Hope and Comfort in God Amidst Life's Challenges

so today I want to talk to you about I know you're I know you're all waiting We're going to talk about Easter I know you were you're waiting for it Uh but we're going to talk about the hope and trusting in the God who raises the dead We're going to talk about how we can trust him and and who he is and why we know we can trust him So there are two things that we know for sure and the two kinds of trouble that we have in this life [00:00:00]

First of all we have troubles of this world Troubles of this world Things things break Our bodies break down Uh we have financial worries We have all we have things that happened to us just by living in this world And then there are things that are specific to our faith If you haven't noticed it's very obvious for most of us is that if you are a person of faith you are swimming upstream You are not going along with everybody else [00:00:26]

This is something you're different you are on a different path and that's not going to be the right path I I talk about this when you were a kid did you ever have your parents say to you "If all your friends jumped off a cliff would you jump off a cliff too?" Okay Well we're the people that don't jump off the cliff that everybody's going "Why won't you jump off the cliff?" Um we're I mean I'm just saying that example is yes we're the ones that won't do it [00:00:58]

but we're the ones who say "No this is the way God has called us to be We're swimming upstream." And because of that there's going to be problems There's going to be issues There are going to be times that there's going to be loneliness There's going to be times that there's just going to be you feel like you're uh being overwhelmed for many people in the world today that are are gathering for Easter They're gathering secretly for Easter Many of our fellow believers around the world [00:01:18]

and they may have at that moment their lives called into question That that is part of living for the faith that they are saying yes it's worth to do this knowing that it might cost me that But when you have troubles that happen in your world there's a lot of different places you can turn to I think one thing that espec a lot of people do is they turn to their job You kind of just say my life stinks I don't have any relationships I'll just work all the time [00:01:42]

and you you just whatever job that may be maybe you get you have four jobs or you just become very a thing Hey a job is a good thing and a job can be a good place to be and we're supposed to have a job but it's not supposed to take care of everything in our life And another good thing is family You may say "Well I rely on my family whenever I had trouble." Family is a great source How about friends friends are a great source [00:02:07]

Um but then there's you move a little away from that and you get into the more negative like you just pull away We're seeing in our culture we're especially see it in Asian cultures is with the internet and with people telecommuting that they never leave their home They never leave their home And this is affecting so much of culture because people are just pulling away and they say I don't want to interact with other people Other people are mean other pe I don't want to have to deal with that situation [00:02:34]

And we saw this also with co that there's a lot that we happen when people were so isolated now people are struggling with this component Another thing that people do is they use substances There's a reason that there are cookbooks called comfort food All right i'm just letting you know They're usually not real good for you but boy do they taste good Okay so they use that term in there because it's like well I'm just going to down a half gallon of ice cream and that'll make me feel better [00:03:00]

All right or I'm going to eat this or I'm going to do this People use food People use intoxicating substances There's a reason that there's a drink called Southern Comfort All right There is one that is called that because it's what it's trying to say is you are you are going to numb yourself and you're going to feel comforted by this And there also is basically pleasure seeking just people saying well I have to go from one high to the other from one high to the other trying to find pleasure in everything [00:03:24]

I can do to numb the hurt that I have to numb the the uh afflictions that I have in my life You know all of these things have something that they do Now I would say with job family and friends those would be positive things but they're not going to cover everything Now when you get into those things that just numb you they're actually going to be worse for you But nothing is going to be complete Nothing is going to comfort you beyond that It It is not good enough is what I'm trying to say [00:03:48]

So how do you find out what is the best well what is the best i was just watching a basketball game last night with the Timberwolves There's a guy in the on the Lakers that plays against the Timberwolist and his name is LeBron James And if you grew up on the era that I grew up LeBron James is the guy who wants to be Michael Jordan because Michael Jordan is the greatest right i mean is like he is the greatest And and everybody's like well LeBron's good but he's not Michael Jordan [00:04:14]

So there's this debate Who's the greatest of all time who's the best who can we depend on who if you're putting together a team which person would you pick would it be this person or this person who's the goat who's the greatest of all time now when it comes to choosing God or choosing a god there's a lot of people that choose God They they choose things to worship And we've even talked about some of them Some people worship pleasure Some people worship money Some people worship idols [00:04:38]

Some people worship and I and I think that it's important that we find what is God that can actually do something If you serve a god and I've read of these stories uh the Old Testament is very clear about this If you serve a god that you carved out of wood and then you take the extra wood and you use it for the fire that cooks your dinner that's not good God There are other gods that have heard people take them out on their boats so the god can see things If your god needs to go out on your boat to see something [00:05:02]

you're serving the wrong god I'm just going to give you these things I But these are real things though people I I've been to countries and I've watched people worshiping the Buddhas I've watched people worshiping all kinds of things and I can tell you that they just stand there I mean I was at a I was at a restaurant in Cambodia and they were feeding rice to the to the statue of Buddha and I said uh I said I can just take it for them and you know it's just going to sit there because that Buddha is not real [00:05:28]

And so how do we know that we serve the God how do we know that we serve God that can handle all of our needs and is the true God because the Bible is very clear that there is no God but God There is no other gods There are no rivals There are no other people that can say "Hey you know what we this this this is somebody who can rival our God." So there's going to be two terms we're going to look at First of all let's look at 2 Corinthians chapter 1 uh starting with verse three [00:05:54]

I'm just going to read it through Blessed be the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ the father of mercies and God of all comfort who comforts us in all our affliction so that we might be able to con comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God For as we share abundantly in Christ's suffering so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too If we are afflicted it is for your comfort and salvation And if we are comforted is for your comfort [00:06:20]

which you experience when you patiently endure the same sufferings that we suffer Our hope for you is unshaken For we know that as you share in our sufferings you will also share in our comfort 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 despared of life itself Indeed we felt that we had received the sentence of death but that that but that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead [00:06:46]

He delivered us from such a deadly peril and he will deliver and he will deliver us On him we have set our hope that he will deliver us again You must always help us in prayer by prayer so that many will give thanks on our behalf for the blessing granted us through the prayers of many Now you're going to see some words that kept popping up First of all the word was affliction He was talking about affliction the things that are that are happening And we talk about afflictions This is one of the key words [00:07:12]

he's going to use throughout this book He's going to be talking about the afflictions that happen And the main uh reason that he brings up this word is for things that happen to Christians Now if you're the Apostle Paul you have a lot of affliction I mean the guy's been shipwrecked He's been beaten He's been stoned He's been I mean there there's not much I mean there's a list and I'm not going to read the list today but every time you read the list like that's a that's a tough life Okay he's been going through it [00:07:38]

But these afflictions can also be things that happen in this life A secondary meaning is just life Life brings afflictions Things happen You know that and what we're dealing with And then the other thing you see that appears in this text is the word comfort In fact it occurs nine times in verses 1- 11 And you kind of get the impression he's talking about comfort because he keeps saying comfort over and over again And so then you need to define that term So I've always talked about it [00:08:02]

So I have some people in my front row today But usually in my front row it's empty Okay I feel hurt but people don't like to be that close to me I guess But if you think about it if you think about it if you're in a plane what do they put in the front row they put the first class seating What if we put first class seating all the way around the front and we called it the comfort zone all right And this would be we would have like waiters that would come up to you and take orders and you know take care of you [00:08:28]

You could re you could recline You could have a good view Uh the pastor would have it have a squirt gun to squirt you to keep you awake That would have to be part of it But we would have that Okay So when we think of the word comfort that's what comes to our head That's not what the word comfort means in the Bible It's not about pampering That would be pampering Okay Now God is not a God that is like "Oh you should never have anything nice you got to be you know mean Uh but it is a word that is talking about a stiffening agent [00:08:54]

that fortifies our heart mind and soul It is that feeling of contentment and a dose of grace that tells us that we're okay that God is with us It's something real that God does in our lives It it gets into our it weakens it strengthens weak knees and sustains a saging spirit It's something that will lift you up and keep you going when times are tough And so if you look at right from the beginning he defines God as the God of all comfort He says "Blessed be the God uh and father of our Lord Jesus Christ." [00:09:20]

He uses a term from the Old Testament blessed be God But then he adds the father of our Lord Jesus Christ He says "This is our Lord Now we have Jesus to comfort us And he's the father of mercies and God of all comfort That's another word I want you to catch in here is the word all or he'll use the word any There is not one thing that God cannot handle The other thing that's unique about uh when you talk about God and I I love this in the Old Testament when uh uh a tribe was trying to attack the children of Israel [00:09:46]

and they came after him and they fought him in the mountains and they said "Well their god must be the god of the mountains We'll fight him on the plains next time." Because in the old times you'd have in the ancient times you'd have a god of every single place or every single thing You'd have to pick which god you were going to pray to And there's still religions like this today that God fits that circumstance So their god must be a mountain god We'll fight them in the plains and then they'll lose Or their god only works in in Israel [00:10:12]

He doesn't work in over here Well that's not the way it is God is God of all comfort God is God of everywhere He is the one who can handle every one of your needs You have no need to go any other place There is no other there's and first of all there's no reason to because there's nothing else out there You could try You can say "Well I'm just I want to try something different." You can try something that doesn't work That's not a good plan Or you can try the the God of all comfort the God that can strengthen you in your time of need [00:10:38]

and the father of mercies The terms that are used for him you just see the strength that he has And it comes from the Psalms when it talks about that he is all He is in and also just immeasurable that you can't even measure how much grace and how much comfort he can bring you As bad as life can get God's comfort is greater That is what he's trying to say here It's better And he says he comforts us in all our afflictions In verse four he says he he does it so much He just So there's not one thing in this life that he can't handle [00:11:04]

There's not one thing It's like well God you just don't understand I talk I talk about this so many times when you're trying to help somebody out One of the worst things you can do we learned this in pastor school I'm just going to pass it on to you is go up to them and say "I know exactly how you feel." Because you don't I don't care if it's very similar You don't know exactly how somebody feels And sometimes they can be pretty mad at you when you say that You don't know what I feel like And you don't But you know who does god [00:11:30]

And you know who can handle every affliction that you have it says right here all all our affliction can be comforted with the comfort that comes from him And he says again he says all our affliction or any affliction it says later in the verse And it says this and I love about this he brings comfort to you So that so much comfort you get extra you have extra comfort that you get to bring to somebody else Now he he's talking about he says he says so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction [00:11:56]

He comforts us strengthens us so we can be with other people so we can stand with other people I remember when my wife had a miscarriage and we felt so alone and we just asked we said you know we feel so alone we don't know what to do and then we said that and there was all these other people that rose up and said we had a miscarriage here's what we and they were a comfort to us because God had comforted them and now they brought comfort to us you know they were there when we needed them and we can be there and sometimes I just talked about it [00:12:22]

you don't know what to do sometimes the greatest thing you can ever do with somebody is just be there for them there's a Jewish tradition that I really like Uh when somebody dies you go to their house and you sit there and you don't say anything because you don't know what to say Guess what you don't know what to say But you're there You're there for them And you just can bring Why are you bringing comfort because God has comforted you and you're going to comfort them now And so so we he's saying that the comfort that they have [00:12:48]

Paul received this comfort He passed it on now they can pass it on to other people It's all ourselves And so God is uh always at work He's not some abstract god He's not some god that's out there I if you really want to know what the the competing philosophies were at this time there was something called stoicism And there was this guy ply the elder who said I was plenty I can't remember say his name but anyways he said that you should never ask God for anything You should just grin and bear it and the only gift that God has given us is suicide [00:13:14]

I'm like well there's a nice religion There's a nice philosophy but that was the the running Roman stoicism It was the concept of the time There's not there's no hope out there You're not going to get any help There's nothing anybody else can do If it gets bad enough just kill yourself Well no We serve the God of all comfort The God that can take care of any affliction The God who is there for everything And it's also the corporate nature of who we are as Christians I've heard I've talked to as many people and this is another we talk about the things that happened in COVID [00:13:40]

and there's going to be studies done for this for years But I mean it a lot of people left church and never came back I mean it did happen It's just like where did they go you know it's like you want to go searching for them Search parties out there But there's a lot of people say "Well now I can watch online and I don't need to be this and you know if the I can watch this pastor and this pastor and this pastor and this and this." This is all about us being together We need each other There is How can you comfort somebody when you're not there [00:14:06]

and this is another factor How can you comfort somebody when you don't know them well I don't know I never talked to anybody I'm going to go comfort them They're not probably not going to let you in their house you know I go to your church Do you yeah I watch online every week Ah you know that I mean that's not going to be a a big plus And then he says he talks about abundantly He says abundantly we are going to share in Christ's sufferings He says guess what as Christians and Paul was or Jesus was very clear about this There's going to be abundant sufferings [00:14:32]

Big selling point All right But it's because the world does not like Jesus They do not like the message of Jesus They do not like the fact that he says that this is the way He does not like the fact that he says that I am the only way to heaven I am the only way to God They don't like that It's going against the world's system He says there's going to be abundant But he says what's great about this he says is we get abundant comfort to go with it Notice the two words abundantly He goes "It's going to be abundant but it's also going to be abundant." [00:14:58]

So no matter how bad it gets God's comfort and again God's comfort gives you extra so you can hand to somebody else Abundant to abundant And so and he says he we talk about this and then at the end of verse six he kind of brings up with another thought He says "If if we are afflicted he says for your comfort and salvation." He's talking about the fact that he came to them and he preached to them now when he preached to the Corinthians and he's the Corinthians are still giving him a hard time at this time but he says we did it for your comfort and your salvation [00:15:24]

your strengthening and if we are comfort it's also for you but then he says that when you experience you patiently endure the same sufferings that we suffer and you get the same comfort and this energizes your faith The patiently endure is an energizing factor of your faith It's something that draws you closer to God because you experience God in your life doing real things in your life And he and he finishes by saying "Our hope because of this is unshaken." Okay i can think of very few things in this life that I have absolutely unshaken hope in [00:15:50]

I I'm just telling you you think about it you know I hope that this is going to work out You're always in the back of your mind going "Probably not This is this could happen This could happen This could happen." But he says "Our hope for you is unshaken because we know that you're sharing in the comfort and you're sharing in the sufferings of Jesus and you're also sharing for the comfort We know that their hope for you is unshaken That God has a plan for you God will carry you through God will bring your salvation to a completion There is hope for you because he is the God of all comfort [00:16:16]

He is the God in any affliction And our hope for you is he will carry you through unshaken There are terms here It's just like well that's a big statement Paul You're just saying I mean there's a lot of people that are fans of sports teams They're like "This is going to be the year for," and then somebody else says "I don't think so." Okay I don't think so and then they point out all the problems Or hey I'm I'm really excited about this I was excited to go you know downhill skiing this year because of all the snow we were going to have this last winter [00:16:42]

Well that didn't work out You know I'm going to do this or I'm going to do that I'm going to do this You know there's things that we have There's not the hope that we have There's it's not out there But this we can say for sure So why can he say that well verse eight he says I need to give you an illustration because you need to understand this He says we do not want you to be unaware So he says there's something that happened in our lives Uh Paul is saying about what the affliction and this would be an affliction more most likely something that happened because of Paul's ministry [00:17:08]

When Paul speaks there's a lot of people that like to throw things at him or whip him or try to drown him There's all kinds of things they try to do Okay so he's had these things happen and he says we were so utterly burdened And the term here for utterly burden is just we didn't we were weighed down So it was this is the term for ballast of a ship Now I've never been in this circumstance but I've seen examples of like you watch an old ship and it's it's full of water and you see the guys trying to throw the water out of the boat trying to get it and it's sinking [00:17:34]

it's overloaded it's going down and like we can't do it That's what this term means right here And that's the way I think many of us feel sometimes in life that we are so utterly burdened that we are sinking and we cannot get the water out of our boat fast enough So this illustration to me just really connects with me I've felt this way before whereas oh man I I got nothing I I can't do it This is this is it's over And he says it goes even further It says it was beyond our strength beyond anything we could handle [00:18:00]

because you there's there's no way you can bail it out fast enough And it's something that we despared of life itself And he says later we were we had like a sense of death upon us He said I felt like this was it I'm not going to make it through this This is the end This is that level of that And so he wants them to know about something that happened Now let me tell you the story about what happened We have no idea but I think this is for a reason because have you ever had somebody tell you a story to try to encourage you and this is something that a lot of people do [00:18:26]

Yeah but that's different My story is different Well you know God I prayed for this You know you say "Hey you want a job let me tell you about the story happened to me I prayed for it God gave me a job and helped me out of this tough time." Yeah but look at you You've got all those tail hunts and skills I got nothing Or you say "Hey this happened to me when I was young." And people look at you and say "Yeah but that was in the 1900s That doesn't even matter." I mean what are you even talking about you You can always bring up an example to blow somebody's story apart [00:18:52]

If you're depressed enough that's what we do We'll blow their story apart So if Paul would have given the exact story right here and I'm pretty sure they know what it is and they probably asked him when he got here we could say "Well yeah that's Paul and yeah that was that circumstance." But we don't know the circumstance But all I can tell you is the guy who is who people are being healed by the people that God is using him in mighty ways He's planting churches all over the place He's a man of great faith He's done all this wonder thing He was utterly despared [00:19:18]

He thought life was over I can't handle it It's over I have a sentence of death on me We don't know if it was a literal or he just felt that way that his life was going to end He despared of life itself That they stared death in the face and said "Well it's coming This is it." He said "But that was to make us not rely on ourselves." He said "What I learned from this I'm going to pass on to you I am not going to rely." It was to make sure we didn't rely on ourselves because he was put in a situation where even the Apostle Paul [00:19:44]

I would not have wanted to debate the Apostle Paul I would I can't imagine the strength he has the the the things that he saw from God He met Jesus face to face I mean that's amazing And he felt that way And you think yourself that's s but he says this the reason I had hope because I had faith on the God who raises the dead He said "If my God can raise the dead," and he's talking specifically about what just happened a few years before this time of Jesus rising from the dead Because if God can raise Jesus from the dead can he handle your problems [00:20:10]

can he handle your situations can he deliver you from anything that's going on in your life you It feels like he puts the big one up there right away All right He puts the standard and says this is you want to be the goat raise somebody from the dead Go All right And God says I did it I raised Jesus from the dead Can you trust me yes Because what's bigger than that what is bigger than that in your life well I have no nothing really If you really put it you put your mind to it There's nothing bigger And so he uses that term And so Paul he says I was desparing [00:20:36]

And then I'm like hey wait a second I serve a God who raises the dead This changed everything This is what I am He says "And he delivered us from such a deadly peril." Now again he uses that term deadly peril It was bad He says "And God who raises from the dead delivered us." And he says "Guess what and he will deliver us." This is a state that Paul has now become that the term that he used a lot of it kind of has like a PTSD thing about how how bad it was They talk about when he says utterly despared It's something that shook him up so bad [00:21:02]

But he says what God did in my life changed my whole outlook so much that I look at the future now and go yeah he did it once He'll do it again He can handle it I saw him at the worst time do it because even God who raises from the dead It all comes back to that And on him we have set our hope that he will deliver us again We have hope again Here's that word hope that we will make it And the hope that it that last one it's I if you look in the Greek and you study it the original language it says the hope that we have that no matter what happens [00:21:28]

if today is my last day on earth and I die tonight my hope is that I can be resurrected from the dead why well that's silly pastor why would you ever think that you could be resurrected well God raises people from the dead and you say well not right away just for the record you know I'm just saying this is the end time But he's going to raise us And so when we die it's not permanent I've done all kinds of funerals for people that are Christians And I always say the same thing I really want to be near a cemetery when Christ returns because I want to see graves popping all over the place [00:21:54]

Don't you i mean come on It says the dead in Christ shall rise first They shall be resurrected I mean that's that's the hope He says "I have hope all the way to the end that he will deliver us no matter what." If I die and Paul eventually will be killed by Nero And you say "Well Nero won." Did he no Paul was Paul's going to be resurrected He goes right with Christ right away And then he's going to be delivered again in the future So 2 Corinthians 4:14 says "Knowing that he who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us along with Jesus and bring us with you into his presence." [00:22:20]

The same Jesus gives us that hope And then he finally finishes up with this You must also help us in prayer so that many will give thanks in our behalf for the blessing granted us through the prayers of many If you start to get this concept that you serve the God who raises the dead how does that change your prayer life how does that change what he can do do you look at God and say "Well this one's a little too big for you God I'll I'll I'll gut this one out on my own or I don't think you can handle it." No He says "You already He" [00:22:46]

He says "You must help us by prayer so that we can give thanks." The reason that we pray is because we pray to a God that can do this We don't pray for people because we don't believe anything's going to happen We pray because we believe God can do it And why can he do it again go back to God who raises the dead If he can do that he can do anything He says "And because of that you will pray You will help us." And he even says "You did when you prayed it affected me." That's what he's trying to say right here And we all get to give thanks because your prayers were some of the things that delivered me [00:23:12]