Reading: 2 Corinthians
4; Psalm 16
Paul didn't preach
promoting himself or his ministry, “but Jesus Christ as Lord,
with ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake.” (2
Corinthians 4:5). As a minister of the New Covenant, he had been
given the transforming knowledge of the glory of God in the face of
Jesus Christ as a treasure that he was proclaiming and presenting
wherever he went. He was holding forth the truth of Jesus plainly by
the preaching of the Gospel. Then Paul describes some of the ways
he suffered as a servant of Jesus.
7But
we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this
all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. 8We
are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not
in despair; 9persecuted,
but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.
(2 Corinthians 4:7-9)
He
goes on to say we “are alive are
always being given over to death for Jesus' sake...So then, death is
at work in us, but life is at work in you.”
(2 Corinthians 4:11-12). How did Paul do it? How
did he endure such suffering over such a long period and not throw in
the towel?
He tells us in the next chapter, “we walk by faith and not by
sight” (2 Corinthians 5:7), which is indeed the secret. But how
does one maintain faith through such affliction?
How does one hold onto faith when affliction is screaming in our
heads, “God has forsaken you!”
(Undoubtedly Paul faced times when he wondered why God wasn't hearing
him. See 2 Corinthians 12:8.) Paul
points us to the secret of maintaining faith when it seems only
“death is at work in
us.”
Since
we have the same spirit of faith according to what has been written,
"I believed, and so I spoke," we also believe, and so we
also speak...
(2 Corinthians 4:13 ESV)
At Gulf
Coast Community Church, where I have the privilege of serving as
a pastor, I often say, “When we see the Old
Testament quoted in the New Testament we must go back to the Old
Testament and read the quote in its context and understand what it
meant in its context, and then return to the New Testament reading
the quote with that understanding.” If we
do that here, it will give us great insight into how Paul responded
to these afflictions, and why he wasn't crushed and destroyed.
Psalm 116 is a psalm
about prayer—about the prayer of someone in a desperate state. No
wonder Paul quotes from it when describing how he responds to
desperate crises. No wonder it was on Paul's mind as he
contemplated his own afflictions. He may well have used the words
of the psalm in his own prayers. In Psalm 116 we see the following
references to prayer:
1...he
has heard my voice and my pleas for mercy. 2…he
inclined his ear to me... I will call on him as long as I live.…4Then
I called on the name of the LORD: "O LORD, I pray, deliver my
soul!"...10
I believed, even when I spoke: "I am greatly afflicted" …17I will offer to you the sacrifice of thanksgiving and call on the
name of the LORD.
(Psalm 116:1, 2, 4, 10, 17 ESV)
And the following make
it clear that these prayers were being lifted up by a man in a hard
place, a very difficult place.
1...for
mercy....3The
snares of death encompassed me; the pangs of Sheol laid hold on me; I
suffered distress and anguish.4…deliver
my soul!" 6...when I was brought low, he saved me.... 8For
you have delivered my soul from death, my eyes from tears, my feet
from stumbling... 10
"I
am greatly afflicted" (Psalm
116:1, 3, 4, 6, 8, 10 ESV)
In
Psalm 116 the psalmist was crying out to the Lord during times of
great affliction. He was pleading for mercy and was definitely hard
pressed, perplexed,
persecuted, struck down,
but because he called on the Lord he was not
crushed, not in despair, not abandoned and
not
destroyed. When
the psalmist declared, “I
believed,
even when I spoke: "I am greatly afflicted" he
was saying, “When
I was crying out to you in my affliction saying, 'I am greatly
afflicted,' I was doing so because I believe, because I trust in You,
Lord.”
The
psalmist prayed because he was walking by faith. Prayer
is the voice of faith. Faith turns us to the Lord in our
affliction. Faith cries out to Him in prayer. Faith doesn't deny our
affliction
(when
I said, “I am greatly afflicted”),
faith brings our affliction to God and asks for intervention!
That is what the psalmist did, and evidently that is what Paul did.
Why
did Paul cry out to the Lord in difficult times? Because Paul knew
that God would use those prayers to bring about deliverance (2
Corinthians 1:9-11). When
we look at the psalms, we find not only prayers to bring to God when
we believe, but prayers to bring to God when our faith is being
assaulted and feels like it is about to crumble.
And when we take these words with us to God they often help us
return to a place of trust in God.
To
the praying soul there becomes possible the faith which is the grasp
of the human spirit upon the realities and verities of the unseen
world. (A. T. Pierson)
So
why do we pray? Because we believe, and because without it our faith
would fail. Prayer is the voice of faith and without it, faith is
silent.
Love the Gospel, Live
the Gospel, Advance the Gospel,
Jerry
