Being Honest About Despair

Being Honest About Despair and the Suffering of Paul

If you have your Bibles, please open them with me and turn to 2 Corinthians 4 and hold your place at verse 7. Before we read, I just want to make a few preliminary comments. If you were here last week, we read verses 7 through 15.

We're going to read them again today, and we're going to go back over some of the things that we talked about last week, and we're going to dig down a little bit deeper. I felt the need after last week to seriously consider some of what was said.

Not that I think that anything that was said was in error, but I want to make sure that I am being clear and that if there are areas that need to be clarified, that they are. And so, we are going to read this passage, and again, to remind you just of the context of where we are, because I know some of you are new, some of you haven't been with us.

We study verse by verse through the Bible. We go through books of the Bible. We've been in 2 Corinthians now for several months, and we have been looking at this as Paul's most autobiographical letter.

I mentioned this last week. This is Paul's defense of his ministry, and one of the ways in which people have attacked his ministry is they say, look at all of his suffering. His suffering is proof that he can't possibly be in the will of God.

Because look at all he's going through.

He's been beaten.

He's been cast out of town. Every ship he gets on sinks. He just, what's the problem? If this is truly God's man, how could he be going through this difficult time? And isn't that echoed today by many of the prosperity preachers who lie to their congregations and say that if you trust in Jesus, you will expect prosperity, health, wealth.

And I remember one most egregious statement from a very popular smiling pastor from Texas who said that if you have the right amount of faith, God will even ensure that you get the best parking spot. That type of vapid, meaningless preaching should not be accepted by the people of God.

And yet the Bible says there will be people who have ears itching for that, and we see it all over. Stadiums are filled with people who want that. And it's very sad. So today the title of the message is Carrying the Death of Christ, as this is a statement that Paul makes in this text.

The Treasure in Jars of Clay

And I want to invite you to stand as we read. We're going to read verses seven down to verse 15. Second Corinthians chapter four, verse seven says,. But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.

We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed, perplexed, but not driven to despair, persecuted, but not forsaken, struck down, but not destroyed, always carrying in the body the death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies.

For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal bodies, excuse me, our mortal flesh, so that death is at work in us, but life in you.

Since we have the same spirit of faith according to what has been written, I believed and so I spoke, we also believe and so we also speak, knowing that he who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and bring us with you into his presence.

For it is all for your sake, so that as grace extends to more and more people, it may increase thanksgiving to the glory of God. Father in heaven, I thank you for your word. I pray now that you would keep me from error as I preach, pray that you would forgive my sins, that you would make my heart a right vessel for proclaiming your truth.

And I pray that you would open the hearts of your people to hear it and understand it and apply it by the power of the spirit, that the spirit may go out and apply these truths. For if we pray and preach apart from the spirit, we pray and preach in vain.

So, God, use this word by the power of your spirit to encourage your people. But also, Lord, to point those who do not know you. To your son, Jesus Christ. The one who said, I am the way and the truth and the life and no one cometh under the father except.

Through me. I pray, Lord, that everything we say would point to Christ. For he is our savior. And Lord, as we talk today about the subject of suffering and. Dig into some of the very difficult aspects of suffering, I pray, oh, God, that you'd be merciful to those who are suffering for Lord, such things are hard to hear and even harder at times to apply.

And yet, oh, God, they are necessary. And needful. And we know that all of us in this room at some level or another have have hurt and are hurting, and some are still in the throes of anguish. So I pray even now for them.

That you'd be merciful. In Jesus name. I'm in this past week, it was announced. That Catherine, Princess of Wales, the wife of Prince William. Has been diagnosed with cancer. She spoke very bravely, I think, about her condition in a video which was placed online and in the news.

She was thankful, she said, for her treatment that she has received already and is still yet to receive. And she spoke very intimately of her husband, her children. And ultimately said that she was hopeful that everything was going to be OK.

Such a thing is a good reminder that no one, not even royalty, is outside of the reach of something as devastating as cancer. And as many of you know, when someone is given a diagnosis like that, it can feel like the entire world is coming to an end.

It can be a time of great despair. It can be a time of serious doubt. And it can even be a time where it feels as if you are slipping into hopelessness. Just last night, I was at Murray Hill Theater. My children are doing a performance there.

And prior to the performance, the owner of the theater, who I had never met, came out and shared his testimony with the people. And he shared how many years ago his wife, while traveling with their two young children, experienced a horrific car accident.

The two young children were killed and she was placed into a coma. And he said when he arrived at the hospital, knowing his two children had died and seeing his wife, whose head and face were now swollen beyond recognition, he said he just wanted to throw himself out the window.

And go and be with his family, that's what he said, I just I just want to go throw myself out the window. And as I listened to him say those words, I thought. I get it. None of us are immune from suffering, and yet there are some who have gone through such suffering that it's tremendous to the point that it's not even to be compared.

And I know that there are stories in this room which have been some of the most severe in the sense of loss and suffering and pain that I have ever seen in going on 20 years in ministry. Our church is no stranger to pain.

It's no stranger to loss. And it's no stranger to suffering, therefore, it is difficult. Results. When you're engaging with a text that directly deals with affliction and doubt and suffering, it's hard not to have those stories in the forefront of your mind.

Having sat for days with people in hospitals and watch the tears and the pain and the suffering and know that for some, this is not just an expression of academic thought, but this is life lived. So today, as we talk about this text and reexamine some of the things that we looked at last week where Paul is addressing his own suffering, I want to reiterate some things that I said last week and I want to dive a little deeper into what I said, hoping to bring even more clarity to what I think Paul is saying and what I think he's not saying.

And sometimes it's important to know what he's not saying as much as it is to understand what he is saying. So let us remind ourselves a little bit of what Paul has said. Beginning in verse seven, we have Paul explaining the purpose behind his weakness, the purpose behind his affliction and the purpose of his endurance.

And what I noted last week, and I hope you remember this, is that Paul is talking about himself first. Many people will run to this text and immediately apply it, as I said last week, in a sense of narcissus.

Remember, it's not exegesis, it's not eisegesis, it's narcissus, it's all about me. But this text doesn't start with us. We have application that can be made and there is secondary application that should be made to us.

But the primary place where this text is, is in Paul himself, who himself, as I said in my opening, has suffered tremendously. Have you ever been stoned? Paul had. Had you ever been run out of town, beaten with whips?

Paul had. Had you ever suffered hatred to the point that people calling for your death in mobs? Paul had. And therefore, in verse seven, he recognizes the weakness of his flesh. And we looked at it last week, and I'm not going to reiterate this because this is not really what I want to talk about today.

But I do want to remind you that this is setting up the entire talk because he's saying we have this treasure in jars of clay. The treasure is in verse six. It's the it's the light of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the light of the knowledge of the glory of Jesus Christ.

That's the treasure. We have it in jars of clay. What are the jars of clay? These mortal fleshly bodies that are easily broken, just like a jar made of clay is brittle and easily broken. Our bodies are easily broken.

And Paul says God has placed this in an infinite treasure, which has greater value than anything in the whole world. And a man would be a fool to buy anything and sell the gospel. But rather, he should sell all that he has if it is to buy the gospel, because it's the pearl of great price.

It is the greatest treasure ever. And Paul says we have the greatest treasure ever in jars of clay, weak jars of clay. This flesh, the soma is the Greek word and sarx means flesh, but soma means body.

And both of those words are used in this in this text. And Paul talks about them and says this is what God has chosen to deposit this wonderful treasure into these weak jars of clay. Why? To show that he is his strength is what endures to show that his power.

Notice it says to show the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. This is the context. And therefore, we move into the next portion, and this is the portion we're going to spend our time with today.

Afflicted in Every Way, but Not Driven to Despair

He says we are afflicted in every way, but not crushed, perplexed, but not driven to despair, persecuted, but not forsaken, struck down, but not destroyed. And I gave a little explanation of that last week.

I gave a short explanation. But as time was running low, I said, I have to come back. I have to come back. I have to talk about this again. And I'm not I Mike told me it's OK if I say this. Mike and I talked two hours after the sermon last week.

And Mike said he said he said, say whatever you want to say. So for those who know. If there's anybody in this room. Who has suffered in the last few years. His brother, Mike, and his wife, Sybil, he mentioned earlier her.

Continued reticence to want to come in, and I get it. It's not yet ready, and we pray for her that she would be and we should. We should continue to lift them up. And lift her up specifically, but as we were talking, we and Mike, you don't mind.

We said you said this was OK. We were talking about the the reality that the words in this text are almost. It's almost impossible to understand quite what Paul's getting at. Because the words that he uses in the original language are literally synonyms in the English, it tries to fix that.

It tries to create one being different than the other. But the problem is they're really not that different from one another. And so I don't normally do this because I don't want to confuse anyone by putting up the original language.

That's what the original looks like. It's underneath the English. So in the English standard version, it says afflicted, but not crushed. And the two words underneath that are two Greek words. And the alu there in the middle, that's the but not words.

And the first word in the second word, there are two different words. But those two different words, when you look at them lexically, meaning you examine the meaning, they both mean the same thing. So when you say you're crushed, but not crushed, because we change it, we say pressed, but not crushed.

But in reality, both of them can mean crushed. So then you have to step back and you have to look at it contextually. What is Paul saying? Well, he is using two different words, so maybe he does have two different meanings in mind.

And certainly he must have at least an expressive difference, even if they are lexically similar and synonymous with one another. And what I've been doing this week is I've been looking at this and I've been examining these words and I've been spending time in the original.

And I've been thinking about this and I've been thinking I start from the bottom and work my way up. And if you don't mind, I'd like to do that because I actually think it's easier to start at the bottom.

Because the word struck down, as I said last week, literally means to be thrown down. Balo is the root of that. And the Greek here is kata balo minoi, and it means literally to be thrown on the ground.

But the word after that, apalominoi, means to be totally destroyed or broken up. And so there is an obvious distinction between those two words, thrown down but not destroyed. We get it. OK. We work our way back up to the next word.

The next words, diakominoi, persecuted but not, and this one's a long one, ekata lepominoi, which means abandoned. We get the difference. Persecuted but not abandoned. Remember the example I gave last week of Janhas.

Janhas was persecuted. He was taken out after the Council of Constance. He was burned for his faith and yet he died singing. Persecuted but not abandoned. Persecuted by his enemies, not abandoned by God.

But then we move up and I want to show you this one. This one's really fun. It's literally, see the red? It's one word and then a prefix and the same exact word. So this is what it looks like without what I just did.

But when I do this, you'll see, apalominoi, ex-apalominoi. It's literally the same root and the X simply expresses, it simply causes it to be a little more expressed, but it's still the same concept.

So when you say perplexed but not driven to despair, it's literally despair but not driven to despair. And this is the part that I really want to spend some time with. Because I don't want you to think that if your situation has caused you to despair, that you are somehow in that moment in sin.

Because I literally think he says despair but not driven to despair. You say, how could he mean that? How could he possibly say one but not the other? This is where it gets hard. And if this feels like more of a Bible study to you, well, buckle up, buttercup, because that's just got to be what it is.

Because we have to be able to spend time in the word of God. If you want me to preach to you, I am not going to give you platitudes. I am going to preach the word. And this is what you need to learn how to study, because that's what we all need.

Pardon me if I was rude, but this is important. So when we see this phrase, perplexed but not driven to despair, this is where, and we're going to get to the first one in a minute. But just here, oh, by the way, you notice the red of the rumenoi is also in stenocho-rumenoi, which is the crushed.

All of these words lexically mean just about the same. You know, you look at it in your fairs or you go into Laonida or you go into any of these lexicons and you begin to look up the etymology of these words and the use of these words and how these,.

They're all basically the same.

In fact, the first four words all have within them the idea of straights. And by straights, when I say straight, you usually think like straight, but by straights, I want you to think more in the terms of straightjacket.

You know what a straightjacket is? Maybe some of you don't. Maybe you don't remember years ago they were maybe a little bit more common, but you would see people in these jackets where they had long sleeves and they would put the people in the long sleeves and they would cross their arms and they would pull the sleeves behind them and they would latch them with a belt behind them.

And that was called a straightjacket. And the reason why it was called a straightjacket was intended to not allow a person to move and hurt themselves or hurt others. Well, that word straight or to be in straights is found at the heart of the definition of all these words, all the first four.

It's hard to say the first one because it's thylabiminoid, stenochrominoid, operominoid and exoperominoid. Those four words all have a very similar meaning. And so you have to step back and say, what in the world is Paul saying?

What is he saying here in our times of absolute and utter grief and brokenness and when things have hit us completely off guard? Do we not feel despair? Thank you. Do we not? And yet, if you read this in the English, it seems as if that's wrong.

Because it says we're perplexed, but we're not driven to despair and the people who are in despair say, wait a minute.

That's not right.

I am, in fact, in despair. And if you've never been there. Spend two hours talking to someone who has before you sit on your high horse of confidence. Go talk to the guy last night. You see, that's the problem.

Is I would never say we should interpret the Bible experientially in the sense that we should use our experience to interpret the text. But what we do have to do is we have to interpret the text honestly.

And say, yes, there are times when we feel despair. So what does Paul mean? Well, there's one way that we could take this. I don't think it's 100 percent correct, but I do think we should at least consider this is that Paul is first talking about himself.

I said that last time, and I do think that is true. Paul does have in this moment and an apostolic gift of leadership that God has given him. And therefore, in all of the suffering he had, he had that apostolic gift with him that was able to push him forward and able to overcome these times of distress and despair.

We cannot leave that part out. But I don't think that that means it has no application to us. But I think that we first have to at least consider the fact that Paul, as I said, is expressing his experience.

You understand what I'm saying? Paul's saying this about himself and about his companions. Paul's speaking about his life and he's saying, I'm crushed, but not crushed. I'm despair, but not despair. And you say, is the Bible forked tongue?

Is Paul being double minded? No, but he is speaking in a way that's more difficult than I think any of us realize. And the best example that I have been able to come up with in trying to figure this out.

And really trying to come to a conclusion on what is Paul saying is that there is a difference between being in despair. And being given over to despair. And here's where I would make that conclusion in Romans chapter one, in Romans chapter one, Paul says.

And God gave them up. To a debased mind to do what ought not to be done, and then he lists all of these sins that happens when God gives someone up to a debased mind. He talks first about homosexuality, but then he goes into all kinds of other sins.

He talks about the sins of of hatred and dishonoring parents and gossip and funny hatred of God right next to gossip.

Keep that in mind.

It's all there, but it's what being given over to a debased mind. Now, I want to ask you a question.

Oh, this one's going to be fun.

In this last week, have any of you had any depraved thoughts? Weren't ready for that, were you? Now, I ain't asking you to stand up and testify. But do you know Jesus? You have the Spirit of God in your heart.

And yet this past week, did you have a depraved thought? Maybe a hateful thought towards someone? Maybe somebody cut you off in traffic and you thought about every which way you would like to see them get a ticket or whatever.

Or maybe you just cursed their name. Maybe you had a moment of depravity. I'm not excusing any of us. Notice I put us in that I'm not making an excuse for our thoughts. But beloved, is it not true that if I took every thought you had from last week and I put it on a television screen and I played it for the congregation, that you would be willing to sink below your chair and hide yourself for the rest of the service?

No doubt. And yet, if we are God's children and we have been given the gift of the Holy Spirit and we have been born again by the Spirit. Then we know one thing is certain. God has not given us up to a debased mind.

And now you kind of get the idea where I'm going, that in our flesh, in our unsanctified, perfectly flesh. That we still struggle with thoughts that are ungodly, and yet God has not given us over to a debased mind.

Amen. Could have easily, right? I know where I was. And so can I step back from this text and can I say that maybe what Paul is saying and maybe the right application is not that you're not going to despair.

But that you are not going to be given over to it. Because God is not letting you go because you belong to him. So do you feel crushed?

Absolutely.

But you're still in his hand. Do you feel despair?

Most certainly.

But you're not given over to it because he's still holding you up. You see the difference? It's a small difference, but it's huge in the sense of what it produces in you. Because it produces in you. An ability to say.

Though he slay me. Yet I will trust in him. That only comes from God. That only comes from God. And it ain't easy. C .S. Lewis. I'm sure many of you are familiar with Lewis. C .S. Lewis wrote many books that many people lift up.

As being great works of Christian writing. Certainly he wrote the. Narnia series, many of us are familiar with that. He wrote the book Mere Christianity, which is. A useful apologetic for the Christian experience.

But C .S. Lewis also wrote a book that many people probably have never read. Well, at least I mean, many people have. But many of you may not have read the title of the book is A Grief Observed. A grief observed.

A grief observed is a poignant and deeply personal account of grief. Written by C .S. Lewis. After the death of his wife, Joy, his wife died in 1960. And Lewis. At her death. Struggled with intense. And complete brokenness.

For a long time. And so he wrote in a series of journal entries. About how he was grappling with questions of faith, the nature of God and the meaning of suffering. He explored the raw emotions of grief, anger, doubt, despair.

And he tries to reconcile his beliefs with the harsh reality that death brings. And there's a portion in the writing of A Grief Observed where he describes the feeling of spiritual abandonment. And the sense of God being silent in his pain.

Like God's not answering me. And I want to read two quotes from the book. Now, this is this begins a little awkwardly because he's going to quote he himself is quoting something. He says, I once read.

The sentence. I lay awake all night with a toothache thinking about the toothache and about lying awake. That's true to life. Part of every misery is, so to speak, the misery's shadow or reflection. The fact that you don't merely suffer, but you have to keep on thinking about the fact that you suffer.

And I not only live each endless day in grief, but live each day thinking about living each day in grief. So it's like it's not only am I going to grieve tomorrow, but today I got to think about tomorrow.

Because I'm going to wake up and still be grieving.

If that ain't real, that's real. Not only do I have to think about grief, but I got to think tomorrow I'm still going to be in this. I'm not going to wake up and it'd be sunshine and rainbows. I'm going to wake up tomorrow and it's going to still hurt.

So today's grief is compounded by the fact that I still got tomorrow's grief to look forward to.

That's profound.

And I know what you're all saying. Please get to the good part.

What if I don't? Because that's what he was saying.

When's this going to be over? He goes on to write this. Meanwhile, where is God? This is the one of the most disquieting symptoms. When you're happy, so happy that you have no sense of needing him, so happy that you're tempted to feel his claims upon you are an interruption.

If you remember yourself and turn to him with gratitude and praise, you'll be or so it feels welcomed with open arms. But go to him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain. And what do you find?

A door slammed in your face and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. That's what Lewis felt. Would you not call that despair? Now, some of you may come to me later. Well, I have questions about Lewis's salvation.

He didn't believe this or he believed that. Hold your thoughts. I'm just trying to ask you, are you Christian?

And do you feel this?

That for a moment, let's just stop with trying to determine a man's salvation, who's long dead and Jesus knows and just ask the question, is this experience not real? It's absolutely real. And that's why I wanted to go back over this today.

And you may think I'm beating like just going too far and digging too deep. But I'm trying to get you to the point of understanding that for some folks, when they read verses eight and nine, it's not comforting right now.

But that doesn't mean that it's not true. Amen. So what do we do?

What do we do? How do we deal with this?

There are so many stories that can be told about people who have gone through times of tremendous difficulty only to find out later some blessing in the difficulty. Corrie ten Boom is a great story. If you've never read her story of when she was taken to the concentration camp and she was put into a place with the other women and they were all kept away from the guards and the guards wouldn't come in their room because of the fleas.

Her room was infested with fleas. And so the guards wouldn't come in because they didn't want to get infested with fleas. And the ladies used to pray against the fleas, please, God, take away these fleas.

They're so miserable and our life is so hard. Only later to find out that that was what kept the guard out and that's what kept them able to be safe. As the guards wouldn't come in and hurt them, the guards wouldn't come take away their Bible.

Because they didn't want to be in the room. So they learned to praise for the fleas. It's a great story and it is true. And we cannot discount the reality of that, but sometimes. Sometimes. We don't know.

Until glory. Why we've experienced what we've experienced. And sometimes because I've heard people say, oh, God's always going to make it right. Maybe not on this side of the veil, maybe not on the side of the veil.

The greater faith is saying, I know my redeemer lives. That's the greater faith, not saying, well, one day God's going to make it right. My wife and I went through three miscarriages in a row before we had Theo.

And then on this last child with Theo, she went through six months of terrible postpartum depression, and I wouldn't even be saying this if she had not been so publicly forthright about saying it to herself.

But I watched my wife in despair. I watched her. Feel like she was questioning her own sanity and her own faith. I watched it and I knew she loved Jesus. And so you may be there now. Where do we find our comfort?

Is it in platitudes? No, it's in Christ. Please look with me again at the text. I just want to show you something. And this is where I'm going to draw it all together, because after Paul gives these four statements, afflicted, but not crushed, persecuted, not driven to despair, persecuted, not forsaken, struck down, but not destroyed.

Notice what he says in verse 10. This is the title of my sermon today. Always carrying in the body the death of Jesus. And here's another one of those Hinnah clauses. So that remember I said last week the purpose for what purpose?

So that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. You see. Sometimes the purpose of suffering. It's simply so that you learn to ever more trust in the Christ who lives within you, you see, that that Christ who is in you is being manifested through you in your suffering.

Notice what he says right after. For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake. Now, again, I think he's talking about himself and his companions because they were literally being condemned and sought out for death.

He says we are constantly being given over to death for Jesus' sake. So that what? So that the life of Jesus may be manifested in our mortal flesh. He says the same thing twice. He literally says the same thing twice.

The first time he says it there in verse 10, he says so that the life of Jesus may be manifest in our bodies. That's Soma. And then he says so that the life of Jesus in verse 11 may be manifested in our flesh.

That's Sarx. And it's two different words because it actually refers to two different aspects of us. The body is our wholeness, but the flesh is this fleshly part that we battle. Paul talks about the flesh that we battle.

And ordinarily, Sarx is negative and Soma is positive. But in this sense, he's he's he's using them synonymously to remind us this, that in all of these things. Christ is manifesting himself. In us, Christ is manifesting himself.

In our suffering, there's nothing other than Christ. That would cause that man right there. To continue to stand and preach his word, my being honest, nothing other than Christ that would cause that man to stand and continue to preach his word, the Christ in him.

And I know this sermon ain't about you, Mike, and I hope you don't feel like I'm pointing in your way to embarrass you or shame you or any way. I love you and I'm thankful for you. And I'm glad we were able to talk about this because this is real.

And Mike's not the only one I can walk around the room and I can see tears and pain and people who have suffered and people who have hurt. This just happens to be the most recent open wound, but there are wounds all around this place and we know it.

God is manifesting himself. His son. In us. As we continue to trust in him. In our suffering, I'll close with this, there's a famous story. Comes out of the I think it's the third century, it's called the 40 Martyrs of Sebast.

These were Roman soldiers. Who, during the persecution of Christians. Refused to renounce their faith despite torture and death. They were subjected to freezing temperatures and they were forced to go out on a lake that was frozen where they would stand until they died of exposure.

As the 40 men stood there waiting for the winter cold to pull the life out of their bodies. One of the men. Decided it wasn't worth it. And so he. Ran. For the lake shore. Went to the fire and warmed himself.

Well, one of the other soldiers. Who had watched this all. Who had. Put the men on the ice. Saw this man defect. And he saw the defection. But then he looked out on the ice and he saw the faith. Of those 39 men and he took off his shield.

And his armor. And he walked out. And he died with. Because those men manifested the life of Christ in their dying bodies. You see what Paul means here when he says. Death is at work in us. But life in you.

God is manifesting his son. In our suffering. Praise be to God.

Let's pray.

Father, I thank you for this opportunity. And I do pray God that I've been faithful to your text. Pray that I've been honest. And pray that I've been truthful and I pray that I. Not mishandled it in any way.

I pray that Jesus would be glorious today. Jesus would be worthy. Is he worthy? Is he worthy? He is.

He is.

Of all blessing and honor and glory, and therefore, oh, God. Give us in this moment.

A sense.

Of that majesty, and I pray, oh, God, I pray for. The members of this church. Those who have suffered and those who will suffer that we would understand that Christ is not abandoned us, but he is, in fact, with us in it.