Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / November 26, 2023 | 2 Corinthians - Causing Grief for Growth

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November 26, 2023 | 2 Corinthians - Causing Grief for Growth · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: This morning we are taking a bit of a time machine back to late September, where we looked at in chapter two in 2 Corinthians, we had a lesson where we Paul had written this painful letter.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: That was the phrase he used.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: He wrote a painful letter to the Corinthians.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: And just kind of for the recap, in case anybody missed it, right, 2 Corinthians in our Bible is actually Paul's fourth letter to the church.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: And so what he's talking about, what he was talking about in 2 Corinthians chapter 2, was his third letter.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: That third letter he wrote to the church after writing 1 Corinthians, which was the second letter, if you're playing along at home.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: That painful letter that he wrote, he said, You know, I did this because I love the church.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: I love the Corinthians.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: These were his people.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: He had lived with them for over a year.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: He had planted this church.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: He knew them so well.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: And he also knew that they were struggling.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: And in some, they weren't living up to the life that God had called them to live.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: And so he writes this painful letter to them.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: And it's painful because it's not just saying, Hey, won't you please do these things?
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: But it had some hard truths in them.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: He said some difficult things, some things that we'll see today, he wasn't even sure how they were going to respond to.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: But because of his love, this was the lesson back in September.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: We said, because of his love, because of our love for those around us, sometimes we need to have hard conversations so that, like Paul, we might experience true joy in that relationship.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: That occasionally, without having hard conversations, we might not be able to experience the full joy that God has for us in these relationships.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: And so Paul sends off this painful letter, and we know that it worked.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: That was sort of where we finished back in September.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: We know that it worked, and so because of love, sometimes we need to do these things.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: But this morning, we're going to kind of get the part two to this message, if you will, is just suspended by two months.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: But part two to this message where we look at the why and the how.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: And this is going to be really interesting because we're going to basically ask the question: why did his painful letter do anything to them?
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: Why couldn't he have sent, you know, just a basket of cookies and said, won't you please?
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: Like, why did this painful letter accomplish anything at all?
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: Why and how?
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: And then ultimately at the very end of the message, we'll look at five different ways that when we are prompted to have these hard conversations, we can do them with the hopefully the skill and the tact that Paul showed when he was speaking to the church in the same way.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: So this morning is why did Paul's harsh letter change the church?
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: Because what is absolutely true is after he sent it, their lives changed.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: And not just one or two people, but a church changed in response to his painful letter.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're with me in 2 Corinthians, we're in chapter 7.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: This morning we're starting in verse 8.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: And Paul basically here to kind of give you an intro, Paul is be he is going to be sharing his emotions and his reflection on the news that he received that his painful letter worked.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: Say it in another way.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: Paul's up in Macedonia.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: Titus has come to him.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: He has, uh Titus was the messenger.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: Paul had sent the harsh letter with Titus.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: Titus went and delivered it, had sort of given it to them and waited for their response.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: They responded well, and now Titus has brought that good news back to Paul.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: And this is Paul's sort of reflection, how he feels about that news.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: He says, For even if I grieved you with my letter, I don't regret it.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: And even if I regretted it, since I saw that the letter grieved you, yet only for a while, I now rejoice, not because you were grieved, but because your grief led to repentance.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: So Paul here shows us the heart of a minister, somebody, and all of us being ministers of the gospel, all of us being messengers of the gospel, the true heart that is needed when you are talking to people.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: Because Paul here is saying, like, he sent out this letter and he didn't know what the response was going to be, right?
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: But yet he was thinking about them constantly.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: And you've been in that situation before, you know, you send the text, you send the email, you send the letter, you talk to the person, you're just like, I don't know how they're going to take that.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: And this is what Paul was feeling.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: He says, I knew what I sent to them was hard.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: It was hard, it was a hard truth that they were going to need.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: It was, I mean, going to confronting them.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: They weren't living the life that they were supposed to.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: They were becoming lazy in their discipline, and they weren't really doing all that they weren't becoming all that they could be.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: And so it wasn't like this message had many compliments in it.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: And Paul says, I was nervous.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I knew that it would grieve you.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: And so he says, he's kind of going back and forth here.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: He says, I was grieved for a time, right?
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: Like there was a period of time where I knew you had received it before Titus came, where I was going, Ugh was that the right thing to say?
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: Was that the right thing to do?
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: But then Titus comes and he says, uh, receiving this news, I don't regret it.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: I don't regret doing the thing that was necessary.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: One of the first parts that we, like I've already said, that we see here this morning, though, is it reveals Paul's love.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the lessons that we need to pick up on is having these hard conversations, causing grief, which will end up being what we talk about.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: Causing grief to somebody else is something that can only be done properly, right?
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: Properly.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: You can cause grief in a lot of ways, but it can only be done properly if you love them.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: See, back in chapter two, this is what Paul said after describing why he sent the letter.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: This was back in September when we he said he was doing it out of love.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: But he says, as a result, you should instead forgive and comfort the one that I was talking to you about.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: Otherwise, he may be overwhelmed by excessive grief.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: Therefore, I urge you to reaffirm your love to him.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: And so what he's saying here is his greatest concern is for the heart and minds and ultimately a relationship with God that those back in Corinth have.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: He says, There's one of you that you need to be a little bit harder on.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: Hold to account, but don't be too hard on him.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: Don't cause him excessive grief.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: And so we see that Paul is sort of walking this road.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: There's a narrow path that he is tracking.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: And so his causing grief is not indiscriminate, right?
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: He's not just firing off angry letters to the editor here, where everybody needs to change, everybody needs to be fixed, everything is wrong, right?
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: This was a calculated, tactical response.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: So why, though, did his letter work?
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: Well, he says at the very end here, because your grief led to repentance.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: This is going to be really the main thing that we focus on for the rest of our time together.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: This is the why.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: Why was Paul's letter successful?
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: Because it caused grief, and that grief led to repentance.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: Here in a moment we'll look at how.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: But it's important to understand, though, this sort of relationship, because what is present in Paul's sort of writings here is he recognizes that their repentance, and that word meaning not just saying, I'm sorry, but actually resulting in a life change, actually resulting in behavior change, right?
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: This is a word that we use all the time to talk about coming to know Jesus Christ, that we have repented of our sins, that we not only say that we were wrong, but we change our behavior.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: That's so important.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: But he says that repentance in this case was only possible because of that grief that he gave to them.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, that there's sort of this alternate reality, if you will, where Paul chooses not to send the painful letter, and the Corinthians don't repent of their sins, at least not in the way that they did here, at least not in the full scale change manner that took place at the church.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: And so the grief led to repentance.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: But how?
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: How does this come about?
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: Well, he gives three ways that this manifested itself in the church, and they all begin with the word for.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: And we'll look at these three things.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: He says, for you were grieved as God willed, so that you didn't experience any loss from us.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, but worldly grief produces death.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: And then finally, for consider how much diligence this very thing, this, as he's been talking about, this grieving as God wills, think about how much diligence it's produced in you.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: And then he gives examples.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: What a desire to clear yourselves, what indignation, what fear, what deep longing, what zeal, what justice in every way.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: You showed yourselves to be pure in this matter.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: So he gives three things here, right?
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: He gives three truths.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: The first one is that godly grief is God's will for you.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: This is a hard thing to talk about because we normally glance over or run over the fact that many times God will use grief in order to draw us closer to him.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: It is one of his many, many tools that he will use, our Heavenly Father will, in order to bring about this change in us.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: And most often when he does it, it comes about when we're feeling most stubborn and least like we want to encounter grief.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: But that is sometimes the only thing that draws us up out of that pit.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: And so what Paul here is saying is that this grief that he that Paul gave to them, this pain that they experienced, he says, that was God's will for you.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: It brought about the change that was needed.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: But then he also says, so that you didn't experience any loss from us.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: That's kind of an interesting phrase because you might think, right, well, Paul's causing grief.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: How in the world was there no loss?
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: How in the world was there nothing that they could say where they're like, well, that actually hurt a little bit.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I got some more gray hairs because of that letter you sent to me, Paul.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: What he's saying here, it's the same thing, the same tool that the Bible will use in other locations.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's one of comparison.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: And he's like, in comparison to the life change, to how much closer you are with Christ now, to the beauty of your relationship, to the true joy that you have, in comparison to that, the momentary affliction that you were caused by my letter, by my writings, is nothing in comparison.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: So that in sort of in totality, you experienced no loss.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: One side of the ledger was so much greater, right?
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: There were so many more things on this side than the other side of the T chart that he says, when you look at them both, you experienced no loss.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: You would make that change over and over and over again.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: Now that they're on the other side, I'm sure they didn't love it.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: When they're sitting, because right, those letters that Paul would read, they would be in a church setting like this, and then somebody would come up and read them.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: You can imagine that that was not the most, I don't know, like lovely experience to just be hit with Paul going, Hey, you need a change.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: But on the other side of that, because it produced the repentance, they're saying, Well, we're thankful that Paul sent that to us.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: Godly grief is God's will for you, and it is God's will that you all would experience, and I would, godly grief at times.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: Number two, godly grief is different, though, from the world's grief, because listen, and this is a whole sermon in and of itself, but there are many different kinds of grief that we can't experience.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: We get a clue, though, to the specific kind that Paul's talking about because he says it is the kind that produces a repentance that leads to salvation.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: And so, whatever this godly grief is, it is something that draws our eyes up above and keeps us away from the mundane.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, he contrasts this with worldly grief.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: And they're different in the cause and the outcome.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: Godly grief is the thing that brings us closer to Him, closer to Jesus.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: It is the thing that helps us reveal the parts of our life that don't accord with the way that God has caused, asked us to live, and therefore we are failing to do it, right?
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: These are the ways we might call it conviction, the grief, the pains, the arrows that we are pierced with when we recognize that our life is not obedient as God would have it to be.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: And so then what that godly grief does when it's properly administered, as Paul did, is then it draws us deeper into this relationship with Jesus.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: And therefore the outcome of godly grief is one way we could say it is the fruit of the Spirit.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: It is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: It produces good fruit, as the Bible would say.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: But then it contrasts with worldly grief, and he says, that's the kind of thing that leads to death.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: Worldly grief comes from all of the pains and afflictions that we get that really do nothing to spur us towards our relationship with God, and oftentimes are related to the idols or to the uh sort of base, sinful things of this world.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: They produce within us the activities that God does not want, the greed, the pride, the unrighteous anger.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: There are many kinds of grief that we have, and they there could be mundane, right?
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's that my neighbor's lawn looks better than mine, and so I need to, you know, change the way my my fertilizer routine or something like that.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um I don't have that experience.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: My neighbor is very happy to see that his lawn is far better than mine.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um I'm happy to provide that service to my street.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: But there are a lot of worldly pains, though, that can be much more extreme than this.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: You're aware of them.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: You've experienced them too.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: And they produce within us not fruit leading to repentance, but ultimately they lead us further away from God.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_00: And then there's a whole nother category.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: Like I said, there's a there's a sermon in here, but there's a whole nother category of pain that is really in neither one of these cat in neither one of these columns, which is the sort of pain that isn't because of sin or idolatry, but we only have the opportunity for it to lead us closer to God.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: See, what Paul was doing in Corinth is they had specific failures, excuse me, and he was pointing them out.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: Well, and then you have on the other side you have worldly grief.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: These are the things that make us just oftentimes draw away from God.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: They're the frustrations of this life, whether because of others' sin against us or our own sin that we're adding into the world.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: But there is another category that I do want to address.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: And actually, it was in a video last week where um Harry Clark presented and himself and then his wife Elaine, and how uh the disease that he had, that cancer, has brought him closer to God.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's not like that is a sort of grief that is due to his disobedience, right?
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: That is not what comes about.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: We do not receive disease for being disobedient to the Lord.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: But nevertheless, it is an opportunity for any of us in any of those circumstances to draw closer to God.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: So I want to just be clear though that what Paul's speaking of here and what we're gonna focus on today is a very um specific set of circumstances where you take the action to reveal to somebody else or to reveal to yourself a way in which you are failing to live up to God's standards, and it is drawing you towards repentance.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: That is something that disease does not necessarily do, and it's something that worldly grief does not do as well.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_00: The third four statement that Paul has here is he says that godly grief leads to action, though, from you, right?
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: Godly grief leads to repentance.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: And then he gives this list to the Corinthians, right?
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: He gives, he lists all these different things that they have done.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: He says, in every way, in every way, your repentance has shown that you understood what happened.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: You didn't take my letter lightly, you didn't just say, Oh, I'm gonna change this one little thing, but you understood that your whole life needs to be given over to this.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: And there are maybe large portions of your life, of your behaviors, of your habits, of your addictions that need to change.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: Godly grief leads to action from you.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_00: Their grief led to repentance.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: And so I don't want to move on without emphasizing this one more time.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: What Paul was so happy about to receive from the Corinthians, the news that he got, was not that they said sorry.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: It was not that they gave Titus lip service, but it was that there was actionable, right, a movement and their response to the instruction of God's word.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_00: That they were not just hearers, but they were doers as well.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: This is what Paul was rejoicing over, and this was the ultimate outcome of his letter with grief.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: When it comes to grief, a final word on it.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: Saint Augustine said that sorrow is a bit like dung.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's a bit like poop.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_00: St.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_00: Augustine said it, not me.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: And what St.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_00: Augustine said is that applied in the wrong context, it's not very fun.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: Put in the wrong place, it doesn't do much good.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: But put in the right place, and it produces a whole lot of fruit.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: You can think of fertilizer in your garden, right?
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_00: That when sorrow or dung is placed in the right location, that it actually can do much good.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: This is what we're talking about.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: As we go on, and the last passage we'll look at this morning here, and then I'll give some application.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: Paul says, So, even though I wrote to you, it was not because of the one who did wrong or because of the one who was wronged, but in order that your devotion to us might be made plain to you in the sight of God.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: For this reason we have been comforted.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_00: So we've already looked at the why, right?
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_00: Why was Paul's letter effective?
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's because uh it led to the repentance of the Corinthian congregation.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: How did it do that?
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_00: Because they experienced godly pain and were moved to change.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_00: And now he is going to emphasize one last time what it is that he was trying to do in that letter, just to make sure, because now he's in a very interesting position of writing to the people who received the letter.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's kind of a post-mortem.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, you've changed.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_00: Let me tell you why I did that.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_00: And what we see is somebody who is not concerned about themselves, about writing wrongs, about revenge, about a personal vendetta.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: Paul here had the heart for the church.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: He had a love for the church, he had a love for the people.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: And this is what was motivating him, right?
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_00: Even though I wrote to you, it was not because of the one who did wrong.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: That was the situation, right?
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: There was some, there was most likely 1 Corinthians 5, where the man is sleeping with his father's wife.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: There's this grievous sexual sin going on in the church, and they weren't doing anything about it.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_00: And so most likely that is what his third letter was about.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I'm not writing, though, about the one who was wronged, nor am I writing about um the one who sort of, okay, I messed that up.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_00: Paul says he's not writing about the offender, and he's also not writing about the offended.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: And many people think, many commentaries think that here it's kind of this allusion to himself.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_00: He's saying, You've hurt me in many ways.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_00: You've you've sort of fought against me, you've called me names, you've uh in certain contexts, you've even kind of persecuted me, you've said terrible things about me, and he says, but it's even not about that.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's not about me, the offended one.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_00: But he says, in order that your devotion to us might be made plain to you in the sight of God.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_00: And you say, well, is it is it about some like following, like getting fans?
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: What Paul is saying here is he sees, this is like a great coach, right, who sees the potential and a great player, but they're not utilizing all of their skills.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_00: And so the coach wants to draw these things out of the player.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: He knows that by pushing them a little bit, by encouraging them, by sort of drawing them towards hard things that they can reveal, sort of this next gear, this next level.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_00: Paul says, I know you are.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_00: This is back in 1 Corinthians, he compliments them so much.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_00: They are a talented church.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_00: My goodness, their spiritual gifts are overflowing.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_00: They have so many skills, they have many of them have high positions in the city and the government andor are very wealthy.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_00: And he says, Man, some of you are really, really impressive.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_00: But when it comes to your spiritual health, when it comes to the things that you need to know and do and be with God, he says, Oh, we can do better.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_00: And it's not a gospel of works, but it's here Paul is encouraging them, and he says, I wanted to reveal to you that there is another level that you can go to.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_00: Don't be these sleepy Christians who are just sort of nominally in the environment and their culture and their context and aren't doing anything to change their surroundings, aren't doing anything to change themselves or their behaviors.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_00: He says, I know there's another step for you in order to see that your devotion to us might be made plain to you, because maybe you didn't see it beforehand.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you didn't see there was another place that you could go in your relationship with God that was deeper and more profound and beautiful than even what you had experienced.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Already.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: Paul says, for this reason we have been comforted, right?
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: And so Paul says it's for them, it's not for him.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: And then he also is encouraging them.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_00: These are the things here is as we take a step back and say, what about us?
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_00: What about the people we need to have hard conversations with that might need to hear a little bit of grief?
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_00: These are all of the things that we need to keep in mind, right?
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_00: That Paul is not doing this for himself.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_00: He's doing it for other people.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_00: And that there is always a specific purpose for why this kind of difficult message is received.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_00: Once more, it's not because he has revenge in mind.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's not because he needs to right a wrong or say, I told you so.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's because it is going to, hopefully, in this case it did with Paul, it is going to elicit a response that is glorifying to God.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_00: The trouble is we don't always know what that response is going to be.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_00: This was the thing that Paul spoke about at the beginning of the in verse 8, when he says, I felt grief, I was reluctant for a time because I sent off this hard message and I didn't know how you were going to take it.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_00: And so the thing we have to recognize as we head into this is that sometimes we give this message of grief because it's necessary to those that we love, and we don't know what the response is going to be.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_00: Though grief leads to repentance, it also requires, and in this case required, a Corinthian congregation that responded by God's Spirit to Paul's grief.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_00: But nevertheless, what are the things that we can learn?
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_00: Is there any sort of secret sauce here, if you will, to how we can deliver these sorts of messages?
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_00: Well, there are two ways that we look at this.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_00: The first one is how it affects us, how does it apply to our life?
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_00: And then how does it apply to the lives of those that we love?
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_00: Let's look at ourselves first.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_00: Because even though Paul wrote this letter of grief to other people, right, if we don't think that this applies to us as well, we're missing the mark.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_00: You see, occasionally we need to hear messages of grief as well.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_00: We need to be grieved, we need to experience pain and the way that we are understanding our relationship with God, because ultimately our connection with Jesus and the depth of that relationship is built upon an understanding that we are sinners in need of a Savior, right?
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_00: That is a clear connection and the greatest reason, right, for our relationship.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, God wants to, um, he made us righteous and he calls us his son and daughters, and we might experience eternity with him.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_00: But ultimately, we are reconciled to God because we are sinners in the hands of a savior.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_00: That's kind of a rephrasing of Jonathan Edwards' sinners in the hands of an angry God.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_00: But in this case, we are sinners in need of a savior.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_00: And so the gospel message, right, is predicated on this idea that as we grow in our relationship with God, first of all, when we recognize we have a need for a savior, but then also as we continue forward, it is based on understanding our sin and responding to it in a way that draws us closer to Jesus.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_00: And so, in other words, if I can summarize that, to think that we just trust in Jesus as our Savior and just coast for the rest of the way is a misunderstanding of the gospel and the call that God has placed upon our lives to be made into the image of Jesus Christ.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_00: This is one of the things that his grief, godly grief, does in our lives is it sort of maybe points us towards areas where we didn't recognize that we were falling short.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_00: And as it pains us to see, oh, there's another place where I am not doing what I should be doing.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not living the life that God has called me to live, it produces within us this grief that then leads to repentance.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_00: And so the same thing that Paul is providing to the Corinthian church is the same activity that should be happening in us over and over and over again, now by the revelation of his Spirit, God's Holy Spirit, which convicts us and turns us towards these things.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_00: And furthermore, the sign of someone who is drawing closer to Jesus is not that they understand their sin, but it is that they change.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_00: I'll say that one more time, right?
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_00: Because we're the 71st person in this room who didn't hear me, right?
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_00: It is not that you understand your sin.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_00: Your journey is not complete.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_00: It is when you change that you are made into the image of Christ.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_00: Your knowledge of the image of Christ is only so useful insofar as it produces a change in your heart and your life.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_00: Now, we fall short in many ways.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_00: Praise be to God that we have a forgiving and gracious Savior who continues to walk with us through these things.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_00: But as we just look internally first, there are some of us who need to be a little bit more open and perhaps eager to receive godly grief so that we can become more like Jesus.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_00: And to be honest with you, it's a portion of my job to provide that grief occasionally.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_00: That's what we do, and let's set aside how successful it is if I can present grief, but if I present grief to you, sometimes hard things, truth that we're not doing, the goal is that we all, myself included, hear that and then respond to it.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_00: I've already mentioned it, but this is the clear statement in the book of James where he says we don't want to be hearers, but just doers.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_00: That is what we're striving to be after as a community in Christ, is people who hear these things and respond to them.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_00: So perhaps you need to seek out or respond to grief in a different way than you have previously, so that you can have an even deeper relationship with Jesus than you had before.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_00: Second, though, let's talk about uh how this naturally applies to hard conversations, right?
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_00: What are the lessons that we can learn from Paul?
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_00: Well, oh, sorry, I had one slide, which was godly grief is good and the right response is to change.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_00: I tried to say that.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_00: Hopefully you understand that.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_00: That was my summary.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_00: But uh I want before as we close, I want to give you five things though, five lessons that we can learn from Paul, because uh you will, as somebody who follows after Christ, if you know Christ, you will sometimes be in the best position, better positioned than anybody else at least, to present grief to someone else who needs to hear it.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_00: And in those moments, there are five things that we can do, five keys to giving godly grief.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_00: The first is we consider our affection.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_00: So I would say that it is impossible to have proper motives in bringing godly grief to someone without loving them first.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_00: You can cause grief, that's for sure.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_00: But to do it properly, to do it in a way that brings about this response that we're desiring, you must have love for them.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_00: And we see this over and over again in the way that Paul speaks to the Corinthian church, how he's sort of simultaneously like, oh, I need to do this, but I'm hurt.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_00: I know it's gonna present produce good things, but it was hard for me.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_00: My heart was broken, all of these kinds of things.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_00: Those only come from somebody who has a sincere love for those that he's speaking to.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_00: And um understandably, when we give the hard message to those that we love, it sometimes hurts us even more, right?
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_00: The more that we care for them, the more it hurts us because the more that we know that they need to change in order to live according to God's will.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_00: Number two is that it matters where we place our attention in the conversation, that our focus is on sin, right?
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_00: When you get into conversations, you know, when you just had hard conversations of any kind.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_00: You can be tempted to get distracted or off onto easier topics.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_00: It can be, this is not the type of conversation about their haircut or their sweater that they haven't returned to you or whatever else it is.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_00: This conversation is a heat-seeking missile, okay?
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_00: And though it maybe doesn't need to, I should probably use a different illustration, it doesn't need to have the impact of a heat-seeking missile.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_00: It should be targeted.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_00: That's maybe a better focus, right?
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_00: We are talking about a failure to be obedient to God.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_00: We're talking about sin here.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_00: And if the words you might want to use don't have to necessarily be that you are, you know, sinning and in rebellion against God, but nevertheless, the attention and focus of this grief-filled conversation, or one that will cause grief, is that you are concerned about their relationship with God and how currently there is an obstacle to that.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_00: Out of concern, out of love for them, you're presenting this observation that they're failing to do this thing.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe they didn't recognize it beforehand, maybe they did, but either way, we don't want to get distracted, right?
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_00: If they have failed to live out God's word, this needs to be the message.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_00: Third, that we need to have an aim or goal of the conversation.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, the aim or goal of the conversation is not that the sin is revealed to them, but that repentance comes from it.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_00: Uh that person would recognize their sin if they haven't already, experience the grief, and then repent.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_00: And so here's why this is really hard is because in these conversations, right, where we've got sort of the obstinate person who, whether they recognize it or they don't, maybe because of their own blindness, they need to experience this grief.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_00: And so our aim is to have just a little zhuz, you know, to this to this conversation, that there's a part of it where it doesn't sound the same as any other conversation that you have with them, because they need to understand the gravity of it.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_00: Now we're keeping all of these things, all these plates are spinning in concert with each other because there's love, there's compassion, there's grace, there's mercy.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_00: Paul presented these things as well.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_00: This is why he says it's this narrow line.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_00: We remember back to chapter two when he says, Hey, the one who experienced grief, make sure that they feel love and compassion so that they don't go too far, experience it excessively.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_00: But nevertheless, our aim and our goal is that this is going to cause a little bit of pain, and hopefully the perfect amount.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the other thing that has to do with this too is that the aim is also important to think about when it comes to our um our motivation, right?
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_00: Our goal is it can be so easy in these conversations to wrap them up still in revenge, to wrap them up still in personal hurt, to wrap them up still in I told you so's.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_00: And so praying beforehand to consider all of these things and make sure that your message is as clear and as pure as possible.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_00: Fourth, that we need to have an attitude that's appropriate.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_00: Our heart needs to be in the right place, and the right place for this is one of humility, okay?
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_00: This is why Jesus had that fantastic saying, all Jesus' sayings are fantastic, but that great memorable line about remove the plank from your own eye before you remove the splinter from your neighbors, okay?
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um we're all sinners.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_00: We all fall short, we all make mistakes.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_00: All of us at various points in time are in need of hard truths so that we can draw closer to God.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_00: So when you go to this person, because you're the best positioned to do it, right?
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_00: Keep in mind that statement that you are not coming in with pride, you're not coming in overbearing, you're not coming in as this brutal authority or just this rude friend, but rather you have a concern and a care for them, understanding that maybe, maybe you don't have everything right, but this is the focus.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_00: You care for them, you love for them, you love them, and therefore you want them to see this.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_00: We have a heart.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_00: The conversation is necessary, right, but our pride isn't.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_00: Fifth and finally, our association.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_00: I just want to let you know if I'd presented this back in my Baptist preaching class, if they saw this slide with all A's, I would have received an A.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, this would have made them so happy.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_00: I had to break out a thesaurus for this slide.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_00: Hopefully it's more memorable.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the worst word, the reason I brought that up, the worst word here is association, but nevertheless, the this is the hardest part though.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_00: The closer your relationship with the person, the better positioned you are to have these conversations, and the more you need to have them.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_00: The pain and grief is best received when it comes from a close friend, right?
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_00: The pain and grief is best, godly grief is best received when it comes from a close friend.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_00: You know they care for you, you know they love you, right?
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_00: These are the kind of people you would want to deliver this message to you, not some random stranger, okay?
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_00: And so you need to be the good friend to deliver that to somebody else occasionally.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe the good parent, spouse, sibling, child, sometimes those closest relationships, right?
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_00: Shoot, we just passed Thanksgiving.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_00: What we missed this opportunity.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_00: We should have done it over Thanksgiving dinner.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_00: But, you know, these close relationships, these are the ones where sometimes we are best positioned, and yet it is the hardest because we love them the most deeply.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_00: So where people go wrong, very briefly, where people go wrong here is when we abandon any of these themes.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_00: They don't love or they make the conversation too um uh personal about personal grievances, or they have selfish aims, or they're prideful, or they have little to no relationship with the person.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_00: This is one of the reasons why uh most of the time online comments don't produce godly grief, which leads to repentance in the hearts and minds of those around us.
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's because we're lacking many of these things.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_00: The hardest conversations are sometimes the most necessary ones.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_00: So, to recap, when it comes to us, do here are a couple questions.
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_00: Do we respond to hard truths with change?
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_00: Are we even willing to seek out hard truths so that we might grow closer to Christ?
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_00: Or do they make us walk even further from God?
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_00: When it comes to others, when it comes to these hard conversations that we have with others, do we have the hard conversations we're supposed to have?
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_00: Or do we take the route of comfort, even though it might result in a loved one harming themselves even further?
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes the absence of having these conversations can lead to even further sin.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_00: By God's grace, right, we are imperfect in all of these things, but we are still called to do this to the best of our ability.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_00: So I hope that the message this morning that it might strike you in one of those ways, that maybe you recognize that you need to have um seek out a bit more grief uh in your own relationship with Christ.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_00: Because maybe you've been coasting, and like the Corinthians, there's a whole nother level, there's a whole nother place that you can go in your relationship with God that is more fruitful and joyful and beautiful because you're setting aside the old self and putting on the new.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_00: And then maybe there are some of you who recognize, maybe have somebody in your head right now that needs to have a little bit of grief in their life so that they might draw closer to Jesus themselves.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_00: Let's pray for these things.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_00: God, we come before you as our Holy Father who has called us into a life in your Son Jesus Christ by the power of your spirit.
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_00: And God, we say, all of us together, uh, we fail at that many times.
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_00: But God, by your grace, you continue to seek after us, you continue to draw us deeper, and Lord, sometimes you bring us grief so that we can realize where we've fallen short and can have true joy in our relationship with you.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, I pray that when it comes to ourselves, you would help us to listen to that spirit of conviction, and God, that we might respond to it with repentance.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, changing our lives, setting aside the old self.
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_00: And Lord, I also pray for those of us who might need to have a hard conversation, Lord, so that true joy can be found, knowing that the closer we are to the situation, Lord, sometimes the greater pain it might cause us, as it did Paul.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, we pray for those conversations.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_00: You would help us to have them like Paul, Lord, like you would have us to do, so that they might lead to fruit and they would be glorifying to you.
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_00: And God, I also pray that you would comfort us when we have those conversations.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, you would tamp down these feelings of anxiety or trepidation that we might have, knowing that we're simply, Lord, doing the things that you have called us to do, and that there's great peace in that.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_00: God, we thank you for this.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_00: We thank you for most of all the cross that has forgiven us for all of our sins.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_00: And it's in Jesus' name we pray.
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks, everybody.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_00: Drive safe.