable about a man with an unclean spirit that was in him. He had
an unclean spirit. He was possessed by satanic forces. And one day that spirit said,
well, I think I'll just go out for a while. And so he went out. He went out. Nobody forced him
out. Nobody beat him out. He just
went out. He wanted to go out, he went
out. But he walked outside through dry places and there was nowhere
out there to rest. And meanwhile, the spirit being
gone, that man said, well, I know what I'll do. I'm going to clean
up my house. And man, he got out the bucket and the soap and
he scrubbed the floors and he washed the windows and he Took
the broom and cleaned down the cobwebs. Man, he cleaned that
thing up. Cleaned that thing up and things
went good for a little while. And one day that spirit said,
I know what I'm going to do. I'm going back to, now listen,
my house. It was always his house. He just
went out for a while. I'm going back to my house. And
it said he not only went back, and when he went back he found
it garnished and clean. And he said he took seven other
spirits with him when he went back. More wicked than him. And the
last end of that man was worse than the first. You hear what
I'm saying? There's satanic forces at work
beyond your comprehension. totally beyond your comprehension.
And nobody is beyond their reach. And there is just no end to the
trouble that they can stir up. Natural men are influenced by
these things, influenced by these satanic forces. And natural men
are influenced by false religion and troubled consciences. And
it causes them to make professions of faith and clean up their dirty
souls. And when they do, they're just
making it more fitting for the demons who already possessed
it. Demonic forces are not anti-religious. They're anti-Christ. Now you
think about what I just said. They're not anti-religious. They're
anti-Christ. And Paul tells believers to put
on the whole armor of God. Why? That you may be able to
stand against the wiles of the devil. For we wrestle not against
flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers,
against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual
wickedness in high places. That's Ephesians chapter 6, verses
11 and 12. My generation thinks that demonic
forces are figments of men's imaginations who grew up in the
dark ages. That's what they think. They
think these demonic forces, I see movies about them, I see projections
from men's evil hearts about these things, and it's just a
figment of your imagination. It's just something to look at
and laugh at. But I tell you, upon the authority
of the Word of God, that these things are real. that they're
presently active, and that they're effectually deceiving the multitudes,
even as I speak to you this morning. Paul said, if our gospel be hid,
it's hid to them that are lost, in whom the God of this world
hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light
of the glorious gospel of Christ should shine unto them. And those
who deny this truth give strong evidence that they're under that
very influence of which I'm telling you this morning. Our ministry is above our natural
ability. because we're dealing with forces,
invisible, powerful, influential forces beyond our comprehension. You think of the things that
those men did to Paul. And the apostle Paul was a man
of God. He was a man of peace. He was
not an immoral man. He was a very moral man. He preached
that believers should be honest in all their dealings. He preached
that believers need to abstain from some of the things that
this world just indulges in to no end. He wasn't an immoral
man. He didn't run around trying to
pick fights with people. He tried to preach Christ to
people, and he did. And they hated him. They despised
him. They stoned him. They beat him. There's no end to the things
that they did against this man. You think there's not satanic
forces at work in this world? And then secondly, we're pressed
beyond measure and above our ability because man has fallen
depraved and ignorant. The reason why man is such an
easy target for demonic forces is because he is spiritually
depraved. Turn with me to John chapter
3. I could give you countless examples
of this in the Scripture. Here is one, the Sadducees. Just
hold your place there in John chapter 3. The Sadducees came
to our Lord one day, and the Pharisees with them. but in particular,
the Sadducees. And they said, Master, supposing
a woman was married and her husband died. And he went up to heaven. He was a good man. He was a believing
man. He went up to glory. And his brother, under the law,
took this woman to be his wife to raise up seed to his dead
brother under the Mosaic Law. And so he did, but that husband
died also. And then she married a third
time, and finally they all died. Whose wife will she be in the
resurrection? Now, why did I give you that
example? Because I'm trying to talk to you about the depravity
of man and his ignorance and blindness. Our Lord said, you
do err not knowing the Scriptures. You don't know. You're ignorant.
That's what the Lord said. Nobody but an ignorant man would
ask that of the Master. This whole book is written of
me. And you're asking me. You're
trying to trick me and trap me with these things. You're ignorant.
You're ignorant. My friend, the reason your children
can sit here today and listen to me preach the gospel and not
be terrorized in their soul is because of their depravity. because
of their depravity. When you witness to your neighbors,
and you sit down with them, and you open this book, and you show
them in this book what it says, and you point them to the scriptures,
and they look at them, and they read the scriptures, and they
say, well, that's just your interpretation. It's because they're depraved. Because they're depraved. There's
none that understand it. Isn't that right? But we know
the Son of God has come and given to us an understanding. We can
understand these things. Natural men, they receive not
the things of the Spirit of God because they are foolishness
to them. Neither can they know them because they are spiritually
discerned. They are ignorant. A sane man would cast himself
on the mercy of God. Wouldn't he? He cast himself
on the mercy of God. A sane man would seek the Lord.
A sane man would hang on every word a preacher had to say. But
a depraved sinner will say, with that bunch on Mars Hill, well,
that was interesting. Maybe we'll hear you again someday.
That's depravity. That's depravity. And the reason
men and women are not moved, not stirred in their souls, not
broken in their hearts, is because they're spiritually depraved.
Now listen to what this says. John 3, verse 18. He that believeth on Him, that
is Christ, is not condemned. He is not condemned. He is justified.
He is sanctified. He is one with God. He is not
condemned. But, he that believeth not, now
watch this, is condemned already. He's already condemned. "...because
he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God."
Verse 19, and this is the condemnation. He's condemned already. Here's
the condemnation, that light come into the world, and men
love darkness rather than light. There's the condemnation. Man
fell in the garden, through Adam sin entered, and death passed,
and in Adam all died. Now let me tell you something.
You can make a child or even a stranger to memorize and to
adhere to the doctrine of grace, but you can't make him believe
it. Can't make him believe it. You
can't make him rejoice in it, and you can't make him rest his
soul upon it. You can catechize children, but
you can But you can't make that child bow to Christ. You can't make him bow. I tell
you, in the service, they used to, especially in boot camp,
they'd get right up in your face and just scream at you and call
you names. You just stood there and took
it. And I bowed to him on the outside, but buddy on the inside,
I was slit in his throat. You can teach a child doctrine,
but you can't make them bow. You can't make them bow. They'll
do it because you told them to do it. But you can't make them
bow. You can't make them submit themselves
to God's ambassadors. It takes an act of God. This
is what I'm telling you. It takes an act of God. It takes
a new birth. It requires the powerful moving
and presence of the Holy Ghost. All right, let's go back to our
text now, 2 Corinthians 1, verse 9. Paul said, we have the sentence
of death in ourselves that we should not trust in ourselves,
but in God which raiseth the dead. We have this treasure,
he said, in earthen vessels that the excellency of the power may
be of God and not of us. That's 2 Corinthians 4, verse
7. God's people are saved and given
the gift of faith as they hear the gospel at the hand of God's
chosen ambassador, yet it's equally true that no man will ever hear
anything, anything until the Holy Ghost attends that preaching
with His presence and power. And I know your children are
privileged above others because they're being raised by believing
parents and they're brought to hear the gospel every week of
their young lives. I'm going to tell you something.
Israel had a great advantage too. They had a great advantage. They heard the Gospel. Paul said
the same as you did. But it didn't profit them not
being mixed with faith in them that heard it. He tells us in Romans chapter
2 and 3 that they had great advantage over the Gentiles. but it didn't
profit him anything because he had already before proved that
both Jews and Gentiles were under sin. God's elect receive Christ
because they're given the right and privilege to believe on Him
as they're born of God. That's what John said. Paul said
he was pressed beyond measure above strength so much that he
despaired for his life. And truly his life had been laid
on the line. Men under the influence of false
religion and demonic power are capable of causing great harm
to God's elect. Paul had suffered at the hands
of Demetrius while he was in Asia and all his cohorts at Ephesus. He fought against beasts, whether
real or spiritual. He suffered at the hands of the
Jews in Iconium, the Jews stirring up the Gentile proselytes against
him, and they took him out and stoned him. I am not talking
about picking up gravels and hitting you and bruising you.
I am talking about rocks this big around. They went out and
stoned him. And they carried him out supposing
that he was dead outside the city and threw him in the ditch.
That is what Paul is talking about. And he is telling these
people, I am not away from you because I did not seek to be
here. I was away from you suffering
great harm for the gospel that I preach. And it took a while. It took
a while to recover. And God's my Deliverer. He suffered
at the hands of these Jews and these men that hated God. Now, men and women, they don't
kill God's ambassadors today. But nevertheless, they persecute
them. They'll persecute them as far
as they can go. Just as far as they can go. But mostly, it's
by false accusations and slander. Paul said, we had the sentence
of death in ourselves that we should not trust in ourselves,
but in God, which raised us to the dead. Now, watch this. Who
delivered us from so great a death. What death is he talking about?
Well, yeah, he's talking about that death when they stoned him
and took him out there and he was laying out there right on
the brink of death. He's talking about that. But
he's talking about far more than that. He's talking about that
spiritual death. We had the sentence of death
in us. You think about that. You unbelieving children here
this morning, you had the sentence of death in yourself. I can't
hammer that home strong enough. Maybe God be pleased to reveal
it to you. If He does, you'll get interested
in what I'm saying, because there's no mercy anywhere else. There's
no hope anywhere else. It's all of God, none of man. Oh, I tell you, when I think
of the absolute, total depravity of man by nature, children of
wrath, even as others, when I think on the forces at work in this
world, and the multitudes influenced by their power. And I know, as
John did, that we are of God and the whole world of life and
wickedness. What of our children? What of our loved ones? What
of those that we've known from childhood, we went to school
with, we played in the yard with? What of them? My friend, that's
why we preach, and that's why we suffer persecution, because
we know there is a Deliverer who sits on the throne, who hath
delivered us. Isn't that what that says in
that next verse? Who hath delivered us from so great a death, that's
what depravity is, it's death, it's spiritual death. And we're
circumcised, listen to this, circumcised with the circumcision
not made with hands and putting off the body of the sins of the
flesh by the circumcision of Christ. Buried with Him in baptism
wherein also you're risen with Him through the faith of the
operation of God who has raised Him from the dead. He delivered
us from so great a death. Now listen to this, and doth
deliver. I don't know about you, He's
still delivering me. I hear people talk about this
thing like it happened way back yonder. He's still delivering
me. Every day. Every day. I fall a thousand
times a day. Who doth deliver? Who doth deliver? In whom? Now listen to this.
We trust that He'll yet deliver us. I've got some things yet to face
that I haven't faced up to now. I've got a death to die. Huh? I'm going to be carried off into
the presence of God. And if He gives us such a deliverance
over these great things, shall He not also give us daily deliverance? Things are the way they are,
Paul said. so that we don't trust in ourselves,
but in God which raises the dead.