Sunday, June 9th, 2024 - 11am Service - Comfort in Christ: Sharing His Peace Through Suffering

In one paragraph

This message, drawn from 2 Corinthians 1:1-11, was about the comfort God gives His people in suffering and why He gives it: so that those who have received it can carry it to others. Pastor Ray preached it on a particularly heavy Sunday, with two suicide funerals happening that same week, and the weight of that was present throughout. Paul opens his letter with "grace and peace from God our Father...

Read together

1. 2 Corinthians 1:1-11 primary text for the sermon on comfort in and deliverance from suffering
2. 2 Corinthians 1:2 grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ
3. 1 Corinthians 1:3 cited as parallel opening greeting Paul used in his first letter to Corinth
4. Galatians 1:3 cited as another instance of Paul's grace and peace greeting
5. Ephesians 1:2 cited as another instance of Paul's grace and peace greeting
6. Philippians 1:2 cited as another instance of Paul's grace and peace greeting
7. Colossians 1:2 cited as another instance of Paul's grace and peace greeting to saints and faithful
8. 1 Thessalonians 1:1 cited as grace and peace greeting to a church with no pervasive sin mentioned
9. 2 Thessalonians 1:2 cited as another instance of the grace and peace refrain
10. Romans 1:7 grace and peace greeting to a church Paul had never visited, his magnus opus
11. Philemon 1:3 grace and peace greeting to Philemon the slave owner, alongside the story of Onesimus
12. 1 Timothy 1:2 grace mercy and peace to Timothy a true son in the faith
13. 2 Timothy 1:2 grace mercy and peace repeated to Timothy in ministry
14. Titus 1:4 grace mercy and peace to Titus a true son in our common faith
15. 2 Corinthians 11 Paul's list of sufferings including stripes, imprisonments, shipwrecks, and concern for the churches
16. 2 Corinthians 4:7-12 treasure in jars of clay, afflicted but not crushed, perplexed but not driven to despair
17. 2 Corinthians 4:16-18 do not lose heart, light and momentary affliction preparing an eternal weight of glory, things seen are transient

Talk about it

1. Pastor Ray opened with a spectrum of pain, from hurt feelings to affliction to feeling like suffering might actually kill you. Where have you found yourself on that spectrum, and what was it like to be there?
2. Paul begins nearly every letter with 'grace and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.' Pastor Ray called this Paul's handshake, not a throwaway line. What difference does it make to approach people, especially people who are hurting, leading with grace and peace rather than with expectations or judgment?
3. The sermon drew a contrast between the common saying 'God won't put on you more than you can handle' and what Paul actually writes, that the affliction in Asia was 'so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself.' How does it change the way you think about suffering to know that Paul described it that way, and that God allowed it so they would rely not on themselves but on God who raises the dead?
4. Pastor Ray said 'comforted people comfort people,' and described a friend who sat at the end of his bed and said, 'It is good from the backside of this. I have been where you are.' Has someone done that for you, or have you been able to do that for someone else? What made it possible?
5. Paul calls his enormous list of beatings, shipwrecks, imprisonments and sleeplessness a 'light and momentary affliction' when he looks at it against an eternal weight of glory. What does it take, practically, to shift your eyes from the circumstances in front of you to the unseen things Paul says are eternal?