2 Corinthians 1:3-7
It is good to be here with you all this morning. I will be preaching this week and next week, and we’re going to be in the passage out of 2 Corinthians chapter 1. If you’d like to turn there in your copy of God’s Word. We’re going to be in this passage of Scripture for a couple weeks. We live in a society that has become very preoccupied with being at ease, with being comfortable, emotionally safe even from those who disagree with us intellectually.
Those who like pain; inflict pain upon themselves. That’s not the norm. The vast majority of people, they’re seeking how to increase their ease and increase their comfort, how to work less and play more. Their jobs are merely a means to satisfy their desires and increase their comfort, whether that be indulging in food, entertainment, otherworldly things and then when people are afflicted by trials and hardship, those are the things that they turn to for comfort; the world, they really have nothing else.
Christians can often succumb to turning to the same kinds of things for comfort, and the church has reacted against this common attitude and behavior by labeling such people as comfort seekers. And what the Christian means by this is that it is wrong to seek satisfaction or comfort in self-indulgence and sensuality. But the problem with this label of comfort seeker is it makes comfort the problem, as if you when you seek comfort you are sinning all together. I just want to clarify, today, that God is deeply concerned with the comfort of his children.
God wants you to be a comfort seeker. He just wants you to seek your comfort in him, not the fleshly or worldly things that are empty and even soul destroying both body and spirit. This is important, because if you’re going to repent of seeking comfort in fleshly and worldly things, repentance doesn’t mean that you stop seeking comfort altogether. Repentance means you must seek comfort in that which truly provides comfort in Christ, in the gospel that we just sung about.
Repentance from comfort seeking, it isn’t deprivation and self-abasement. God doesn’t want us seeking misery instead of comfort. God wants us to drink deeply from the well of comfort found in him. He wants our souls, both body and spirit, to find comfort, not just our bodies through fleshly indulgence. We’re going to find how to do this in our passage today.
So if you’re there in 2 Corinthians chapter 1, read along with me. We’re going to begin in verse 3. Paul writes to the Corinthians, and he says, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction. So that we will be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.
“For just as the sufferings of Christ abound to us, so also our comfort abounds through Christ. But whether we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation; or whether we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which is working in your perseverance in the same sufferings which we also suffer. And our hope for you is firmly grounded, knowing that as you are sharers of our sufferings, so also you are sharers of our comfort.”
That word comfort in noun and verb form is used there ten times. That’s a fifth of the entire number of times it’s used in the New Testament found just in those few verses right there. Do you think God cares about our comfort? This topic was brought to mind as I was reading the last couple weeks out Owen, in one of the volumes of his completed works on sin and temptation and he’s talking about Romans 8:13 and how if we mortify the flesh, we will live.
And he has this phrase that hit me and out of that chapter he’s and he says, and I quote, “the vigor, and power, and comfort of our spiritual life depends on the mortification of the deeds of the flesh.” And that phrase there, “the comfort of our spiritual life” just struck me.
In the world we live in where we seek so many fleshly comforts, just struck by the fact that God does care about our comfort. He does want to comfort us, but not with the vain and empty comfort of the world. Paul likewise, he cared about the Corinthians and their comfort as he wrote this to them.
God cares deeply for our comfort, but it is, as Owen wrote there, the comfort of our spiritual life that he cares about, that must be the priority. Last week, Travis was talking, in his sermon, about religious hypocrites who wage war against their bodies when they think depriving themselves of physical things will mortify sin, so their spirits wage war against their flesh.
The opposite of that is when we our flesh wages war against our spirit by seeking physical comfort and the pleasures of the world to the detriment of our soul, but if we flee from seeking to please our bodies by beating them and depriving them, that’s jumping from one ditch into the other.
The answer in this predicament of seeking comfort in the world is looking to the God of all comfort, to increase the comfort of our spiritual life, which will also bring peace and harmony and comfort to our physical bodies as well. So as we study this passage over the next two weeks, we’re going to see how to find our comfort in Christ. We’re going to see how to help others do the same, and then the blessed result of this comfort that we find in God.
So this passage, we’ve got three points, but we’re only going to cover one of those today, but the three, three-point outline we’ll cover in the next two weeks is, first of all, the source, we might say, the spring of comfort, and number two, the purpose or the conduit of comfort, and number three, the result or the fountain of comfort.
But as I mentioned, we’re only going to cover the first today, the source, the spring of comfort. Look again there with me at verse 3. “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all of our afflictions.”
If you’re familiar with the first letter of Paul to the Corinthians, you know that he had to say some very difficult things to them. They were a very immature church, and Paul had to correct them quite extensively, rebuke them, call them to repentance in, in a wide variety of areas in their life.
This letter, though, it begins with a very different tone. Right away Paul indicates his heart for them, his consolation of them in light of Titus’s report to him, that they had heeded all of the rebuke, all the correction in the first letter, and that they had been working out repentance.
Thus, this letter begins with this benediction of praise to God, but it would have set their hearts at ease as well. It would have been a comfort to them the way he started this letter in light of the last letter. But this letter begins with this benediction, the word, blessed, here. It’s not the same word as we’ve studied in passages like the Sermon on the Mount here. It’s the word eulogetos from which we get our word eulogy. It means to speak a good word or it means to praise something.
So Paul says praise be to God. Paul and Timothy as they write to the Corinthians, they begin by lifting their own hearts in praise to God, so that, when the letter would be read to the Corinthians, they would also lift their heart in praise as well. No doubt some of the people, as the church received Paul’s second letter, they probably would have been pretty trepidatious about hearing it. Is it going to be a bunch more of those difficult words to hear?
But these opening sentences about comfort would set the tone for the rest of the letter. It would have immediately comforted those who might have been ill at ease in anticipation of its reading. And it began here with extolling, “God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, the God of all comfort.”
For Paul to confess and praise God as the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. It elevates Christ above all other Lords, making him equal with God, setting him in distinction from all others, but it reveals God, not just as the father of Israel, but the father of Christ, and the father of all those who are in Christ, the father of all those found in Christ, namely the Corinthians, and all who confess him as Lord still and are those are identified with him.
God is our father as well, the father of all mercies. Mercy, here it refers to a display of concern for another’s misfortune. You see someone down, you feel for them, you pity them; you are moved to compassion. This noun is actually pretty rare. It’s only used five times in the New Testament, and all but one of those are in relation to comforting God’s people.
God is a God of mercy, and he that compassion is moved to comfort. This word, it denotes God’s concern for the plight of those who suffer. He is genuinely concerned for those who suffer. He isn’t indifferent to it. He isn’t distant from it. He’s the father of all mercies.
The Puritan commentator Matthew Henry puts it well when he says, “there is a multitude of tender mercies in God essentially, and all mercies are from God originally. Mercy is his genuine offspring and His delight.” Jesus and mercy, here, metaphorically are siblings that work together as God shows pity upon people; bring relief to their plight and to their affliction.
In this verse is a chiastic structure, it starts and ends with God. There’s two mentions of the father, in between the father, dual mention of that, emphasizes that relational aspect, that intimate aspect; just as if you are a father, you would have compassion on your children who are in affliction.
God is the father of all mercies. He’s far more compassionate than even we are for our children when they are in affliction, because where we sometimes even fail to be compassionate, God is the father of all mercies, the God of compassion.
It finds its source, all of our compassion finds its source in him. He is a tender, compassionate father who takes pity on those who are afflicted. So while mercy here, father of all mercies, denotes the inward concern and the pity, this inward concern moves one to do something about it. And in our case here, it’s a movement to provide comfort to those who are afflicted.
He’s not just the father of all mercies and compassion, and but he is the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction. The word comfort here is the word paraklesis related to the verb parakaleo. The Holy Spirit is called the comforter, the same word, and this word has the range of meaning from emboldening another in a belief or course of action. That is to encourage someone to exhort them to do something. It can also mean to make a strong appeal or request to someone. But it can also mean, as it does here, to lift another’s spirits, to comfort them, to console them, to lift them up when they’re downcast.
Most of us think of the word comfort as maybe emotional relief, a sense of well-being, physical ease, satisfaction, freedom from pain and anxiety. I think that’s how the world views comfort and the comfort that God provides, it isn’t too dissimilar from that, but it incorporates the spirit of man as well.
The comfort that God is the source of, it does provide emotional relief, but it’s a deep emotional relief, as our sin is actually dealt with and our consciences are cleared. The comfort that God provides it involves a sense of well-being, but both body and soul.
It’s not just physical ease, but a spiritual strengthening. It’s not just a shallow satisfaction that flees away as as quick as we are done indulging ourselves in something, but it is a deep satisfaction that is long lasting.
This comfort that God provides that is sourced in him. It does provide freedom, but it’s a freedom from the power of sin. It does provide relief from anxiety, but it does so as we’re freed from the power of sin and we’re forgiven. The anxiety over our sin is dealt with. Doesn’t that sound like much better comfort to receive when you’re afflicted by any trial or hardship?
It’s not the worldly comfort of shallow ease that never satisfies, but it’s the deep, soul satisfying, enduring comfort. God’s comfort endures, because its source is in him and he is eternal and endures all things. So how do we receive this kind of comfort, this enduring comfort? And that’s really what we’re going to spend the rest of our time on this morning. And it’s really going to culminate in the ordinance of communion.
So the beginning of verse 4 says, God comforts us in all our afflictions. God is the God of all comfort. He is the source, and just as our afflictions are varied, and they are many, so also are the streams of his comfort to us. If we are to enjoy the full force of God’s comfort, we have to then absorb every little tributary that flows to us, so to speak, every small stream that comes to us. So our comfort comes in full force as we tap into all those small sources of it.
So as we think about tributaries running into, all supplying a, a river or a spring to create the full force, so we are going to look at ten tributaries or streams that we can tap into in order to receive the full force of God’s comfort. And we’ll do ten, if we have time to get to them, or we’ll cut it off at number seven, if we don’t have time to get to the rest.
But we’ve got these ten tributaries that we tap into in order to receive the full force of God’s comfort, strengthening us spiritually to face the afflictions of life, to face them not with weak knees, but with unbending resolve and rock solid assurance that will also produce a deep satisfaction of the soul that will endure through the ages.
We’re essentially going to look at the Old Testament development of God as the God of all comfort. So the first of these ten tributaries or streams of comfort sourced in God number one or sub-point A is truth. If you would take your Bible and turn to Psalm 119, and I’m going to lead up to that with a few comments.
But if you’re a Christian and it’s no surprise to you if you’ve ever been afflicted and going through a trial, it is extremely comforting when someone comes and administers truth to your heart and deals with your affliction. We have an example in the Scripture of the discouraging effect on someone when it’s the reverse, when someone tries to minister comfort with falsehood, we have this example in the book of Job.
In Job 21:34, this is Job responding to his friends, who tried to comfort him, but they didn’t have, they, they weren’t accurate in the things that they were saying and Job said this to his friends. “How then will you vainly comfort me indeed, when your answers remain full of falsehood?”
Job’s friends had tried to comfort him, but they told him things like, Job, you’re suffering because only sinners suffer and you’ve done something wrong and you need to repent. They told him things like, Job, it’s, it’s your fault this is happening to you. That’s not comforting to somebody, especially like Job, who hadn’t sinned. He was not suffering because of his sin; he’s actually suffering because he was the most righteous man that God could point Satan to for his own glory.
But lies and falsehood, they don’t bring comfort to God’s people. They might bring a temporary comfort to unbelievers, but it’s a fleeting comfort; it’s a soul-destroying comfort. For example, believers are comforted by the truth of reality. We’re comforted by creation order, when we’re pressed and afflicted by satanic ideologies of gender confusion in the alphabet soup of the sexual revolution.
We’re comforted and spiritually strengthened knowing biological reality, just revealed in natural law, that we can clearly see and observe. Believers are comforted by truth, just the truth of reality, not the falsehoods of the world.
But if you’re in the Psalm 119, the the truth of reality in the natural world that we see is, is one thing that can provide us comfort, but the word of God is another aspect revealed in his word that ought to be the, the source of our comfort.
God wants us to drink deeply from the well of comfort found in him.” Bret Hastings
When God’s children are afflicted, they are deeply comforted by the truth. Go to verse 49, we’re going to read through 49 to 52, and then we’ll also touch on verse 76 and, and 82. But the author of Psalm 119 writes and he says, “remember the word to your slave, which you have made me wait. This is my comfort in my affliction, that your word has revived me.
“The arrogant utterly scoff at me, yet I do not turn aside from Your law. I have remembered your judgments from of old, O Yahweh, and comfort myself.” We find there the comfort that the psalmist finds in God’s Word. And as you know, if you’ve read Psalm 119 at all, the focus is on God’s Word and the effect of it in the life of a believer.
The love that this psalmist has for the Word of God, and in part he loves it because when he goes to it, it brings him comfort in his afflictions. Look over at verse 76, He says, “Oh, may your loving kindness comfort me according to your word to your slave.” And then if you go down to verse 82, “my eyes fail with longing for your word, saying, when will you comfort me?”
The psalmist, when he was longing for comfort, he knew that it was only going to be found in God’s Word. God’s slaves, God’s children, they are comforted by God’s Word. When we as Christians, we go through any affliction, it is the truth of God’s Word that comforts us.
So, beloved, when you are afflicted, whether it’s outward pressures or trials or oppositions, when you want to be comforted, do you flee to God’s Word for comfort or do you run to other things and other people to find your comfort? Or do you, like the psalmist here, you flee to God’s Word, longingly looking for comfort in his revealed Word?
Beloved, God doesn’t want you to settle for distraction from your affliction. He wants you to come to him and find true comfort, lasting comfort in your affliction and that’s primarily found in his word. As we move on and look at these other tributaries or streams that bring us comfort, most of them or all of them could probably fit under this, as as sub-points because they are all revealed in God’s word, but they’re distinct.
So we’ve just broken them up, broken them up into more points. So the first stream that brings us comfort, this is just generally, truth; reality in general and the truth of God’s word. But second, sub-point B, we’re also comforted by God’s protection. If you would flip back just to Psalm 23, most of you, many of you are familiar with this.
And as I mentioned, as our afflictions are varied and many, so we also need to drink of the various avenues of God’s comfort that he gives us in order to be fully satisfied, fully comforted in him. If, for example, that you are afflicted with fears from external things, the freedom you have in Christ isn’t necessarily going to bring you a great comfort.
But if you’re afflicted and you’re giving into a certain sin, the freedom you have in Christ to overcome that sin is a great comfort. So just as our afflictions are varied, we want to look at the various means and of comfort, the streams of comfort that God gives us so we can drink deeply of that and be comforted by him.
In Psalm 23, we’re not going to read the whole thing for the sake of time, but David writes in verse 4, “even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for you are with me. Your rod and your staff, they comfort me.”
David models here where when he feels like he’s going through the valley of the shadow of death, going through afflictions, he tells us here how we can find comfort as well. When you’re afflicted with fears, maybe for your own life, your own health, your own safety, maybe of a family member.
When you’re going through a fearful, uncertain time that brings all kinds of terrors to mind, is one of the greatest comforts. At least it is to my own soul and many others to meditate on the truths of this Psalm and be reminded that God is the Good Shepherd who protects his sheep.
His rod there refers to the weapon of the shepherd who would fend off lions and bears coming to attack the sheep. And when we understand that God is, he stands as our Shepherd, ready to beat off any attacker, we have nothing to fear.
The Almighty God of the universe stands as our Shepherd, as our protector. What do we have to fear when he stands guard? And so, when you are afflicted with fear, where do you seek comfort? Is it in the arms of our dear Shepherd or is it by some other fleeting means? And perhaps the Good Shepherd has seen fit to allow you to be greatly afflicted by trials. Maybe like Job, who lost almost everything except his own life.
Maybe you’re in the midst of a dark valley that other people fear. Maybe that you once feared and you are afflicted and in need of comfort. Well, that brings us to the third stream of comfort that we can tap into or sub–Point C restoration.
Restoration, turn over a few chapters to Psalm 71. Psalm 71. In two very brief verses here the psalmist acknowledges that God has afflicted him and yet he will revive him. In this Psalm, the author’s been afflicted with many troubles and evils, and yet he seeks restoration. He finds comfort in God’s restoration of him and those promises.
So Psalm 71, look at verse 20 and 21. The psalmist writes, “You have shown me many troubles and evils,” and yet he trusts in this. “You will revive me again and will bring me up again from the depths of the earth. May you increase my greatness and turn to comfort me.”
So in two very brief verses here, he acknowledges that that God is the one who’s brought these things into his life, and yet he understands that it’s also God who will revive him, who will restore him to greatness and comfort him.
So have you been afflicted with many troubles and evils? Maybe you’re in the midst of that deep, dark valley that David mentioned. You’re not just afraid of it, now it’s a reality in your life. Maybe you, you have experienced the loss of position. Maybe you’ve received a medical diagnosis that’s going to afflict you the rest of your life. Maybe it has reduced the number of days that you thought you had left.
When you’re afflicted with troubling thoughts about this and these evils that have come upon you, where do you find your comfort? Do you bury yourself in sorrows? Maybe self-pity, put your head under the pillow, hope it goes away, try to ignore it.
Or maybe you go to the opposite end and you use it as an excuse to live out the rest of your days however you want. Or do you comfort yourself with the reality that one day God will restore you? Maybe in this life, but if not, certainly he will, as the psalmist says, bring you up from the grave and restore you not to the way you are now, but he’s going to increase your greatness, as the psalmist says there.
He’s going to make you like our Lord Jesus in his resurrected state, his glorified state. We will realize the full comfort of God then, but we can be comforted now by the future reality of our restoration, it is certain. David spoke of this also at the end of Psalm 23, when he spoke of the certainty, “that I will dwell in the House of the Lord forever.”
Regardless of what happens to you in this life, regardless of what was going to happen to the psalmist here or David in Psalm 23, even if he had died in the valley of the shadow of death, he knew he would be restored to the Good Shepherd.
Beloved, when we are afflicted with many troubles and evils, we can drink deeply of the promises of future restoration where we will receive a hundredfold of whatever we think we have lost in this life. Don’t turn to the world when you feel like your days have been cut short. Don’t, don’t turn to the world for comfort, but turn to Christ. Remember, he will restore you.
Next sub-point D, God comforts us through the stream of justice. Justice. Flip over to Psalm 135, because we’re already in the the Psalm; before we, we move on, we want to touch here. We’re kind of for the most part looking at this as God has revealed himself as a God of comfort progressively throughout the Old Testament.
We’re going to discuss here how God brings us comfort regarding justice towards others, and then we’ll move on to also consider how we find comfort when we think of God’s justice towards us.
Psalm 135, verse 14 says, “for Yahweh, will render justice for His people, and will give comfort to His slaves.” Immediately preceding this, the psalmist talked about God’s judgment upon the Egyptians who oppressed Israel as their slave masters along with all the people of Canaan.
We all have the law of God imprinted on our hearts as image bearers, and we know that sin deserves punishment. Justice must be done and it’s a great comfort, as it’s described here. When God has executed judgment on those who have sinned against us, those who sinned against Israel.
When justice is served, it bring great, brings great comfort to the victim. When we see injustices going unpunished, it bothers us and and rightly so. It wasn’t too long ago that a member of our church called and was struggling because someone in his family had been deeply sinned against some sexual sin against a sibling, and he was really bothered by what was going to happen, whether this person was going to receive justice or not.
It is deeply comforting to understand the truth of God’s justice. When you are afflicted by another sinner, when others sin against you and we seek justice, do you seek comfort and relief, by as some people do by ignoring it. Some people seek comfort by stewing over it and rehearsing the wrong in our minds, thinking evil thoughts about those people.
Maybe you seek relief even by returning evil for evil, an eye for an eye, it’s it’s even biblical. These things promise relief, but they can’t deliver. They only bring more pain, because it’s more sin on on our part when we respond to injustice like that.
True relief and comfort is found when we think upon the justice of God. Even if some heinous sin goes unpunished in this life, a person maybe they don’t even go to jail for what they had done. It is a comfort to know that one day God will execute justice, that person will not escape justice.
God will one day punish every sin, and full and final justice will be had for all, and there’s nothing that you can do personally to the person who sinned against you or someone else you love to bring about the satisfaction of justice. Nothing you can do will truly bring comfort, but God can and God will.
God was concerned about justice for Israel, punishing those who did her wrong, thus bringing them comfort knowing justice was done. Beloved, he seeks to bring you the same comfort. He will one day bring you that comfort. And we can find comfort now, knowing that one day all will receive justice.
But we should be far more concerned with our own sins against God than how other people have sinned against us. You’re in Psalm 135, go to Isaiah chapter 40, Isaiah chapter 40. This brings us just to the the second aspect of justice that we find comfort in, and that is justice even for our own sins.
When we sin, justice is demanded; punishment is deserved. We have sinned against the holy God of the universe. We have sinned and our consciences are afflicted. There’s a weight of sin against us that we cannot bear. And if you’re here today and you are still in your sins, you have not received the forgiveness that God offers; you stand as his enemy. He is angry with your sin every day, but there is a way to receive justice for your sin that restores your life rather than ends it.
In Isaiah 12, I told you to go to 40. You can stay there. Just listen as I read Isaiah 12:1, where he says, “Then you will say in that day I give thanks to you Yahweh, for although you were angry with me. Your anger is turned away and you comfort me.”
Isaiah tells of a future day when Israel would have the anger of God turned away from their sins and comfort them. This comfort will come by receiving justice for her own sins. If you look at Isaiah 40 verse 1 there, I’m going to read verses 1 and 2 where Isaiah writes, “Comfort, Oh comfort my people, says your God, speak to the heart of Jerusalem, and call out to her that her warfare has been fulfilled, that her iniquity has been removed, that she has received from the hand of Yahweh double for all her sins.”
Comfort comes when sin is dealt with, when the payment has been paid. But notice the following verses, verses 3 and 4, but particularly 3, “A voice is calling, ‘Prepare the way for Yahweh in the wilderness, make smooth in the desert, a highway for our God.’” Does that verse sound familiar? That’s because every Gospel account, Matthew, Mark, Luke and all, and John, they all quote this verse at the beginning of their Gospels.
Mark actually begins his Gospel with this quotation. Mark begins his Gospel with the beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ as it is written in Isaiah the prophet. “Behold, I send my messenger ahead of you who will prepare your way. The voice of the one crying in the wilderness. Make ready the way of the Lord. Make his paths straight.”
That’s the beginning of the Gospel, because this is the beginning of the gospel. The beginning of comfort begins with having our sins dealt with. “Comfort, Oh, comfort my people, for I’m going to deal with your sins, but not by punishing you, but by removing your iniquity.”
And those Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John go on to detail how he did that by fulfilling the law, obeying the Mosaic Law perfectly, being the perfect God man, who then was sufficient to die in our place and bear our punishment. “He made him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God,” that we might have all of the dead of our sin nailed to the cross and forgiven in Christ. “Oh, how blessed is the man whose sins are forgiven.”
We’re forgiven because we have trusted in the sacrifice of Christ that he took all of our punishment. He bore our sin, and now we are robed in his righteousness. We receive comfort and consolation rather than the pain and punishment that we deserved.
If you’re here today and you haven’t been made right with the Lord, you’re still in your sins. You can repent of your sins and believe and trust in that same truth. You can trust in the sacrifice of Christ and receive comfort for your sins.
And now as Christians, when we sin, we can be comforted by reminding ourselves of this gospel all over again, that has saved us. Jesus dealt with all of our sin on the cross and when we sin, we clearly need to clear our consciences before God and seek forgiveness, but positionally before him, we are forgiven fully and finally in Christ, all of our sins have been paid for.
We don’t need to wallow in self-pity that we sinned again, but we comfort ourselves with the truth of the gospel. Christ paid it all, but there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ. And this if this is a reality in our life, we have been forgiven, then this is a great comfort to us daily as we sin. And God wants us to comfort our own hearts with these gospel truths. He doesn’t want us to continue to feel bad about what we did. He wants us to confess and repent, yes, but immediately applying the balm of the gospel to our hearts.
And this can be a great comfort when other Christians sin against us, because we don’t need to hold it against them either. We don’t need to demand their punishment. We forgive, as God has forgiven us in Christ. Christ paid for every one of your sins as much as he did mine.
And when another Christian sins against us, we comfort ourselves knowing that Christ paid for that as well. They don’t need to pay for that. They simply need to repent. We graciously forgive. We receive them back and restore them.
He wants you to come to him and find true comfort, lasting comfort in your affliction and that’s primarily found in his word.” Bret Hastings
So, beloved, when you’re afflicted by sin, your own, as you willfully participate in it, the sin of others, do you find comfort in trying to work out justice yourself, that is making others pay for their sins against you, or trying to do penance and pay for your own sins against others?
Or are you trusting in the gospel and the God of justice to deal with sin, whether that’s in Christ, in the cross for all those who have trusted in him, or fully and finally, on Judgement Day, God will render justice.
Find your comfort in that, not in trying to work it out yourself. This justice leads to our next point, sub-point E, peace. Turn over just a few pages to Isaiah 57. Isaiah 57, justice naturally leads to peace when sin is dealt with, God’s wrath has been poured out, it brings peace.
Isaiah 57 verse 14 says, “And it will be said, ‘build up, build up, prepare the way, Remove every stumbling block out of the way of My people. For thus says the One high and lifted up, Who dwells forever, whose name is Holy, I dwell on a high and holy place, and also with the crushed and lowly of spirit In order to the revive the spirit of the lowly And revive the heart of the crushed.
“For I will not contend forever, Nor will I always be angry; For the Spirit would grow faint before Me, And the breath of those whom have made. Because of the iniquity of his greedy gain I was angry and struck him; I hid My face and was angry, And he went on turning away, in the way of his heart. I have seen his ways, but I will heal him;
“I will lead him and pay him his mourners in full with comfort, Creating the praise of the lips. Peace, peace to him who is far, and to him who is near,’ says Yahweh, ‘and I will heal him.’ But the wicked are like the tossing of the sea, For it cannot be quieted, and its waters toss up refuse and mud. ‘There is no peace,’ says my God, ‘for the wicked.’”
If our own sin has been dealt with before God, paid for in Christ, we have objective peace with God. We’ve been justified, declared righteous before God. That’s an objective reality. But this objective reality leads to a subjective peace that we just read about there.
When we remind ourselves of our justification before God in Christ, it comforts us. As we are reminded of this objective peace that our sins have been dealt with. We find also peace in this subjective, we find comfort in this subjective peace. This text, towards the end there said the wicked are like a tossing sea, there is no peace, no comfort in a raging sea. It’s always tossing up refuse and mud. There’s no peace for the wicked, but the opposite is true for the one whose life rests in the gospel.
The gospel makes war with the world and unbelievers, but it brings great peace to Christians and even Christian households. If your home operates with gospel principles, if your marriage priorities are dealing with sin rather than ignoring them, if you’re concerned with working out repentance, then there is, most times, a relative peace in the home.
Many people seek peace in their home, but they try to achieve it not by the gospel, but just by pacification and mollification of sinners, sweeping things under the rug. This is a false and empty peace. But when we seek to be faithful to the gospel, that there’s, there is going to be relative peace in our life, in our homes, in our relationships, in particular with other Christians.
And as we experience this peace, we ought to take great comfort, as is mentioned in this passage, we ought to be encouraged that, even though we do stumble, even though we are afflicted, maybe we are doing this whole thing right, that God has gifted you in the gospel and as you experience this peace, it’s the fruit of the Spirit in your life that God has given you to bring comfort, even to remind you that yes, you are his child.
And then when unbelievers draw near to ask you what is different about your life, about your family, or when they hate you for it, ’cause they want that kind of peace, but they don’t have it and so they hate you for it, beloved, take comfort in all those things. The Lord has brought that peace into your life to bring you comfort.
That brings us to the sixth stream of comfort or sub-point F, faithfulness. Turn back just a couple chapters to Isaiah 51. Sometimes when we are afflicted, doubt assails us. When we are overcome by the things that the Lord has given us to bear, we lose sight of the hope that we have in him. We need to be comforted by his faithfulness towards his people.
Isaiah 51, I’m going to read verses 1 through 8, Isaiah writes, “Listen to me, you who pursue righteousness, Who seek Yahweh: Look to the rock from which you were hewn and to the quarry from which you were dug. ‘Look to Abraham your father And to Sarah who brought you forth through labor pains; When he was but one I called him, Then I blessed him and multiplied him.’
“‘Indeed, Yahweh will comfort Zion; He will comfort all her waste places. And her wildernesses He will make like Eden, And her desert like the garden of Yahweh; Joy and gladness will be found in her, Thanksgiving and sound of a melody. ‘Pay attention to me, O My people, And give ear to Me, O My nation; For law will go forth from Me, And I will set My justice for a light of the peoples. My righteousness is near, My salvation has gone forth, And My arms will judge the peoples; The coastlands will hope in Me, And for My arm they will wait expectantly.
“‘Lift up your eyes to the sky, then look to the earth beneath; For the sky will vanish like smoke, and the earth will wear out like a garment, And its inhabitants will die in like manner; But My salvation will be forever, And My righteousness will not be dismayed. Listen to me, you who know righteousness, A people whose heart is my law; Do not fear the reproach of man, Nor be dismayed at their reviling’s. For the moth will eat them like a garment, And the grub will eat them like wool. But My righteousness will be forever, And My salvation to all generations.’”
When we feel overcome and assailed by the afflictions that the Lord has brought into our life, he begins there by reminding them of Abraham. Was God faithful to his servant Abraham? While we don’t come from the same gene pool, we haven’t been hewn from the same rock, so to speak, the New Testament says we’ve been grafted in.
We are Abraham’s true children in the faith; thus we can look to Abraham. We can see how God was faithful to him, though he was but one, God made a promise to him and turned him into a nation of many, that brought blessing to all of us. And just as God has been faithfulness to Abraham all the way to us who are his children, and even though we are but one person, God deeply cares.
God is faithful to each one of his children even when we are not. He is faithful. He is faithful to bring about all of his promises. Not one of them will fail. Do not doubt that beloved, but trust that just as he was faithful to Abraham and all of his children sin, so he will be faithful to you, to lead you through whatever affliction it is that assails you.
All of this is in part because of his redemption. That is the seventh stream of comfort to us sub-point G, redemption. You’re right where you need to be in Isaiah 51. Just look at verse 17, this is a little bit longer of a section, but I think we’ll probably end with with this point and lead into communion.
But Isaiah 51:17 beginning in 17 and we’re going to go through 52:10. Isaiah writes and he says, “Awaken yourself, awaken yourself, Arise, O Jerusalem, you who have drunk from the hand of Yahweh the cup of his wrath, the chalice of reeling you have drained to the dregs. There is none to guide her among all the sons she has borne, nor is there one to take hold of her by the hand among all the sons she has reared. These two things have befallen you. Who will console you the devastation and destruction, famine and sword. How shall I comfort you? Your sons have fainted.”
They lie, “they lie helpless at the head of every street, like an antelope and a net full of the wrath of Yahweh, the rebuke of your God. Therefore now listen to this, you afflicted who are drunk, but not with wine. Thus says the Lord Yahweh, even your God, who contends for His people. Behold, I have taken out of your hand the cup of reeling, the chalice of my wrath. You will never drink it again. I will set it into the hand of those who cause you grief, who have said to you, lie down that we may walk over you. You have set your net back down like the ground and like the street for those who walk over it.
Awake, awake. Clothe yourself and strength, O Zion. Clothe yourself in your glorious garments, O Jerusalem, the holy city for the uncircumcised and the unclean will no longer come into you. Shake yourself from the dust. Rise up, O captive Jerusalem. Loose yourself from the chains around your neck, O captive daughter of Zion. For thus says Yahweh, you are sold for nothing, and you will be redeemed without money.
For thus says the Lord Yahweh. My people went down at first into Egypt to sojourn there. Then the Assyrians oppressed them without cause. So now what do I have here declares Yahweh? Since My people have been taken away for nothing, Yahweh declares those who rule over them howl, and my name is continually blasphemed all day long. Therefore my people shall know My name. Therefore in that day I am the one who is speaking, here I am. How lovely.
On the mountains are the feet of him who proclaims good news, who announces peace and proclaims good news of good things, who announces salvation and says to Zion, Your God reigns the voice of your Watchmen. They lift up their voices, they shout joyfully together, for they will see with their own eyes. When Yahweh returns to Zion, break forth, shout joyfully together. You waste places of Jerusalem. For Yahweh has comforted his people, He has redeemed Jerusalem. Yahweh has bared His holy arm in the sight of all the nations, that all the ends of the earth may see the salvation of our God.”
When we are afflicted, as Isaiah was prophesying to bring comfort to Israel, when we are afflicted, we can find comfort in our redemption. If we continue to read, you know, right after this is Isaiah 53, we’re going to read just a small portion leading into communion.
But where most of us are familiar with that, it outlines the suffering servant who shed his blood to accomplish this redemption. We might ask, how does this comfort us any differently than the justification we talked about earlier? Well, the justification comforts us when we sin, that it has been dealt with.
The redemption here comforts us when we are afflicted by things external to us. When we go through deep, deep trials in this life, when we are overcome by afflictions, it’s comforting to be reminded what God has spared us from. Look over at Isaiah 53:4 to 12, which outlines what God has put his son through, which really is sparing us from Isaiah 53 forces.
“Surely our griefs He Himself bore, And our sorrows He carried; Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken, Smitten of God, and afflicted. He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; The chastening of our peace fell upon Him, and by His wounds we are healed. All of us, like sheep, have gone astray, Each of us has turned to His own way; But Yahweh has caused the iniquity of all of us To fall on Him.
“He was oppressed and He was afflicted, Yet He did not open His mouth; Like a lamb that was led to slaughter, And like a sheep that is silent before its shearers, So He did not open His mouth. By oppression and judgment He was taken away; And As for His generation, who considered That He was,” cut out of the land of the living, or “cut off out of the land of the living, That for the transgression of my people, striking was due to Him? So His grave was assigned with the wicked men, Yet He was with a rich man in His death, Because He had done no violence, Nor was there any deceit in His mouth.
“But Yahweh was pleased To crush Him, putting Him to grief; If you would place His soul as a guilt offering, He will see His seed, He will prolong His days, And the good pleasure of Yahweh will succeed in His hand. As a result of the anguish of His soul, He will see it and be satisfied; By His knowledge. The Righteous One, My servant, will justify the many, As He will bear their iniquity. Therefore, I will divide Him a portion with the many, And He will divide the spoil with the strong; Because He poured out his soul to death, And was numbered with the transgressors; Yet He Himself bore the sin of many, and interceded for the transgressors.”
When we’re tempted to think in this life, in our affliction, that God has given us maybe a burden too heavy to bear, we can be comforted and remind ourselves what we have been spared. We deserve to be crushed by God. Yet he spared us from that. Whatever burden he has given us to bear instead, it is infinitely more bearable than that. And any discontent we have with the lot God has given us in this life, when we reflect on what Christ has done for us, that discontentment should quickly be turned into joy and thanksgiving and satisfaction.
And as we reflect on what he endured to save us, to bring us into eternal blessedness with him, man, that ought to bring a deep satisfaction to our soul, comfort us in our affliction, no matter what affliction assails us. He did not spare the life of his son to redeem us. We were spared wrath and punishment. Moreover, he will hold us fast and never let us go, no matter the depth of our affliction.
He spared you and afflicted his own son instead with the greatest affliction. He purchased you by the blood of Christ to ensure that you would never be separated from him. Don’t kick against the goads of the lot and life he has given you. Don’t look to worldly things for comfort in your affliction, but turn to him. Find comfort in rejoicing in your redemption regardless of your life circumstances.
Looking at the time, we are not going to try to cover the other three. That ends in a very good place to lead into communion. But Beloved, when you need comfort in affliction, don’t settle for the fleeting comfort of this world. Turn to the one who can truly comfort you in any affliction. Drink deeply from all of these streams that we surveyed today and apply the balm to your own heart.
But just as we lead into communion, as we look, this is the progressive revelation in the Old Testament of God’s, as the God of comfort, but all of this finds its culmination, its full realization in Christ. I’ve already connected all of these things to Christ and the gospel.
But I just want to make this point in Luke chapter 2, when Jesus’s parents come to dedicate him at the temple. Simeon rejoices because he was a righteous man waiting for the Christ, and the Holy Spirit told him, revealed to him that he would see the Christ before he died. And when Jesus’s parents brought him to dedicate him at the temple, the Spirit revealed to him that that was the Christ. And the text says Christ is described there as the comfort of Israel.
All of this Old Testament revelation revealing God is the God of comfort for his people. It culminates and it finds its fulfillment in Christ. Beloved, God is the father of all mercies, Christ is your comfort, and the Holy Spirit is the comforter that makes all of this a reality in our hearts. We want to look to him, we want to find our comfort. Seek comfort in him, not in all the vain things of the world. With that, let’s turn our attention to communion.
Our Father of all mercies, God of all comfort. We come before you this morning humbly recognizing we do so on no out of no righteousness of our own, but we only approach to partake of this holy meal, because of the righteousness of your son Christ imputed to us. We praise you for your mercy and your grace towards us, and we ask that you would bless these elements, that they would be true spiritual food for us, that through this bread and cup that you would commune with us as we commune with you and one another. And we pray all these things in your blessed son Jesus’ name, Amen.