Last week, I capped the sermon by saying: Our purpose in life is clear but may be hindered or altered by the in the meantime moment that we are in, but God’s promise will not change
when we are weak, then we are the strongest. Our time in the meantime is designed to bring the best out of the power of God and when we accept God’s grace, we will see why we had to spend time in the meantime. Before we begin, I want to share a story with you that I read by JRR Tolkien. It is a short story titled, “Leaf by Niggle.” In this story, an artist named Niggle lives in a society that does not much value art. Working only to please himself, he paints a canvas of a great Tree with a forest in the distance. He invests each and every leaf of his tree with obsessive attention to detail, making every leaf uniquely beautiful. Niggle ends up discarding all his other artworks, or tacks them onto the main canvas, which becomes a single vast embodiment of his vision. However, there are many mundane chores and duties that prevent Niggle from giving his work the attention it deserves, so it remains incomplete and is not fully realized. For example, Niggle knows that he has a great trip looming, and he must pack and prepare his bags. Also, Niggle’s next door neighbor is a gardener named Parish, and is one of those neighbors who always drops by whining about the help he needs with stuff, like fixing his roof and getting a doctor for this sick wife. You know the type of people I’m talking about. Moreover, Parish is lame and has a sick wife, and honestly needs help Niggle, having a good heart, takes time out to help. You know how this story goes, Niggle gets sick doing some errands for Parish in the rain, and then is forced to take his trip grossly underprepared for it, and cannot get out of it. As a result, he ends up in an institution, don’t ask me why, I don’t know. I know that he does menial labor there and the conditions stink. In time Niggle is paroled from the institution, and he is sent to a place ‘for a little gentle treatment’. But he discovers that the new country he is sent to is in fact the country of the Tree and Forest of his great painting, now long abandoned and all but destroyed (except for the one perfect leaf of the title which is placed in the local museum) in the home to which he cannot return.
But the Tree here and now in this place is the true realization of his vision, not the flawed and incomplete form of his painting. Yes, he was at the very place where he saw his initial vision. This week I want to leverage what we talked about and understand how our meantime uniquely equips and qualifies us to bring comfort to people who are suffering in the meantime. If you’ve been there, you’re uniquely qualified to comfort those who are still there. Being able to comfort those who need comforting will bring purpose to your pain and bring life to your soul. Let’s read from 2 Corinthians 1:3-11 to dive into it.
3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, 4 who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. 5 For as we share abundantly in Christ’s sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too. 6 If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation; and if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which you experience when you patiently endure the same sufferings that we suffer. 7 Our hope for you is unshaken, for we know that as you share in our sufferings, you will also share in our comfort. 8 For we do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of the affliction we experienced in Asia. For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. 9 Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead. 10 He delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will deliver us again. 11 You also must help us by prayer, so that many will give thanks on our behalf for the blessing granted us through the prayers of many. (2 Corinthians 1:3-11)
I want to start our conversation this morning from this scripture passage from verse 8. In verse 8, we are clued into the conversation we were having last week about confidence only being from Jesus. Paul asked God to remove the thorn of the flesh three times but nothing happened. Well, nothing happened because God wanted Paul to know that when Paul is weak, God is strong. In verse eight, Paul seems to be in the same vein of thought. We” suffered to the point of death. In fact, Paul is saying that death was so close that they could feel it, but they didn’t die. He didn’t die because God delivered them from the deadly peril. That is also the same promise he has for us: we will not die when we are afflicted beyond life, we will be delivered. This is comfort from God. In fact, I want to call this, the comfort zone. I want you to know why God delivers when we feel like we’ve received a sentence of death. It is because God is sovereign over these things, he foresees them all, he causes or permits them all, and when he causes or permits something, he does so with purpose and design. Various setbacks like failure, layoffs and joblessness, and the social ills and unrest that go with the life wreaking havoc and pain are part of life that was created so that we would have nothing and nobody to rely on except on God. It’s kind of weird to call this our comfort zone, but it really is our comfort zone. Let me rattle off some proof from scripture that support this idea:
- The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord. (Proverbs 16:33)
- Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the Lord that will stand. (Proverbs 19:21)
- The Lord brings the counsel of the nations to nothing; he frustrates the plans of the peoples.” (Psalms 33:10)
- [The Lord] declares the end from the beginning . . . saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose.” (Isaiah 46:10)
Do you see that reiterated in verse 9? Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead. God is not surprised by what is happening to us. His purposes and designs are being fulfilled according to the plan. God permits us to live in these horrible, often excruciating moments so that we would come back to God. This passage we just read was about God bringing his own faithful servant Paul to the brink of death so that he might learn more deeply to rely not on himself but on God. If that happened to Paul, we may be sure that God is doing that for us as well in the meantime we are in right now. When we don’t rely on God, I’ll tell you that it is difficult to love one another and it’s even harder to glorify God. I’ll tell you why. It’s because at the bottom of every Christian heart
no matter how advanced in faith and godliness, there is a sediment of self-reliance. God shakes our lives, sometimes to the foundations, to show us our self-reliance and clean it out with a new, deeper reliance on Him. Adversity by its very nature is the removal of things on which our comfort and hope have rested and so it will either result in anger toward God or greater reliance on him alone for our peace. Do you see that when we are in our meantime and in the comfort zone, we start to grow with Jesus at the center of our lives? And his purpose for us in adversity is not that we get angry or discouraged, but that our hope shift off earthly things onto God. God’s main purpose in all adversity is to make us stop trusting in ourselves or any man or thing. Everything will fade to black, but God won’t. This is comfort
it’s weird and strange, but it’s from God, and when you experience a life that is not self-reliant, but God reliant, nothing in your meantime seems to matter. Rather, your time in the meantime appears to have more purpose and our suffering seems comforting to know that when we do our best to believe in God, our best comes out because God is the God of the impossible and He pours Himself out for us. When Jesus dies on the cross, he is suffering, but he is pouring out comfort into our lives. He is becoming the sign to people who believe that when we look at the cross, the affliction of sin and death is no longer there upon us, it is our comfort. Paul says this in verse 5: For as we share abundantly in Christ’s sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too. I know what I’m talking about seems a bit abstract, so what I did was I created this slide to help with the argument I am making this morning. Comfort comes to us when we believe our afflictions are to cause our delivery in salvation.
What we don’t realize about our so called perfect, dreamy life is that the perfect conditions were never perfect. They were never ideal enough to bring from within us the perfect mixture of God’s strength into our lives so that we can do the impossible in the name of Jesus and tell the story about it. Our comfort is reliance of God, a deep reliance when all things are falling apart or when things are hanging on by a thread, it is a comfort to know that God is doing this for our comfort and for the comfort of other people. We are standing in the meantime because we are given a unique opportunity to find a new comfort zone in relying on God instead of ourselves. And this unique opportunity in the meantime is an awesome place to be when we settle into the comfort zone that God has niched out for us. Let me explain it this way: you have a body and sometimes in hurts. When you hurt, you find yourself seeing the people who hurt like you. God’s aim is that we would wake up to the hurt that we have and how we can rely on God
imagine if those other people who are hurting can rely on God. That would be amazing, wouldn’t it? Relying on God means that we allow God to relocate the roots of our joy in His grace and mercy rather than having our joy come from us. We are miserable people after all, we are not happy or graceful by any means. On our very best day we are grumbly and stingy reeking with a false sense of imagined entitlement. When we tasted the measures of our sin and the magnitude of God’s grace, we will have abundance of joy in hardships or the meantime, when our lives seem to be on hold and there is nothing we can do to get out of the rut because God’s grace overflows in Jesus for sinners like you and me and it is the most glorious thing in the universe. This is where our joy is rooted. Our time in the meantime is intended to advance God’s saving mission to the world by allowing our suffering and comfort to be the comfort of the people looking at our lives. Let’s go to verse 6, look at what it says: If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation; and if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which you experience when you patiently endure the same sufferings that we suffer. We see this all over the Bible.
God does his great advancing work again and again when it looks least possible for us. In the summer months I told you the create your masterpiece by living out the most beautiful art you can create from your lives, but I switched subjects to talking about being stuck in a place where your masterpiece may go unfinished, but ultimately reliance on God for His comfort is the method by which people can see their masterpiece through. Moreover, in the church caring for other hurting members in the world and to grow in the gift of love is a work of art that is impossible except through the power and grace of God. Don’t pin your hopes on man or anything this world can offer. Look to God for your hope, your joy, your fulfillment, even in death, for he is the God who raises the dead. If we trust him like that, he will be greatly glorified, and that is his purpose in our meantime moment and circumstance. But Paul doesn’t end his commentary on the comfort zone of being in the meantime there.
Verse 11 says, “You also must help us by prayer, so that many will give thanks on our behalf for the blessing granted us through the prayers of many.” Having told the Corinthians in verses 9 and 10 what God’s purposes were in his unbearable affliction, he calls on the church in verse 11 to pray for him that those purposes might in fact come about. The more I meditate on it, the more insight it unlocks. Follow my logic for a bit. I drew it out for you on this next slide. It begins with the meantime of Paul. He feels a need for help in his life, to rely more on God and to be delivered from his life, so he sends out a line of appeal to the Corinthians: “Please help us by prayer.” Then the Corinthians respond to Paul’s plea and send up their prayers for Paul to God. Then the prayer enters the heart of God, and in response to the many prayers of the Corinthians, God gives a gift of blessing to Paul. In this case the blessing is deliverance, as well as the ability to rely fully on God through trials. And now, just as many heard that Paul had a need, so also many see that, in response to many prayers, God has met Paul’s need. So what do you do when there’s nothing you can do? You can pray, at the very least. You don’t have to give in to the tidal wave of emotion, you just need to posture yourself and pray
talk to God about where you are and how you’re doing. You need to talk to one another to talk about where you are in the meantime and pray about those things together. God answers and when He does, you will all witness it. You are living in your meantime so that you can comfort those who need comforting with the comfort you have received from God as He delivers you when you rely on him. If you’ve been there, you’re uniquely qualified to comfort those who are still there. Let’s pray. Question for meetings: What can you do to begin to receive your adversity as a gift from God and leverage that gift to comfort others? How can this group help you and support you as you take a next step?
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