Comfort in Affliction

Michael Coughlin

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Well, good morning. It's good to be back with all of you here, anyone that hasn't met me yet.

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This is my second time preaching here, but I've visited the church a number of times.

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I've been friends with Joe for over a decade now and several of the others now. And so I am happy to be here to open the word.

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May I ask, was the call to worship and the confession, was that all designed to go along with the...

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really? Because I thought that was really well done. And so we'll give all glory to God for that one.

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We don't get any credit because I probably couldn't have picked better accommodating passages of Scripture to go along with what

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I will preach about today, which is 2nd Corinthians 4 16 through 18.

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You can turn in your Bibles to that passage if you're going to read along with me.

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I will say by way of introduction that, you know, 1st

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Thessalonians 5 14 says, we urge you brothers to admonish the unruly, encourage the faint -hearted, and help the weak, be patient with everyone.

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And there is a sense that when you're preaching the Word of God, there's a little bit of all of that that may or may not come out.

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And a lot of preaching ends up being, for lack of a better phrase, just shouting at people how terrible they are and in trying to exalt the

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Lord in that sense. But today's sermon, this passage, is really about encouraging the faint -hearted.

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And so the passage itself is for believers to understand what

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God wants you to know, and so that you might be comforted in the midst of your affliction.

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And so if you do not know the Lord already, if you are not already a Christian, maybe you're a visitor here today, maybe you're just investigating it, a lot of this message doesn't apply to you at the moment.

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And so what I would exhort you to is to still listen, but I'd like you to understand that there is a

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God of this universe who's going to judge all people that have ever lived. And each and every one of us has fallen short of his perfect standard, which is holy, holiness, righteousness, justice, and we cannot obey his law.

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And in our sinful states, we cannot even come to him and be near him. And yet he and his love sent his son

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Jesus Christ into the world to become a man. The second person of the Trinity took on human flesh, lived in this world where we live, had the same kind of state we have, this human state, with all the miseries of this world and all the difficulties, and yet he chose on every single occasion of his life to do nothing but the will of God, and to obey

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God's law perfectly. And he did that in the place of those who could not.

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And then when he died on the cross, he died in the place of those who deserve to die because of their sin against God.

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And he rose again from the grave three days later and promises that he will resurrect all those who trust in him to new life one day, and he will forgive your sins right now.

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And that's what Eric was just talking about, that justification that we have at the moment where you can be seen as righteous by God in Jesus Christ, and not because of anything that you do, but because of what

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Christ has done. So that is something that we all would like everyone in this room to trust by faith, that Christ died in your place and lived the life that you could not live, so that you could be treated as if you lived the life that he lived.

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Now let me read from the passage, 2nd

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Corinthians 4. I'll just read the three verses at the end of the chapter, 16 through 18.

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I'm reading from the Legacy Standard Bible, so if it sounds different to you, that's why, if you don't have that one.

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Therefore we do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day.

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For our momentary light affliction is working out for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison.

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While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen.

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For the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.

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That was the Word of God. Let me pray. Father in heaven, we ask that you would bless the study of your

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Word today, bless the preaching of your Word, that your Holy Spirit would be active in all of our hearts, piercing us even to deeper levels than we knew existed, that we might truly trust what you have written.

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In Christ's name I pray, Amen. I don't think that it would be too small a thing if I said to you that these verses here could be construed in a sense as a simple thesis of the

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Christian life. I would say that not because I think this passage is utterly special, but because in fact any one of you that knows your

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Bible well right now can probably think of half a dozen passages that say virtually the same thing.

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We already saw today, and we'll say accidentally, but providentially, that multiple people have gotten up here to say something about the

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Bible and from different passages than I chose to even use to support what

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I'm going to teach from this text said the same things I could say. And even when

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Joe said, how do we confront anxiety? You know, how do we battle this thing?

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How do we avoid the sinful anxiety? My first thought was we set our minds on things above us, and that's from Colossians chapter 3.

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And that's not in my notes, and it wasn't in Joe's. You know, so the whole Bible tells the story of Jesus Christ, but somewhat secondarily to that, but very closely related to it, is that the

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Bible tells us how it is that we are supposed to live. The Bible tells us what it means that as Christians we aren't to lose heart.

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That's verse 16. The Bible tells us that we are going to be afflicted, but that there's glory to come later that is better than that affliction, which is why we willingly suffer.

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And the Bible reminds us over and over, verse 18, to have faith, which is what it means to say we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen.

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And so you will leave here today very likely thinking of, hopefully you will think of a number of passages that you thought, oh, he could have used that passage, or he could have used that passage.

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It's, this theme is throughout the Bible. Why do the righteous suffer?

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Right? That was Job's question. That is the question that Jesus answers for us at the cross, and we have comfort because of that.

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The Heidelberg Catechism begins with a question, what is your only comfort in life and death?

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And the answer is that I, with body and soul, both in life and in death, am not my own, but belong to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ, who with his precious blood has fully satisfied for all my sins, and redeemed me from all the power of the devil.

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So we kind of have the gospel there. We believe the gospel. That's one of our comforts, but then it adds, and so preserves me that without the will of my

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Father in heaven, not a hair can fall from my head. Indeed, that all things must work together for my salvation.

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Wherefore, by his Holy Spirit, he also assures me of eternal life, and makes me heartily willing and ready from now on to live for him.

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And so I was not here when you began the book of 2nd Corinthians. I was here when we were very close to the end of 1st

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Corinthians. And so I don't know everything that has been taught up to this point exactly, but what

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I do know is that you're going verse by verse through the Bible here. And the reason that your elders have chosen to do that is that they understand that the context of each passage is important to understanding the passage.

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And so I can't get up here and just randomly teach you what these three verses mean, apart from all of the verses surrounding them.

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In fact, the verses before them and after them are important. And what we know from the book of 2nd

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Corinthians, if you start at the beginning, is that this book was written for the comfort of God's people. The Corinthian church was a church that most of us wouldn't attend if it was down the street from here.

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Let's be clear about that, okay? And yet believers in the first century were expected to be there.

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They were expected to be worshiping with the other believers there, and they were expected to love them. Despite the fact that there was a pile of correction necessary for that church, right?

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That's instructive in and of itself, but I have to get to chapter 4 in my context summary here. But what we know is that they get to the third chapter, and Paul is trying to make a number of arguments throughout this book, and Paul does a very good job of stating something, often restating it in different ways, and then

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Paul also does a very good job of following what seems to be a really clear outline, if you choose to break it down that way.

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And sometimes Paul will say something, go down a little trail to describe it further, and then he'll say the same thing again, but in different words.

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And I think that we have an example of that in in chapter 3 and chapter 4, where it's really one larger argument

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Paul's making. It doesn't even end at 4. 5 continues the argument, I believe, all the way to the end of that chapter.

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But in verse 16, we'll look at these verses. Paul says, therefore we do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day.

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Losing heart is one of the primary concerns of Paul when he's writing to the people.

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The book of Corinthians, I said, was written for the comfort of God's people, and so comforting someone is, in a sense, the opposite of them losing heart.

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You want to help people to be bold. If you look at chapter 3, you'll remember that in verse 12,

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Paul says, therefore having such a hope, we use great boldness. Boldness would be the opposite of losing heart.

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He says in verse 4 of chapter 3, and such confidence we have through Christ toward God.

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This section of Scripture, if you look in verse 5, well, verse 1 of chapter 4, therefore, since we have this ministry, as we receive mercy, we do not lose heart.

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In chapter 5, Paul says in verse 6, therefore, being always of good courage, and knowing that while we are at home in the body, we're absent from the

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Lord. For we walk by faith, not by sight. We are of good courage, and so Paul's emphasizing over and over the good courage they have, that they don't lose heart.

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They don't faint or grow weary in this difficult day. That could be very difficult to do, but God promises that he will help us with that.

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If you turn to Isaiah 40, some of you have this section memorized. It's a good passage to remember.

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In Isaiah chapter 40, verse 28,

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Isaiah writes, do you not know? Have you not heard? The everlasting God, Yahweh, the creator of the ends of the earth, does not become weary or tired.

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So we have this great statement about who God is, and what God is like. Isaiah continues, his understanding is unsearchable, but then this

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God who doesn't grow weary or tired, rather than that simply being written for contrast for you, so you can feel small, which it should make you feel pretty small.

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I mean, most of us couldn't go, most of us can't go a day without sleeping, but if you had to, you could go a couple days.

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You wouldn't function very well though, right? That's how they train some of these Navy SEAL guys, and what, 90 % of them drop out anyway, right?

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It's a very small fraction of people that don't need a lot of rest. But what

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God says in verse 29, is he gives power to the weary. And to him who lacks vigor, he increases might, though youths grow weary and tired.

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So even though young people are going to be weary and tired, he says, and choice young men stumble badly, those who hope in Yahweh will gain new power.

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They will mount up with wings like eagles, they will run and not get tired, they will walk and not become weary. The idea here is, is that God is able to sustain his people.

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And you, although you will be faint on your own, although you will tire out on your own, and to use the phrase from 2nd

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Corinthians 4, you will lose heart on your own. God, who is the God of the universe, the one who called light out of darkness, we saw that earlier in chapter 4, the

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God who created the heavens and the earth, he also has the power to help you through the difficulties that you face.

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You have to believe that. Paul continues in verse 16.

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I'm back in 2nd Corinthians 4. He says, though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day.

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There's a distinction here that can be made, that you could make a whole Sunday school out of, if you wanted, that we have a body and a soul.

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We saw that in the Heidelberg Catechism, question that I read, question one, that I, with body and soul, belong to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ.

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You are a body and a soul. Do you realize if you deny that, you're either uneducated and ignorant, or you're a heretic.

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We cannot deny that fact. You have a body, you have a soul.

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There are people, it maybe sounds weird to you, if you haven't studied this, but there's people that have denied one or the other of those.

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Or there's people who have overemphasized one or the other to the point where it's a functional denial of one, where they think

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Jesus is the Savior of the soul, but not the body. Let me tell you something, if Jesus doesn't save your body, if he doesn't make you, what, no passe pecca, whatever,

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I don't remember the Latin, non passe peccare, if he doesn't make you unable to sin someday, you, that's, that's not hope.

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Living in this body for eternity would be miserable. Part of the point of this passage is to teach you that it's really miserable for just 70 years, but compared to eternity, it's not.

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You have a body and a soul. And so we aren't, we're not materialists. We don't believe that there's nothing but the physical world around us.

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We believe there's more to it. We believe when a person dies that their soul lives on, that there's something that is happening with that soul that is different from the experience of being in this body, but it's important, and it's actually part of who you are.

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But we also believe your physical experience is vital to your existence, and it's part of who you are, and, and Jesus validated this without question in the

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Incarnation. And so I don't even need to go into that, but it is important to know that there are people who will deny these kinds of things.

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Your inner man is your spirit, your outer man is your body in this passage right here, and the inner man is spiritual, and your outer man is dead.

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Now the passage says, though our outer man is decaying, our inner man is being renewed day by day.

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I would submit to you that things that are alive aren't decaying in reality, that it's actually, this is

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Paul's way of reminding us that you are carrying a dead flesh. So you were once dead in your trespasses and sins in which you once walked according to the prince of the power of the air,

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Satan, right? And that says in Ephesians 2, and then Paul says, but you've been quickened or made alive in Christ.

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By grace we are saved through faith. That's, that's Paul talking about your spiritual self being saved, and you've been justified.

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And so when we talk about salvation, we talk about multiple facets, and you need to understand that enough so that you don't confuse the categories.

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So one, you have to be justified. There's a few steps before this, and God does all these things, but you have to be justified.

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So you're, you have to be looked at by God as if you have not sinned, and as if you have lived the perfect righteousness that Christ lived.

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That's called the active imputation of the obedience of Christ to your account. So God looks at you, and instead of seeing all the bad stuff you've done, and every time you've failed,

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God looks at you, and all he sees is the perfect righteousness of his son. And he can't be more pleased than he is with his son.

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Which, there's a lot of implications to that. Okay, but just the idea that you realize

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God can't love you any more than he ever has. You know that? You can't make him love you more.

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And what's really nice, you can't make him love you less either. Right? You can't.

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You can't do it. It's not about you. He sees his son when he looks at you. And so, then after you're justified, you have to be sanctified.

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Sanctification is that process where, by God's grace, you're actually made more practically in this world like Christ.

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Eric talked about that today, too. Okay, so that's when you look back on your life, and you realize, wow,

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I don't do some of this stuff I used to do that was bad, or I have more affection for God now than I did before.

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It doesn't mean you're somehow closer to God all of a sudden. Again, God can't love you any more than he did ever.

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He's perfect. He doesn't change. But you enjoy your life a little more the closer you get to him.

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You're a little more prepared for the things that come up. And then one day you'll be glorified. That's when God takes your body that right now is decaying.

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It's decomposing. It's dead. It's just a pile of flesh that is completely and utterly depraved because of sin.

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And that's the thing that's actually constantly pulling you towards sin. And it's that spiritual battle that you're in where you're already saved in God's eyes.

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You've been seated in the heavenly places with Christ Jesus, and yet simultaneously justified and sinner, right?

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And you are now in actuality in a battle. And there's a spiritual war going on between your body and your flesh where you're grappling with the sins of the flesh because your flesh will not quit trying to pull itself in that direction.

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And your spirit is supposed to be trying to pull you in the other direction. And God promises some power when you get weary and weak in that situation.

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And so you don't lose heart even though your outer man's decaying. So even though you're constantly delivered over to death,

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Paul said earlier, right? Even though, what does he say? In every way afflicted, verse 8, perplexed, verse 9, persecuted, struck down, always caring about in the body the dying of Jesus.

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It says in verse 11, for we who live are constantly being delivered over to death for Jesus's sake. So death works in us even though you're constantly under the pains of death in this world.

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You're surrounded by either someone else's death, the reality of your own, the fear of it, and on top of death and even just the annoyance of that, you have the fact that your flesh wants to sin.

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You can wake up in the morning. You can have a nice thought about God. You can get on your knees and pray and say,

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God help me to have a great day today to obey you, to love you, to serve you, to obey your commands.

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You can review the Ten Commandments if that helps you. Whatever it is that you want to do and everything's great and then at some point something happens.

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Some circumstance occurs or maybe there's no circumstance. At some point you just you fail.

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You sin and that's your flesh and that's what we're longing for is the deliverance from that.

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That's what Paul said when he said, Oh who will deliver me from this body of death? Paul, who arguably is the greatest

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Christian man who ever lived, in theory, maybe one of the most mature and sanctified believers that ever lived, could not wait to be delivered from the body of sin that he was in.

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He didn't cry about the shipwrecks. He didn't complain about being starved and hungry and naked and persecuted and in famine.

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He didn't cry about those things. He didn't ask God for deliverance in any of the prayers that I can remember. You can correct me if I'm wrong, but what he wanted was to be delivered from the body that brought him into sin.

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Even if it was only in his mind and heart sometimes. That's what he hated the most. So Paul says don't lose heart and one of the reasons you cannot lose heart is because of verse 14.

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Knowing that he who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and present us with you.

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Jesus's resurrection, and I'll add his ascension, are essential. If Jesus didn't raise from the dead, you really don't have any hope.

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If Jesus didn't ascend into heaven, we don't have any hope either. These are things that promise us something better than what we have now.

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So don't lose heart because your inner man's being renewed day by day. So the hope is that while you're suffering from the flesh, while your flesh is, if you're like most people, it's not a perfect linear curve, but if you're like most people, there comes a point in your life when you go from,

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I'm growing and I'm getting stronger and I'm looking young and healthy and I can do things, and there comes a point where you're basically, what do you call it, over the hill?

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Where it's like you're on the way, you're on the way down, okay? You're not looking forward to more vigor in your flesh, okay?

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You might be able to work out, lose weight, do some things, but there comes a point where everybody is just headed toward the grave, all right?

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And what Paul's saying is that while you're watching that process, and this is hard, I think, for younger people to understand, okay?

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I see some young guys in here, I bet you could go outside, we could beat you with a sledgehammer, you'd probably get up and just run around no problem, right?

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There's some of us who like, we're hoping we don't trip over the carpet, all right? But as you're heading in that direction, and everything's dying and everything's hurting and things are starting to be harder to do,

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God's promising that your inner man's being renewed day by day. What I would hope to see is that as you're getting grayer, as you're getting wrinklier, as everything's starting to fall apart, as there's more doctor's appointment, more medicines, more vitamins, essential oils, whatever you do, as long as you don't force me to mask, like, do what you want, right?

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But, different topic. But there's a point where what you hope to be seeing is that in your own life, you're starting to know the

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Lord better. You're being sanctified. That you are practically able to say that you know that in some way, you're sinning less than you did before.

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I get that there's this idea that we're always sinful and we're depraved in our flesh, but I think we can see growth.

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I think you should be able to see measured growth in your life. Now, you may still battle that thoughts come in your mind, and Satan attacks us in all sorts of ways, where he tries to get us to do things and to think things.

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But some of our outward sins, in particular, we should start to see more self -control over, and things like that.

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So, in verse 17, Paul continues the argument that I believe he actually started in chapter 3, at the very least.

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He says, "...for our momentary light affliction is working out for us an eternal weight of glory, far beyond all comparison."

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Now, this is just like one of these phrases where I'm excited to learn

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Greek one day, I know Joe was talking about today, because when I looked at the people that talked about this verse, so there's a

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Greek word that we get a word from, and it's hyperbole. Most of you know what hyperbole is, and hyperbole is when we say something that goes above and beyond what it really means.

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So, it's when you say, I've told you a thousand times, you know, put the toilet seat down, or whatever, right?

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So, Paul's saying this is like the hyperbole of hyperboles, to even consider comparing your affliction to the weight of glory that's coming.

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So, briefly, go back to chapter 3. In verse 7,

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Paul's talking about the law, right? The Ten Commandments written in stone. But if the ministry of death, which is interesting, he calls the

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Ten Commandments the ministry of death. So, if somehow you think the Ten Commandments is the covenant of grace,

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I don't get that. So, he says that the ministry of death in letters, having been engraved on stones, came with glory.

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So, he's saying the law came with glory, right? He's not saying it didn't. He said it had glory, right?

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So, that the sons of Israel could not look intently at the face of Moses because of the glory of his face, which was being brought to an end.

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How will the ministry of the Spirit not be even more in glory? So, he's saying that, you know, Moses had this shining face.

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It was so shiny they had to cover him up. They couldn't look at him. That happens in Christians sometimes.

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There's some Christians that you can't be around. It's not because there's something wrong with them. It's because there's something wrong with you.

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And you don't like being around that guy because he actually makes you feel kind of dirty because he's actually living a holy life.

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And he refuses to participate in things that maybe you happily participate in.

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So, there's a little bit of that that can happen. But, he says there's a glory that came from the law.

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It was on Moses' face. People couldn't look at it, right? And then he says in verse 9, if the ministry of condemnation has glory, so again, he says it has glory, much more does the ministry of righteousness abound in glory.

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So, now he's saying that the ministry of righteousness has much more glory than the law.

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But then listen to what he says in verse 10. He says, for indeed what has been glorious, what had been glorious, in this case, has no glory because of the glory that surpasses it.

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Paul wasn't an idiot. And the Holy Spirit who wrote this behind Paul, right?

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He just said there was glory in two verses of the old covenant, of the law. So much that it made a guy's face shine and people couldn't look at it.

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And then his next verse, he says, in this case, it has no glory.

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I think he's making the same kind of comparison he's making in verse 17 of chapter 4. But the idea is, is that once you understand the glory of the new covenant that Paul's revealing to the

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Corinthians and reminding them about, reminding them because what were they doing? They had a guy in their church that they should have been dealing with in his sin, right?

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Back in chapter 5 of the first letter that's scripture, there was apparently, I think, four letters to the

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Corinthians. But in the first letter we have in scripture, there's a guy they should have been dealing with and they weren't dealing with it right.

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And then they dealt with it. And then it sounds like that guy, or maybe it was a different guy, repented and they're still bludgeoning for it.

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They're still punishing him for his sin. And he's trying to say this glory of the new covenant, of the forgiveness that we have in sin is so much greater.

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And he says, it's so great that the glory I just described for you that was actually physically manifested in Moses' face isn't even glory at all.

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So now look at verse 17 of chapter 4. Paul says, we have a momentary light affliction that's working out for us an eternal weight of glory, far beyond all comparison.

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What he's saying in summary is that whatever affliction you're enduring now, keep in mind,

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Paul has listed more afflictions that he's written in the letters that are in the books to the

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Corinthians than anyone in this room likely would ever suffer. So Paul isn't just like a...

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He's not sitting in a seminary somewhere telling people that are actually doing ministry.

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Paul lived it. And he says that the affliction that he's facing, the affliction that Christians will face, is nothing, is what

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I think he's saying. That it's not even worth consideration when you consider the eternal weight of glory.

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And that's a special phrase that the Old Testament uses a lot, the weight of glory. And I think it's that Hebrew word kavod where it's got to do with the weightiness of the glory of God.

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And so when you are in your affliction, it has a couple properties.

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Those properties, according to Paul, are that it's light, which is in contrast to the weight of the eternal glory that you'll experience if you know

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God. And it's momentary, which is in comparison in the same verse, verse 17, to the eternality or the eternal glory that you'll have.

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And so it's the idea that, not that your affliction isn't real, Paul understood it.

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It was real. And it lasted, I'll tell you what, if it's affliction, it's lasting longer than you want it to.

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So again, this isn't a denial of the actual physical. All right, Paul's already established we have an inner and outer man, we have body and soul.

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This is real stuff you're going through. What Paul's trying to get you to do is change your perspective on it so that you will see your affliction that you have now, no matter how extreme it is, and no matter how long it actually lasts,

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Paul wants you to see it as light and momentary because, not because that helps you through it, but because that's the reality in comparison to what eternity really is.

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And so, is that difficult? Yes. It's utterly impossible, right, apart from the resurrection of Jesus Christ and belief in it.

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This isn't Paul saying, hey, make sure you set your alarm for 6 a .m. and do devotions. Like, pretty much any of us could do that, right?

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You can get a non -believer to wake up at 5 a .m. and do devotions if you motivated him for something that he'd get out of it, right?

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This is a completely different level of things. And the fear that Paul has,

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I think, and that I have, is that there aren't enough Christians that are actually believing this to the point where they're preparing for it.

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And then when the difficulty comes, they're not ready. I'll give you an example.

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You're not gonna get arrested and go to prison for Christ and sing hymns now, if you don't sing, or someday, if you don't sing hymns now, right?

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Some of us are gonna be sitting in that prison cell together and like, well, I don't remember any lyrics. You know, we have to do these things on a regular basis.

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So, I want you to, for a moment, as difficult as it is to think about affliction, and, you know,

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I'll just use a small number compared to what it could be. Let's say you had to fight some really difficult affliction for 10 years.

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Which, compared to some people, probably in this room, 10 years is nothing. Some people are like, I've been dealing with this for 60 years.

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Great. But let's say you had 10 years of something. Compared to eternity, it's nothing. It's really hard to imagine when you're in it, though.

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But reverse it in your mind for a moment. If I told you that you were going to spend eternity in hell in unspeakable torment, but I'll give you 70 years of partying and fun here, where you have nothing but comfort, no pain, where you just live 70 years like you're 25 in perfect health and then you'll just go to hell and you'll spend eternity suffering, you'd say, no way.

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Because you know that that 70 years of even pain -free existence is nothing compared to what would be waiting for you, right?

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So just flip it around. The difference is when you're in the affliction, that's when it's hardest, right?

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That's when we want out. If it wasn't difficult, it wouldn't be called affliction. But Paul says it's working out for us, that eternal weight of glory.

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So we have a hope that the affliction is actually with a purpose. All right, so turn to Romans 8.

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I'll start in verse 18. I'm going to skip a few verses that are actually good, but I don't want to read the whole chapter.

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He says, For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us.

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So in case you disagreed with me and thought, well, Paul was making a comparison. I was like, he's not. He doesn't think it's comparable.

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That's his point. You can't compare what's going to happen to what's happening now.

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He says, For the anxious longing of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God. The creation was subjected to futility not willingly, but because of him who subjected it in hope that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God.

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For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now.

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And not only this, but also we ourselves, having the first fruits of the spirit, even we ourselves grown within ourselves, eagerly waiting for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our body.

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You will be glorified one day. For in hope we were saved, but hope that is seen is not hope.

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For who hopes for what he already sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, with perseverance, we eagerly wait for it.

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Isn't that verse 18 of 2 Corinthians 4? So you might ask me, well, how do

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I live a life where I see the current affliction that's so overwhelming to me,

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I really don't even know how I'll get through it. How do I live a life where I can actually endure that and treat it as if it's momentary light affliction?

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How could I have joy in the midst of my suffering? How can I continue to serve the Lord in the midst of my suffering? How can I love this wicked sinner who's hurting me in the midst of while they're hurting me?

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The answer is you hope for what you don't see. You're looking forward to something unseen at this point and you hope for things you don't see by one simple phrase and that's the word faith, by faith.

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Faith is the substance of things not seen, the evidence of things hoped for, right? Nobody hopes for what they see.

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You hope for what you don't see and you wait for it with patience and perseverance, you eagerly wait for it.

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Praise be to God, the spirit also helps our weakness for we don't know how to pray as we should.

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Think about a little child. Has any of you ever had a little child? A little child wants something, they just have no way to tell you.

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They scream, cry, right? Maybe they have words but they don't have the word for the thing.

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I just see more head nods. Everybody in here has seen a kid, right? And yet you know how to help that child because you know what the child needs, right?

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The spirit knows what you need more than you know what you need and knows how to ask for it.

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And I'll tell you what, when the spirit of God intercedes for you, that prayer is answered.

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The spirit of God will pray according to the will of God, right? That was verse 27.

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So let's turn a little further to 35 now. Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will affliction or turmoil or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or sword, just as it is written, you quote

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Psalm 44, for your sake we are being put to death all day long. We were counted as sheep for the slaughter.

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One of the reasons why some people will so vehemently preach against guys like Joel Osteen and Joyce Meyer and some of these guys that teach what we call the health and prosperity gospel is that they teach a gospel where all the promises of God are basically contained in your physical life.

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And they will make all of your afflictions and difficulties matters of you don't have enough faith rather than see the honest truth that it is

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God who actually delivers you over to the affliction and the difficulty that you may call upon him and that your faith may be tested and come out as gold.

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How many of you have been through something very difficult in your life? And even though you may have faltered in the midst of it, you came out realizing, well,

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I have a stronger faith. Or God validated for me that I actually had faith through that.

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I know more now that I'm actually one of his because of the suffering

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I went through and how he carried me through it and maybe even how I was able to handle myself through it, right?

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Paul says, in all these things, we overwhelmingly conquer through him who loved us.

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For I am convinced that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus, our

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Lord. We have to look at what we do not see. It's a funny way to say it, but your life must be better.

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The righteous shall live by faith. You can have just a little tiny bit of faith and get saved, okay?

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If you think about faith as like a, think of like, we all have like a bag, right, of faith.

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And when you get to heaven, there's gonna be some people with these bags that are like full, right?

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It's gonna look like they stuffed it even, you know? It's not really bags, but trying to give you a metaphor.

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And you know, there's, you know, think about just how math works. There's like a greatest and a least, right?

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You know, there's gonna be like one guy, right? And he's gonna have the least amount of faith that anyone had.

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Like, that's just how math works. And we don't all get the same. Like, we have a measure of faith, read Romans 12.

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And that little faith will get that guy into heaven. But when you're gonna go through the furnace of affliction in this life, when you're going to have to do things that are difficult, when you're gonna have to not grow weary or faint and have some courage and boldness, more faith is gonna help you.

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Now, your faith will never completely fail because it's a gift from God. But if the solution to not losing heart is apprehending by faith what

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Christ has done on your behalf and looking at the things which are seen, I'm back in 2

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Corinthians 4, by the way, but at the things which are not seen, by looking not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen, then you should desire more faith.

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And faith is a gift from God. So you want more faith? You can pray and ask

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God to grant you more faith. I was reading something.

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I don't remember what it was right now. And the person was talking about how we will forever fight this flesh.

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And they said, I think it was R. Scott Clark, I guess. I like to give credit where I can, but he said, you know, even on my dying bed,

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I'm gonna be saying, Lord, help my unbelief. Okay, so we're always, in a sense, knowing that our faith isn't perfect.

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We want better faith, but little faith will get you there.

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But I would dare say that little faith might make things tougher on you on the road there.

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And if you read the Pilgrim's Progress, I think there's a guy named Little Faith, right? There's a guy named

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Mr. Fearing in the second one. Which if you've read the Pilgrim's Progress, make sure you read both parts.

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A lot of people just read the first part and think they read it. Like the second part is phenomenal.

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And if you think about John Bunyan's life, what you have in the second part is a more mature

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John Bunyan writing. And so I actually think it's kind of better, but it's a different story.

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It's about his wife's journey. But I want you to understand that another way that you will increase your faith, which has to be,

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I think, accompanied with prayer and obviously God's gift is you need to study God's word.

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You need to attend the preaching of God's word and the teaching of God's word. You need to take part in the sacraments or the ordinances where your faith is emboldened and increased.

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And it's because knowing what God has said is the only way you can believe what

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God has said and faith is believing what God has said. Faith is apprehending the promises that God has made in his word.

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And so for you to endure suffering, for you to be able to look at any one of your afflictions as small compared to the eternal weight of glory that is coming for you, and even being worked out by that affliction, for you to see that you have to read it and know it.

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Some of us have trouble waiting five minutes for our taco or if the person at the red light when it turns green doesn't hit their gas right away, that's the level of affliction that's enough to cause you to sin in this world.

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And I think it's chuckle worthy, but also it's really disgusting when you think about it, right?

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Because if little tiny levels of what I couldn't even call affliction can cause you to lose patience, can cause you to blaspheme or swear or be angry with a fellow human being, what's difficult affliction gonna do?

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Some of us seem to think that we're just gonna go through life and then boom, the difficulty is gonna come and we're just gonna do it.

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Or God's gonna be there then. Well, if God's not helping you with the little ones now, he's not gonna help you.

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Remember Thomas Cranmer? He's the guy that denied Christ, right? Now he repented, but when the going gets tough, your preparation for that moment is important.

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Remember your body and soul. So I'm not gonna pretend like it's all you. I'm also not gonna pretend like it's all

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God at the moment. God wants you to live a Christian life that's actually gonna prepare you for this.

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So look at the things that you do not see. I'll just remind you, I'm not gonna turn there, but in 2

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Kings 6, the king sends this huge army to get

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Elisha and his boys, right? And Elisha's servant gets up and he sees all these guys and he's like, well, what are we gonna do?

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Like we have no hope, right? And Elisha says, don't worry, those who are with us are more than those who are against us.

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And then Elisha gives him a glimpse. Well, the Lord, Elisha prays, and the Lord gives this guy a glimpse of the host of armies.

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You know he's called Yahweh of hosts, right? Yahweh of armies, right?

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He's got armies and armies of angels that are invisible beings throughout this world that are actually ministers for his people.

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And so there's always God's help. This is kind of a way I'll put it.

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There's always God's help available to you. And there is a sense, okay, so I'm a

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Calvinist, I'm a good monarchist, but there is a sense that you have to access it, all right? You're the one that has to say, you know,

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I'm gonna avail myself right now to God's help in my life. And oftentimes you do that by performing the duties

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God has made clear or required of you where he increases your faith. Robert Murray McShane said this, okay?

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So I talked about the spirit interceding for you. He said, if I could hear

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Christ praying for me in the next room, I would not fear a million of enemies. Yet the distance makes no difference.

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He's praying for me. So if you can remember on a moment -to -moment basis that regardless of the affliction that you're facing,

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God is actually for you. It's God who sent the suffering because he loves you.

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And it's God who's praying for you. It should help you to get through the difficult moments a little bit.

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You apprehend those things by faith. So this should encourage you to learn the Bible. This should help you to get your mind off of things of this world and onto heavenly things.

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It should give you hope that there's unseen powers at work. And it should help you change your perspective on suffering and affliction.

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Okay, so we don't go looking for persecution. We don't go looking for suffering. But we also can understand that suffering that's appointed from the

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Lord for our sanctification results in an eternal inheritance that's disproportionately better than the suffering that you're facing.

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It's not, your suffering isn't a bump in your road, but it's actually part of the path God has you on. The one who said, come to me all who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest wasn't lying.

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And I'll submit to you that the rest God promises is not simply future rest.

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That you can actually have the peace that surpasses understanding in this world by resting in Christ.

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Don't let the circumstances of your life toss you about like waves on a boat, right?

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Jesus slept in the bottom of the boat. He rested when he wanted. Don't let those circumstances push you around rest in Christ.

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And even as you battle the difficulty of the affliction in this world, even as you suffer through the affliction and even as you cry out to God for help and deliverance sometimes from some of the physical difficulty and you ask him at the same time,

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God sanctify me through this process. I want you to also remember that a lot of this suffering and affliction is just meant to cause you to anticipate his coming.

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It's to drive you to the point where you were eagerly await seeing him and cling to him more than anything in this world.

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There's a few ways I think in conclusion you can prepare to suffer. And I mentioned one already, you know, sing hymns at home, right?

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But basically anything you do, you know, do it heartily as unto the Lord, your scripture memory.

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There may be a day you don't have a paper Bible. You know that, right? Or you might open up the internet and go to a

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Bible page and it might show you something wrong, even on purpose. Who knows, right? Memorize scripture, memorize hymns, learn to pray, learn to pray on your own and to be close with God, afflict yourself.

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There's things people can do that aren't stupid things where you train yourself.

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Some of you, if you needed to lose weight, would happily cut calories for a few weeks and suffer through that for the hope that's coming, right?

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And so a lot of us could, you can afflict yourself, you can do things that make you uncomfortable and that will help you when real discomfort comes.

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For some of you, you'll be able to say, well, I've already experienced a lot of discomfort. I know how to still worship

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God through that difficulty. So when suffering comes and it's promised, do not lose heart.

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Be comforted that you are suffering no differently than saints have throughout the world and throughout the history of God's church and that God has always been there with every single one of his saints, that he has been the one that appointed those difficulties for their good because he loves them and that it will bring about the eternal weight of glory one day in your life.

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Father in heaven, we pray that your word would be used to convert souls, comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.

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I ask that you would cause each and every one of us today to increase in faith, that we would learn to grow as Christians, following your commands, but focused not on our following but on Jesus Christ and his finished work, believing that it is

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Christ who led the way and will help us and give us strength and vigor for the difficult days.