Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / September 24, 2023 | 2 Corinthians - Avoiding Pain

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September 24, 2023 | 2 Corinthians - Avoiding Pain · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Good to be with you.
• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um by show of hands, how many people um enjoy pain?
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: Who's do that every once in a while just make sure spot the crazies who might be in the congregation?
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, it's it is amazing how many um decisions in our life are dictated by pain and wanting to avoid pain, right?
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes pain makes us uh run away from things or change our behavior, right?
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: We get a new pair of shoes because our our feet hurt, right?
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: We get a new knee uh because our our joints hurt, right?
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: We move and change our behavior because of pain.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um sometimes pain also makes us avoid things, right?
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: Uh this morning we're going to be talking about a situation uh with the Apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians that I think just about every single person can relate to, which is having a hard conversation with somebody that you love that causes a lot of pain.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: And you know you need to do it, uh, you don't want to do it, and yet uh by God's grace, you're gonna do it uh because you love them.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: And as we walk through that, though, it it is still amazing, as most of Paul's uh sort of words here this morning are gonna revolve around the pain and the emotional anguish that it's causing him.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: It is amazing how much of our life truly is changed and altered because we are trying to avoid pain.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: We are pain avoiders by nature, right?
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: Uh this past week I just finished um the Jurassic Park book, okay?
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: For those of you who have only seen the movie, it is a book.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um and uh you'll be happy to know that the movie follows the book very closely, but in that great uh movie, if you've only seen it, you know that there's the gigantic T-Rex that comes along and terrorizes everybody.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: And what cracks me up was as I was reading this book, which it the book has a lot more science in it, okay, than the movie does, and they talk a lot about gene editing and all these different things.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: But in this sort of futuristic sci-fi fantasy world where you know dinosaurs have come back to life, there's a whole section where they talk about how they're gonna be able to control the dinosaurs.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: And the answer is that they're gonna build huge electric fences.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: And it just kind of cracked me up that, like, in this book about all of this science and stuff, they're gonna control this huge eight-ton T-Rex with pain.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: And then if if you've seen the movie, you know that eventually that breaks down and then the fun begins.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: But it it's an eight-ton dinosaur, and it's every moment of our lives that is often about in our, maybe I could say in some of our weakest moments, is just about what is going to bring me comfort here.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: And if possible, we want to choose the path that is going to bring us the least amount of pain.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: That's not a bad thing necessarily, but we have to recognize when it might get us into trouble.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: So, as we're in the book of 1 Corinthians here, um, I won't belabor the point because the last couple weeks we've given you a bit of an introduction, especially if you're with us last uh fall when we went through 1 Corinthians.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: But Paul has, let's just say, a hard relationship with this church.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, they they uh they have a hard time with the way that Paul wants to minister, right?
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: He is humble, he uh speaks quietly, forcefully, but quietly.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: They they want somebody who is sort of this bombastic, this big personality, this orator that can convince them and use his words in an impressive way.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: And much the same, they are have surrounded themselves in Corinth with people who match what they think ministers of the gospel should look like, and because of that, their relationship with Paul is strained.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's like Taffy that is being pulled too far apart, and we're kind of in that middle space where you can see through it.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: And Paul is corresponding with them, and he is their pin pals.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: They've had so many conversations together.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: And what we're gonna look at this morning, which will cover the end of chapter one and the beginning of chapter two in 1 Corinthians, is Paul is finishing basically his justification for why he wrote them a letter instead of visiting them.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: This is what Jeremy talked about last week, a huge part of it.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: Remember, they they were um had questions about Paul's trustworthiness because he had said he would visit them and then he did not, and instead he wrote them a letter.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, and and Paul's argument at that section was look, I did this, and even though I did, I just want you to know that the gospel message that has been proclaimed to you is trustworthy, even though you think that I am not.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: But now as we look in the text this morning, as we are in chapter one, verse 23, we're gonna see that Paul gives sort of his very real, raw, emotional reason for why he didn't visit them.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to turn with me there to the text, Paul says in chapter 1, verse 23, I call on God as a witness on my life that it was to spare you that I did not come to Corinth.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: I do not mean that we lord it over your faith, but we are workers with you for your joy because you stand firm in your faith.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: See, Paul didn't go to Corinth and visit them because it would be painful.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: And he had already had too many experiences with them, too many interactions with those that he loved that had been marked by pain.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: I I if you're anything like me here, I think this passage is so applicable to the way that we live our lives.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: And you can probably think without even trying of examples where you say, I know relationships that are marked by pain and are marked by hurt, and I don't I don't really want to go and visit them again.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want to engage in that space.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: And that's kind of where Paul's at.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: I call on God.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: He literally says, like, God is my witness.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: This is why I didn't go back and see you, is because I wanted to spare you.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: And we'll get more into that as chapter two begins, but I want you to see here that what he was sparing them from, he says, ultimately, he does it for their joy.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: He does it so that they would be able to understand and know the joy that is supposed to be present when you're in a community that knows and loves Jesus Christ.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: Here in the church, like let's just talk about Tobeka Bible Church for a moment, because we know Jesus Christ, the very end of that statement there, you stand firm in your faith.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: If we stand firm in our faith, there is an expectation that the sort of foundational emotion of our congregation is that we should be able to have joy with one another, that we should be able to connect and have fellowship and enjoy each other simply because we know Christ and not be because we align on other things, right?
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: You know, if you're a guy, you heard the announcements, you might be going to the chili cook-off, right?
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: So you should be able to go to the chili cook-off and enjoy yourself, not just because you're enjoying great chili, which is a huge perk, right?
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: But because you know Jesus Christ and you're with other people who do.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: And so Paul is sort of, he says, you know, this is this, this is what it should be like.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and this is why we're doing this, and this is why I'm still writing you these letters, because that joy doesn't really feel like it's present at the moment.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't feel like our relationship is marked by that unity that comes from Christ.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: And so, because of that, because ultimately his end goal is that they would experience joy, and the relationship would be marked by this.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: He says he's sparing them from something.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so we kind of need to get a little technical for a second, and then we're gonna dive in, and then we're gonna dive back out.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, but I last uh two weeks ago rather, I shared with you there was kind of like that timeline of all the communications that Paul has had with them.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: But it's sort of important that you understand what Paul is saying he was sparing them from.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: So he remember, Paul originally visited the Corinthian church.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, a V is going to be visit, an L is gonna be a letter.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: This is where he founded the church.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: And then he sent them a letter, okay?
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: That first letter, we don't have it.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: That's not 1 Corinthians.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: 1 Corinthians is the second letter, okay?
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're already lost, I have I can't help you anymore.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: Then he gave them after 1 Corinthians, so this is what's happened since last fall.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: He visited them again on what was um either an unexpected or a hasty visit that he has called painful.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: And then he sent them after that painful visit, he sent them another letter.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: So both of these he said were painful.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: And then he sent them a fourth letter.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: That's 2 Corinthians.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: That's what we're reading right now.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: And then actually after 2 Corinthians, this is, you know, way down the road, he visited them again.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: Everything was hunky-dory.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: He did find joy.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: He actually wrote the book of Romans while he was there on that final visit.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: But what we're talking about this morning, if you can kind of picture this, is in 1 Corinthians, in this fourth letter, he's talking about why he wrote them a letter beforehand instead of visiting them, if that makes sense.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: And so what was on the table, um, let me take a step back.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: The situation was Paul had written them that first, or had visited them that painful time, and there had been a lot of fighting.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: The issues of 1 Corinthians hadn't been solved.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: There was even more division, there was even more dissent, there was more sexual immorality, there were things that he had told them to do that did not happen.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: And so, because of that, it was a bitter and contentious sort of engagement.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: It was one of those times where you just have to agree to disagree because nothing is going as it should.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: And it gave Paul deep sorrow that that was the way that his last visit had gone, right?
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: Let's just remember, right, we're not texting, we're not calling, we're not emailing.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: This is his uh sort of when you come around every couple years and visit them, the last one was so painful.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: And so because he's an apostle, because he has a responsibility, because the community isn't doing what it should, he now has a dilemma.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: This dilemma is that he needs to engage with them further.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: He can't just back away.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: If he backed away, then it would give all of his enemies, and he had them in Corinth, who had been saying, you know, this Paul, like, who is he, right?
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: Who is this guy?
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: He's he's a bunch, he's a nobody.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, actually, I share this with you.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: This is literally, this is in 2 Corinthians.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: For it is said, his letters are weighty and powerful, but his physical presence is weak, and his public speaking amounts to nothing, right?
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: Like these people, this is like the roast that isn't funny.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: They pull no punches.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: Paul is, this is even the part that he picked out.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: He's like, okay, I'm gonna include that in the letter, just so you remember what you said about me.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: So if he doesn't engage with them, right, it proves all of his doubters wrong.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: Or it proves all of his doubters right.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: It shows that what they were saying about him was true.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: So he needs to engage, but the problem is it's gonna be painful.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: And so the decision that he has is he can visit or he can write.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: And he chose to write.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna see why he did that in a second.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: He chose to write, but he needs to justify it because they're mad that he didn't visit, if that makes sense.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: And ultimately, right, keeping in mind that the reason Paul did this was for the purpose of their joy.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: So here's his justification, and this is where we sort of move from the head to the heart.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: I, in fact, I made up my mind about this.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: I would not come to you on another painful visit.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: For if I cause you pain, then who will cheer me other than the one being hurt by me?
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: I wrote this very thing, so that when I came I wouldn't have pain from those who ought to give me joy, because I am confident about all of you that my joy will also be yours.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: For I wrote to you with many tears, out of an extremely troubled and anguished heart, not to cause you pain, but that you should know the abundant love I have for you.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: If you have um if you were ever once a teenager, or ever parented a teenager, you know what this is like, probably to an extent.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: The interaction that is marked by pain.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: And this word pain, it's used five different times in the noun or verb form in this passage that we're looking at.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: And the pain that he's talking about, like is sometimes the case, runs deeper than just, you know, you hit your funny bone.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: Let me let me show you a couple other places where this exact same word is used.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: Matthew 17, they will kill him, and on the third day he will be raised up.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: And they were deeply distressed.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: Lupe is the Greek word, and that's what's being used there.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: But learning for the first time that Jesus is going to be killed brings pain.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: Deeply distressed, there's the word, each one began to say to him, Surely not I, Lord.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: So the anguish of being at the Last Supper and being told that one among you is going to betray Christ.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: That causes pain.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_00: When he got up from prayer and came to the disciples, he found them sleeping, exhausted from their grief.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: Same word.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's just translated as pain in 2 Corinthians.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane about to be arrested because Judas was betraying him, sees the disciples having fallen asleep because they were so racked with pain.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_00: This is the same kind of pain that Paul says is coming up in his interactions with them.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: And yet, he continues to press forward, but he says, This is the reason why I did not visit you again.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: Because I mean, again, you can hear the Father in his tone.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: He says, Because when you feel pain, I feel pain.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: Because the message that I need to bring to you, or rather, that I sent in my letter, I know it wasn't fun.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't a happy occasion.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: That letter was prompted because you are sinning.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_00: That letter was prompted because you are doing things that you should not be doing.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: Who enjoys that?
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: Who loves those conversations?
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: Not I.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: And so Paul says, Well, I didn't want to go because reading this at first glance, you might hear him be like, Well, because that doesn't sound fun.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: That's why you wouldn't want to go.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's easy.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, who who hasn't like sent the email or the text, and you're just like, and send?
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_00: And you just watch it as like the bomb, you know, just explodes, and you're just walking away from it as if you had nothing to do with it.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: But that's not the reason he didn't go.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's not because he's scared.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: He didn't go because he says, our relationship is supposed to be founded in joy, and you needed to hear this and basically have some time to work through it so that the next time I come, he's already thinking about the next time.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_00: The next time we see each other, it will be joyful.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: That we've worked through these things so that we don't have to do another painful visit.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: Paul is not trying to avoid pain here in all its forms.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you look at the last verse there, the last sentence, you'll see that in fact what Paul ended up having to do was the most painful thing of all.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_00: He says, For I wrote to you with many tears out of an extremely troubled and anguished heart.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_00: See, if what Paul was really trying to do was avoid pain, live in the absence of pain, he would have walked away.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, this is I already showed him you in my terrible drawing.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's not like this is the first conversation.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: The issues that he's bringing up, and and look, we don't know the the letter that he's talking about that he sent, that he's referencing here at the beginning of chapter two, we don't know what it said.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: We don't have it.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: We can sort of, people have for 2,000 years tried to sort of Sherlock Holmes it together and think what he was trying to do, but we also don't really need to know the details to understand the emotion behind it, which is really what's at stake here.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: He says it was painful.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: And based upon that, we can understand that it was probably a bit more intense than 1 Corinthians.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_00: And if it's a bit more intense than 1 Corinthians, then it was probably a pretty intense letter.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: And so Paul says, I wrote to you with tears at an extremely troubled and anguished heart, because like the one who loves, he recognizes that to walk away would be to leave them to continue heading towards their destruction.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_00: They were a young church that did not fully understand what it meant to follow after Christ.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, even when 1 Corinthians is written, right?
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: Which is, I mean, depends, but maybe a year or two before uh 2 Corinthians, even then, they're like a two-year-old church.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: How long have you been a Christian?
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: You know, how long have you known Jesus?
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: How close were you to Christ after a year or two?
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_00: And furthermore, having come out of an environment where every single thing is trying to draw you back into idolatry and sexual immorality and all of these worldly things.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_00: Paul is trying to redeem them from that with the gospel of Jesus Christ.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_00: And they're struggling, understandably, but he says, if I walk away now, what's gonna happen to them?
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: It is my job.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: I care for them, I love them.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: And so, because of that, I'm going to intentionally push into the pain.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna press on that infection to get it out.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: Man, what a hard thing to do.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you have had some of those circumstances where you've recognized that I need to do something hard to get to the joy on the other side.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that's what Paul is doing here.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, there are a lot of words that we could use to describe the Corinthians that we love to sort of bandy about in our culture today.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_00: They're toxic.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_00: They were gaslighting him, they were negative.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_00: They didn't, you know, weren't supportive of whatever Paul was doing.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_00: You know, if you look on social media and listen to people, health coaches, mental health coaches, talk about what it means to be able to live your life the best way possible.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_00: Oftentimes one of the things that's done is we can overindulge.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying there's no place for it, but we can overindulge and that desire to remove as much pain as possible.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_00: But I want to establish a fact, which is that there's a difference between the absence of pain and true joy.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_00: And those are two modes that you can live your life in.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_00: There is a life that you can live that is as free from pain as possible.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: And in order to do that, in order to live that life, it might be comfortable.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_00: It might be comfortable for a time, but you are not going to be able to experience the depths of true joy that is found by occasionally engaging with painful things.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's true in a lot of situations in life.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's true, for example, in your health.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: Think about your body, your physical health, right?
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_00: I don't love rowing machines or ellipticals any more than the next guy.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_00: But I'll tell you what, if my ticker's still ticking.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: I understand that I need to do a little bit of exercise to keep it healthy.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_00: And in order to do that, I might need to sweat.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: I might need to do the painful thing and go to the gym.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_00: There are a lot of situations like this in life.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: Only this one, people's salvation is what we are talking about.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_00: The life that they were living for Christ is what we are talking about.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_00: And so Paul presses into this, right?
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_00: And he might, and again, like I say, there's an opportunity that we have to say, well, Paul was just trying to walk away from the problem.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_00: He could have visited them.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe that was the more painful and better thing he could have done.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: But here's where I submit to you that Paul was a wise man.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: Paul is like the doctor that is administering the shot and asks you, would you like that in your right arm or your left?
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_00: And you, thinking, well, I've got to use my right arm quite a bit today, you say, Well, I'll take it in my left.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_00: Paul had a shot that he needed to administer, like the good doctor.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_00: He knew that it would be malpractice to walk away.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_00: But what he does here is not take the pain-free route.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_00: He does that by engaging in this relationship anyway, which basically to him has just been abuse.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_00: By engaging and writing this letter and doing what he knows is the hard and right thing, he's taking the painful route.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_00: But he knows what we need to understand, which is that even when we engage in hard conversations like this, painful circumstances, so that we might have joy on the other side, that there is still wisdom to be applied in the how.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what he's doing, right?
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_00: He says, I know if I came and visited you, it wouldn't have gone as well.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_00: You wouldn't have received it as you did this letter.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_00: And we actually find out later in 2 Corinthians chapter 7, I think it is, that that painful letter, the decision that he made to not visit but write, had its intended result.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_00: Everything's not fixed.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we do have 2 Corinthians, right?
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_00: He needed to write a fourth, but there were people who were repenting of their sin, who were changing their lives because of these things, and we can assume that it is because he put it into the left arm instead of the right.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_00: The greatest lesson, though, that we can find from this passage, the greatest takeaway for us, because there should be a part of us, whenever we take on things that don't rationally make sense, like intentionally choosing to be painful or to endure pain, uh, there's a motivation that needs to come behind it that supersedes the understandable hesitation of being in pain.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_00: And for Paul, it was the abundant love that he had for them.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_00: You don't do this kind of thing if you don't love somebody, if you don't care for them.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_00: You walk away.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_00: Paul, you're you're kind of homely.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_00: When you talk, it makes our ears hurt.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_00: We'd rather hear you write to us and read that than listen to you.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_00: Paul, we would prefer it if Apollos was here instead.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_00: He matches more of what we think an apostle should look and sound like.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_00: Paul, we don't we don't like that you're poor because it doesn't look good on us.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_00: But Paul loved them, even though that was his treatment in many circumstances.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_00: There were great people in Corinth.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_00: But because of his abundant love for them, he says, I'm gonna do the painful thing.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_00: So going back to our earlier illustration of a parent with a child that needs to have a hard conversation, let's talk about the difference between the absence of pain and true joy that comes through pain.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_00: The absence of pain is when, and forgive, listen, if you're a teenager listening, forgive me, you are about to be the object of my illustration.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_00: But we were all teenagers once, and this probably doesn't apply to you anyway.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_00: So when you're a teenager and you do something that is foolish, and your parents are upset because you did something that endangered you or was unwise or whatever the reason is, went against their rules.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_00: As parents, you have a couple options, right?
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_00: You can choose to ignore that and let them continue to do it, which will certainly be less painful in the short term.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_00: Let them continue to do what they want to do.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_00: You don't have to listen to them argue, listen to them fight back, have that sort of soul in expression that lasts for days, hear the slamming, you know, bedroom door.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_00: You don't have to deal with those things.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_00: But true joy comes through dealing with the pain, actually taking the authority that you've been given by God to sort of handle the situation and to do it in a way that is honoring to the Lord, because you know that by going through that out of an immense and overflowing love, you will, Lord willing, get to a situation that is more joyful than it was previously.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_00: And so there are these options.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_00: But the other option, right, is that you can just walk away.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_00: And over and over as I go through this text, I ask myself, man, why did Paul not walk away?
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_00: Why did he not just throw up his hands and say, man, three letters is good enough for me?
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_00: Three letters, two visits, I'm done.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_00: I've said my peace.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_00: Why does he keep doing it?
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's because Paul followed a savior that did the exact same thing.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_00: Paul was struck blind by Jesus on his road to Damascus.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_00: And while Paul had been a persecutor of the church, he had also encountered the resurrected Christ and understood at that moment what it meant to follow after a savior who intentionally chose to walk through pain so that there might be joy at the end.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_00: He was following after a savior who had been beaten, mocked, scorned, had his family reject him, had his friends reject him, had one of his best friends betray him to his death, had somebody who endured a whole lot of abuse, but continued to endure it for the sake of love, so that there might be joy on the other side.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, if anybody is an example of intentionally taking on pain so that others might benefit, that would be our Savior.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_00: That is quite literally the foundation of the gospel message.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_00: And so how can Paul do this?
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_00: Well, because Paul understood the gospel, and Paul wanted to live out the gospel.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_00: And Paul understood that how he felt in the moment maybe wasn't as important in the grand calculus as what was to be provided as a benefit to the Corinthian church by him continuing to have this relationship.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_00: So if we could summarize all of these things, I have a couple thoughts here, and then I have a way that I feel that you might be able to guess we can apply this to our lives.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_00: Three things.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_00: The absence of pain is different from true joy.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_00: True joy is often found through painful situations, and painful situations can come from a loving place.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_00: The absence of pain is different from true joy.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_00: There's a situation here where we probably don't have 2 Corinthians because Paul didn't want to endure the pain and the anguish and the tears and the brutality of telling some of his best friends that they were not only sinning, but some of them needed to be kicked out of the church.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_00: And that he desperately desired that they would be restored, but that they were not acting in accordance with Christ.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_00: True pain is enduring those things because you want to experience true joy.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_00: And we flow all the way back to the beginning of the message, back to the end of chapter one, when Paul said, the reason I'm doing all of this is because you stand firm in your faith, and because you say you stand firm in your faith, that means that if we go through this process, if that is true, when we get to the other side, we'll be closer than we were before.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_00: True joy is often found through painful situations.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's a perhaps a sad but real truth that some of the most joyful things in this life aren't achieved without sacrifice.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_00: And that if we walk the road of no pain, if you will, that we're gonna miss out on some of those things.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_00: And while that's possible, it's not as fulfilling.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_00: Third and finally, that painful situations can come from a loving place.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_00: There's some of you who have a particular dislike for uh relationships with conflict because you've seen conflict done so poorly when you were a child or young adults, or maybe even now, but you've had a bad experience with that, where pain didn't result or it wasn't coming out of a place of love.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_00: And so because of that, you have a hard time thinking that it's possible for somebody who loves you to also have a hard conversation with you.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_00: And what you need to know is that it is possible.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_00: Paul's doing it right here.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_00: And the reason, the whole reason, he's having a hard conversation with them is because he says, I have an abundance of love for you.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_00: I'm shedding tears because I love you and doing what needs to be done.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_00: So, how can we take this?
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_00: Well, there's two direct paths, right?
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_00: The first one is that there are some of us who probably need to have a hard conversation, a painful conversation with our Lord.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it we don't talk about this often because accepting Christ is so easy to believe that Jesus died for your sins, that he endured pain on the cross so that you would not have to, and that you might be forgiven.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_00: It is such an captivating and welcoming invitation that no matter what you've done, you are forgiven.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_00: No matter where you are, you're welcome.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_00: One thing we don't often talk about is that it can still be a painful process.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's painful because you have to admit that you're a sinner.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_00: You have to admit that you're wrong.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_00: We don't fall before the cross of Christ and say, Jesus, take me as I am because I'm perfect.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't go that way.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_00: There is a pain that comes in the Christian life.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_00: This is why Jesus says that you need to use phrases like pick up your cross daily as you're walking after him.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_00: If you know anything about your Bible, Jesus picking up his cross was not the most comfortable thing in the world.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_00: There are things that you do in your life for obedience to Christ that requires pain, requires sacrifice.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_00: But you do it because it leads to true joy.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_00: The joy of hope, the joy of peace, the joy of forgiveness, the joy of true fellowship, the joy of knowing that you are loved and complete and sanctified in God's presence.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_00: Those things pass through a barrier of pain, and there's joy on the other side of it.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_00: Even when we look at the end of our life, where the question of what we believe, and for that matter who we believe, is of utmost importance, you will pass through a window of pain that is death, and then you will experience true joy.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's everywhere that we look.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_00: But the first question that some of us need to have is with our Lord.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_00: And if we choose to have an absence of pain, do the easy thing, we can continue as we have been, right?
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_00: Walking through our life, not engaging with what the Lord has called us to do, but just doing exactly what we want to do.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_00: Or we can experience true joy.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_00: Trust in Jesus Christ.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_00: Accept that the Christian walk involves sacrifice and difficulty, and we can find that joy on the other side.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_00: But the second way that this applies is that there are probably some hard conversations that you might need to have in your life.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe there's a situation where because of your abundant love for somebody, a painful conversation needs to take place.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_00: And so, just in the last few minutes, I'd just like to walk through that real briefly.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_00: Because uh, for some of you, like right under public speaking and going to the dentist is having a hard conversation with somebody that you love.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_00: So there's two ways that you might be involved in that conversation.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_00: One is you're Paul, one is you're the Corinthians.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_00: If you're Paul, uh that means, listen, nobody's wrong and nobody's right necessarily, but if you're Paul, you're the initiator.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_00: You're the one that is going to, perhaps the one that has caused you the most pain.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_00: And out of love, you're not going to write the letter or the email or have the conversation that secretly would feel the best.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_00: I know we've all, uh maybe I I say that a lot of times, like I'm including you all in sort of my anger, but you know, write out the whole email and then delete.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_00: And then write the real email that gets sent, right?
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_00: The one that doesn't include the way that you maybe truly feel and you need to take it to Christ.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_00: Don't do that.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_00: Send the letter that Paul sends.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_00: The one that says, I love you and I care for you, and because we're firm in our faith, I want us to have joy and have a real relationship with each other.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_00: And right now that's a little hard.
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_00: Right now I'm struggling a bit.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to work through it.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_00: But the great power that you have, being the Paul in that difficult situation, is you get to choose whether you write or visit.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_00: You get to choose the injection site.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_00: You get to choose how it's done.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a lot of freedom in that and a lot of wisdom that is carried forth in how you choose to go about that situation so that, even though the situation will be painful, as Paul says, you are able to prevent them from some of the pain because of the way that you're doing it.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_00: The other side of the coin is you could be the Corinthians.
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_00: And we've all been there.
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_00: You are the party that maybe needs to get their acting gear a little bit.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_00: You are the one that has caused more of the pain.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_00: You are the one that has sort of the reason for why this brokenness has occurred.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_00: And as they did, what you're going to need to do is with humility understand that having a renewed relationship and a joyful relationship is more important than holding on to whatever bitterness that you have, whatever ideas that you have of the other person and how you think they should be.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_00: And look, I know, I can guarantee you, there's going to be somebody who's like, Connor's telling me that I just need to like stay in these toxic relationships or whatever it is that is going to be taken to the nth degree.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_00: No, what I am saying is that there are a lot of relationships in your life that you might have backed away from where a little bit of pain would have resulted in more joy.
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_00: And that leaning into that is how we can show Christ to the world around us.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you are able to do the hard thing, to walk into a conversation with somebody that you know is going to be difficult, that you know is caused perhaps even brokenness by sin, yours or theirs, and to do it as Jesus Christ would, with your eye on love and willing to sacrifice, you're going to display the gospel and the way that you carry these things out.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_00: And so as we review this passage and we say, why would Paul do any of this?
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's because Jesus is his Savior and He wants Corinth to understand the gospel.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_00: And it's very clear that they are not living their life in a way that is following after Jesus.
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_00: But by Paul doing this, by showing them this, by acting in this way, he is doing more occasionally than words on a piece of paper could ever do.
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_00: Because he's doing the hardest thing.
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_00: The absence of pain is different from true joy.
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_00: True joy is often found through painful situations, and painful situations can come from a loving place.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm going to go ahead and pray for us.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_00: And as I do, I would invite you to think about where is an area of pain in your life that you can press on in order to find joy on the other side?
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_00: Is there somebody that you can, or a situation that needs a little bit more Jesus so that he can be shown in the interactions between you and those that you love?
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, we come before you today.
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_00: And Lord, we thank you for the example of Jesus Christ, who died on the cross for our sins, who was beaten, who was mocked, who was scorned, Lord, because of his love for us.
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, might we carry that forth into more of our relationships?
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, when it's possible to set aside the petty things, the things that won't matter in a month, Lord, to set aside the things that by grace, Lord, you so often set aside for us.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_00: And Lord, in those situations where there's a real genuine hurt and pain, I ask that you would give us wisdom.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_00: I ask that you would give us discernment.
• 42:36
  SPEAKER_00: And Lord, I ask that you would give us a measure of Paul's endurance to enter into this in a way that is glorifying to you.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, I also pray for anybody who doesn't know you as their Savior, that they might be willing to take that step to move from what is just maybe a pain-free life right now and take that step that recognizes that they are a sinner and they need Jesus Christ as their Savior so that they might experience true joy.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, we thank you for all of these things, and we ask for forgiveness when we fail to carry them out.
• 43:19
  SPEAKER_00: And we thank you for the example that you set for us.
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_00: And it's in Jesus' name that we pray.
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 43:26
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks, everybody.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for enduring my teenage boy going through puberty voice.
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_00: Hope you have a great week.