2 Corinthians chapter 1. What I've been laboring to do
in these opening verses is to teach you and to remind myself
to slow down when we're reading the Scriptures. Just slow down. It's not by volume. It's not
the volume of what you read. Any trinket in the treasures
of this book It's just overwhelming. It's beyond your comprehension.
And we just hope to get a glimpse at it. And when you're reading
the Scriptures, just slow down. Slow down. And take those things
and chew them and look at them and get the full benefit of them. Just consider what's being said. In all Paul's epistles, He first
turns our hearts and minds upon the treasures which God has bestowed
upon His people. That's the very first thing He
does. Before He gets in here and begins to rebuke and correct
and establish and do all these things for which this letter
was written, the very first thing He does is to remind you of what
God has already done for His people. He brings to our minds the infinite
grace of God. That's how He opens this thing.
Grace and peace be unto you. All of His epistles, they all
contain that in the very first part of it. And He brings that
to our minds, the infinite grace of God, free, undeserved, unmerited
grace, amazing grace, marvelous grace, effectual grace. And mercy. He talks about mercy. Opens the letter that way. Pointing us back to that grace.
That infinite grace. Amazing grace. And mercy. He talks about mercy. Somebody
said grace is God giving to us what we do not deserve. Mercy
is God's not giving to us what we do deserve. Grace. Mercy. When the gospel revelation of
Christ burst forth in your own mind and heart, it was not by
works of righteousness, which we've done. That's not how it
came about. Titus 3, 5, but according to
His mercy, He saved us by the washing of regeneration and the
renewing of the Holy Ghost. Now in our last lesson, we looked
at the blessing of God as our Father. I know in this day they
preach the universal fatherhood of God. I've heard that and it
just turns my stomach. Can you imagine God the Father,
if He's Father of every man, sending His Son for which He's
purposed all blessings, from whom He'd love for all eternity,
sending Him to You can't even imagine that. You can't even
imagine doing that to one of your own children, let alone
for God to do that to the object of His love. There is no universal
fatherhood of God. God is the Father. He is our
God and Father as He is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. And
He cannot be the Father of many sons without the person and work
of His only begotten Son. In Ephesians chapter 1, another
one of Paul's epistles, he says in verse 5, "...having predestinated
us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ unto Himself
according to the good pleasure of His will." That's how we got
to be sons. Verse 11, "...in whom also Talking
about in Christ, this Christ who was purposed of God to gather
all things unto himself in the end of time. It said, in whom
also we have obtained an inheritance being predestinated according
to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel
of his own will. And then in Romans 8, verse 29,
it said, for whom He did foreknow, He also did predestinate to be
conformed to the image of His Son, that He, that is His Son,
might be the firstborn among many brethren. And whom He did
predestinate, them He called. Whom He called, He justified.
Whom He justified, He glorified. What am I saying in all this?
I'm saying, beloved, when you pray our Father, our Father,
you think on Him as the wellspring. He's the wellspring. The eternal
source of all blessings. James said, every good gift and
every perfect gift is from above and cometh down from the Father
of lights. He's the wellspring. When we
pray our Father, we need to turn our minds and hearts to that
fact. This is the source. This is the
source. God is our Father, and as our
Father, He's provided us with an inheritance. And then He's
made us meet to inherit the inheritance. Made us meet to inherit the blessings. He's enabled us and gave to us
the right and privilege to become sons of God. And as such, Paul gives to him
this title, the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort. Now
with these things fresh in our minds, let's look at verse 4.
2 Corinthians 1, verse 4. Now he's already talked about
the fatherhood of God. He's already talked about this
grace and mercy and peace. Now watch where he's going here.
He's the God of all comfort. who comforteth us in all our
tribulation." That word is trouble. "...in all our tribulation, that
we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble by the
comfort with which we ourselves are comforted of God." Now, the
lesson this morning is comfort to troubled sinners. That's what
Paul is talking about. Comfort to troubled sinners. And the lesson begins with the
God of all comfort. Verse 4 of our text begins with
the word, who, who, which is in reference to the God of all
comfort. Now my friend, you can find all
sorts of comfort when you're going through troubled times.
Sometimes a little money. It gives a little comfort, don't
it? You're hurting for money, you've got to have this, this
thing blindsided you, this event or circumstance, whatever it
is. You know, a little money helps. It goes a long way. Sometimes
you just need somebody to listen. You just need to vent a little
bit. And that's a hard thing. Some
of you believers that have been at this for a while, you know
how hard this is. You've got to distinguish the
difference when somebody is asking you for help and when they just
want to vent. If they just vent and just listen, don't say nothing,
just listen. If they ask you for help, then
that's another thing. All of these things we can find.
Sometimes a little food is all we need. A little food. A little
help. Maybe a place to stay. Little
simple things that we need. And when you're in trouble, whatever
that trouble is, there's lots of things that you can turn to
that will give you some help. But the help's only temporary.
You eat, you have to eat again. You drink, you have to drink
again. You spend the money, you have to have more money. You
know, it's just temporary. It's just a temporary fix. But
not so with the God of all comfort. He's the God of all comfort. It's kind of like a wound. When
you first inflict it, smack your thumb with a hammer. What are
you going to do? Are you just going to stand there
and look at it? No, you're going to grab that thumb. And you don't
want any further harm coming to it. You're going to protect
it. You're going to grab it. And then you're going to think
about it. And then you're going to start
seeking something a little bit more permanent. And you're going
to start looking for that bomb maybe to put on there, that salve
or whatever it is. And you might have to have it
closed up a little bit and bound up. And you start looking for
more permanent solutions to the problem. And that's the way it
is in all these troubles, whatever that trouble is. When we've thought
about it, when we've suffered a little and we begin to think
on it, It's the God of all comfort. That's your permanent source.
That's your permanent source of comfort. That's where you're
going to go. When we go through trouble, and
man is of a few days and full of trouble, we first seek to
hide it, to somehow isolate ourselves from it. And then we begin to
seek some comfort from those we know and love. Get a little
sympathy. Get a little understanding, maybe
a word of comfort. And all of these things are good
things, but all real comfort comes to God's children from
the God of all comfort. Look at the Savior. This is the God of all comfort
as sent Him. And now He's appeared here, He's
done His work, He's accomplished that redemptive will of God,
and He's ascended back to the right hand of God. But He said,
if I go away, I'm going to send to you who? The Comforter. The Comforter. And He's going
to comfort you. How's He going to comfort you?
He's going to take the things of mine, Christ said, and He's
going to show them to you. He's going to show them to you.
And so look at the Savior. Here He is. He's appeared. He's
on this earth. He's accomplishing the will of
God. He is working out for His people a righteousness. He is
going to the cross to die for their sins. He is a preacher. He is preaching the gospel. He
is going. He knows where God's elect are. And He goes to them. He preaches
to them. They are converted under His ministry. Look at the Savior
with His elect, healing all their infirmities. We are talking about
the God of all comfort now. And I am trying to show you this
permanent comfort comes through His Son, but the source is God
the Father. And He, just see Him with His
elect, healing all their infirmities, opening their hearts to understand
the Scriptures, delivering them from the possession of demonic
influences, opening the doors of their imprisonment, taking
off the chains of their bondage, feeding the hungry soul, taking
away their blindness, raising them from spiritual death, assigning
for them a caretaker as he did for his mother, defending chosen sinners as he
did the young prostitute cast at his feet, giving strength
to the hopeless as he did to the man at the Pool of Bethesda,
intervening in the lives of chosen sinners as he did with the woman
at the well. And on and on it goes. Calming
the troubled sea. Feeding the multitude. He's the
God of all comfort. All comfort. And what of your
own experience? What about that? Listen to this. Who comforteth us, see it there
in the verse? Who comforteth us in all our
tribulations. What about our own experience?
Paul was not some product of a preacher factory who has never
experienced the grace of God. He's experienced it. He knows
what sin is. God showed it to him. He knows
what mercy is. God was merciful to him. He knows
what grace is. Grace is what brought the truth
to him. Grace is what saved him. Grace
is what regenerated him. Grace is what keeps him going.
He knew what grace was and mercy. He experienced the conviction
of sin. Oh, give me a man who's experienced
the conviction of sin. He can talk about it. He can
talk about it. Boy, he can read your heart.
Did you know that? Because your heart and my heart
are the same. It's the same. And that man who's experienced
sin, the conviction of sin, he knows what sin is. He can reach
the hearts of his hearers. They know what this man is saying.
And they know it by the Word of God. He saw and felt the terror of
it, the power of it, the rule of it, and the consequence of
it, and cried, O wretched man that I am, not that I used to
be, for I got saved. No, O wretched man that I am
right now, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?
And not just at the beginning, but all through his ministry,
trouble, persecution, rejection, incarceration, shipwreck. Somebody
said the only mission boards Paul knew anything about was
the ones he floated ashore on. That's the mission boards. He
had a personal thorn in the flesh. We don't know what it is, but
it was so severe that he prayed his heart out to God to take
that thorn in the flesh away. And God said, My grace is sufficient.
It's sufficient. And what about us? Have we experienced
God's mercy and grace? Has God the Holy Spirit revealed
our malady to us? You see, that's why people have
no appetite. That's why people don't want
to come. That's why people get up in the morning and say, well,
you know, I'm kind of tired and I'm kind of in this movie right
now. I think I'll just stay here this Sunday. And they ain't got
no appetite. No appetite. They've got no need.
I tell you, when that leper, his flesh was falling off. He
was going to die any day. He had to wear a rag over his
face. You couldn't even look at him
for all of the pus and the flesh falling off. And he had that
rag and he had to cry unclean, unclean everywhere he went. There
was no question in his mind, the only one who could do him
any good was Christ. He had to be there. He had to
be there. And he cast himself down at his
feet. And the Lord said, What would you have me to do?" He
said, if you will, if you will, not if I will, if He will, you
can make me whole. You can make me whole. Do you know anything about that?
Do you see what Paul is saying? Fallen sinners, sinners by birth,
sinners by choice, sinners by practice, disease sinners, paralyzed
sinners, demon-possessed sinners, condemned sinners, sinners under
the curse of God, enemies of God, despisers of Christ. By nature, the children of wrath,
even as others, who comforteth us. He's the only one who can. He's the only one who can. Do you know what it is to be
a hopeless, helpless, hell-deserving sinner? Do you know to some degree
what it is to so clearly see your sins as to agree with God
that He ought to send you to hell? Who comforteth us in all our
trouble. And then thirdly, what's this?
That. That. See that little word there?
That. That means in order that we may
be able to comfort them which are in any trouble. My wife,
Nathan Whitehead, have experienced brain cancer. I know what it
is, and they know what it is. And they know it's life-threatening.
They know its effects. They've experienced the pain.
They've experienced the grief. And they've been comforted by
those who know how to deal with it. Now, nobody can comfort another
with this disease like they can. You know, I've never had it.
And I sit over in the operating room and lots of times I'm just
there for hours and somebody's sitting there and we'll strike
up a conversation. But when it comes to their cancer,
they ain't got much to say to me. But now she could be sitting
there and they start talking about cancer and they talk. They
talk for 15 minutes. I've read about it. I read about it. I got the book
on it and I read it front to back. I've studied what these
doctors have written about it and probably know more about
it intellectually than she does. I know Luke does. You did the
same thing for Nathan. Intellectually, you probably
know more about his cancer than he does. But you haven't experienced
it. You see the difference? And this
is what it is. You go to some seminary somewhere,
you go lock yourself in a corner and you learn intellectually,
you learn the gospel and you learn all of these things, but
you haven't experienced anything. And what Paul is telling them
is that the God of all comfort had comforted him. Comforted
him in his conviction of sin. Comforted him in his lack of
righteousness. Comforted him in all these areas. Showed him that he sat on the
throne. Showed him by his own experience and by his own life
that deliverance that only God can give. Loosed those shackles
off his feet. Gave him a hymn to sing in the
middle of that prison in the middle of the night. Gave him
these things. He comforted him. And he did
it, Paul said, that I might be able to comfort somebody else
that's going through the same thing. experiencing the comfort of God
in the salvation of our souls by the comfort given to us by
our Heavenly Father, making His purpose made known to us, making
our Redeemer made known unto us, making His glory made known
unto us, putting upon our wounds that sacred balm of Gilead, who
comforteth us, Paul said. Did you ever talk to anybody
that doubted their salvation? I mean really doubted their salvation. Doubted their calling. Doubted
their salvation. Just had no assurance at all. And you come to them for comfort.
You're going through a trial and you come to them for comfort.
And you go away worse than you were when you came. He can't
comfort. He just can't do it. He can't
comfort. Oh, give me a man who's been
there. Boy, you can just talk about conviction of sin to another
who has been through it and he lights up all over. I know exactly
what you are talking about. Now watch this. 2 Corinthians
1 verse 4, the last line of the verse. By the comfort wherewith
we ourselves are comforted of God. For as the sufferings of
Christ abound in us, so our consolation. It also aboundeth by Christ. And whether we be afflicted,
it's for your consolation and salvation. Because if I've never been stricken, if
I've never been tested, if I've never been through trials, how
in the world can I come for jail? And then it goes on, verse 6,
and whether we be afflicted, it's for your consolation and
salvation. which is effectual in the enduring
of the same sufferings which we also suffer. Or whether we
be comforted, it's for your consolation and salvation. And our hope of
you is steadfast, knowing that as you are partakers of the suffering,
so shall you be also of the consolation." Paul said, that's my hope. That's
my hope. Our Lord said this to His disciples. John 16, 33. These things have
I spoken unto you, that you might have peace in the world. That's where we are. In the world
you shall have tribulation, but be of good cheer. I've overcome
the world. This is the comfort wherewith
we ourselves are comforted. God found this old sinner. This
one right here. Found him on the broad road.
Right out there on the broad road. Boy, it's a broad road.
Everybody. I was amazed. I was raised in
this little old church. It wasn't very big. Probably
had about this size, really. About that many people. I just didn't think there was
anybody else. I thought that was it. And, man, I got a little
older and began to date and found out, oh, you go down to this
church. And I went down there and sat down with her and maybe
listened. Well, they preach the same thing.
They are. They preach the same thing. Come
down to the front, shake hands with the preacher, join the church,
be baptized. They preach the same thing. Got
a little older and got me a guitar and began to play some music
and sing in the churches. Began to travel around. Go into
a Methodist church. Go over here into a Baptist church.
Go over here into a Nazarene church. They're all preaching
the same thing. Come down to the front. Accept Jesus as your
personal Savior. Do this. Do that. You're all
fixed up. Now you're saved. You got saved. In me you might have peace."
That's what our Lord said. And those who have been down
that broad road, and this sinner has, that's where he found me,
on that broad road to destruction. He found me dead in trespasses
and sins. He found me cursed under the
law. What does that mean? That means that I don't have
the nature to obey it, but God demands my obedience to it. That's
a curse, isn't it? There's the curse. You can't
do it. You can't do it. Whether you want to or whether
you don't, you can't do it. You can't keep that law. But
yet it's demanded of you to keep it. But what God demands from
His people, He provides. He provides. Found me on the broad road, running
headlong into hell. Without any covenant of promise.
I didn't know anything about a covenant. Did you? I didn't
know there was covenants. I didn't know what a covenant
was. An alien from the commonwealth of Israel. Read about Israel.
Read about the blessing. Read about the promises of God.
Everything God had to say in the Old Testament was to those
Jews. To those Jews. To those Jews.
But I'm not a Jew. I'm not a Jew. And I didn't know
anything about a spiritual Jew. But the God of all comfort revealed
to this suffering sinner that in Christ I had peace. In Christ
I have a righteousness. In Christ my sins are put away.
In Christ I have one who sits on the throne, whoever liveth
to make intercession for me. In Christ I have The Lord, who
reigns over all things, arranges the very providence that I live
and work out down here. In Him, in Christ, God hath made
Him to be unto us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. He is life and light and all
things. Long to find a suffering sinner
somewhere. I can't find one. I just can't
find one. Oh, we ain't always done the
right thing, but now we don't hate God. I can't find a sinner. Can't find one. You look for
one. See if you can find one. If you
can find one, I got some good news for him. If you can find
me a sinner. I got good news. Christ was appointed
on His behalf. He came into this world to save
sinners. That's what He said. Those old
Pharisees, boy, they're jumping up and damn mad, arguing, wanting
to poke this word at Him and that, trying to trick Him and
trap Him and all those things. He said, I ain't talking to you. I didn't come to call the righteous.
I come to call sinners to repentance. I wasn't talking to you. I'm
talking to sinners. That's who I'm talking to this
morning. Sinners. Sinners. Oh, I've got good news
for sinners. I've got good news for sinners.
Christ is all. He's all. You see where Paul's
coming from here? He's turning your minds. Before
we ever get into all the problems, he's turning your minds. Turning
you back. Laying again that foundation.
Pointing your mind and heart right back here to grace, mercy,
your Father in heaven. His Son who He's provided for
you. All His grace and mercy and all
these things. Peace, all these things to you.
He's the God of all comfort. And He comforted some in this
world. And enabled them through that
comfort to go comfort you.