Welcome to Moore in the Word, a podcast of Moore Theological College in Sydney, Australia, that seeks
to glorify God through biblically sound, thought-provoking, and challenging talks and interviews.
In this episode, from a chapel service held on the first day of the academic term on the 17th of February, 2025.
Mark Thompson, Principal of Moore Theological College, speaks on 2 Corinthians 1, verses 1 to 22, and the God of all comfort.
He encourages us to remember who God is and what he has done, and therefore, why we should listen to him in the midst of turmoil and distress.
We hope you find the episode helpful.
I'm so thankful to God as I look out on you all this afternoon.
I'm absolutely thrilled that you're here.
It is great to see you.
This fellowship of living and learning together with its goal of preparing you to serve the people of God.
is extraordinary.
It really is.
And each one of you has a very special part to play in it.
God has some very significant things to teach you during the course of this year.
There will be ups and downs for many of you, but it is a remarkable thing that God has done in your life to bring you to this point.
The conversations you've had.
The desire to learn and serve that he's put in each one of you the details that have come together to get you here.
All of that has been God's work.
He has brought you here and I'm so very glad that he has.
Uh, we formally begin our academic year with, uh, this service of the Lord's Supper sitting
together under the word of God and sharing together in a meal that reminds us of God's grace.
Through the first term, as Andrew has pointed out, we'll be preaching through two Corinthians together.
Um, and, um, I'm hoping that you'll find that here you have an insight into the Apostle Paul that you may not get anywhere else.
It's a very revealing, uh, letter of Paul.
So this afternoon, we come to hear what Paul the Apostle had to say to a church that was in turmoil and distress, and also what God has to say to us.
In these same words.
So let's pray together.
Heavenly Father, we pray as we turn our attention to your word, that you might take all distractions from us and help us to hear your voice.
That knowing what you would say to us, we might live as those who love your word and who seek to live in the light of it.
Please move us by your spirit in that way, for we ask this of you in Jesus name.
Amen.
Well, it very quickly feels like you've walked into the middle of a conversation when you open up 2 Corinthians, doesn't it?
It's clear that Paul, the writer of this letter, knows the people he's writing to.
It's also clear that something has gone on between them.
It's not the first letter that Paul had written to them.
If you piece together the clues from this letter and the other letter we still have that he wrote
to them, 1 Corinthians, it seems this is most likely the fourth letter that he's written to them.
We no longer have the first one and the third one, it seems.
What we call 1 Corinthians was most likely the second letter that Paul had
written to them, written a few years after the church had been planted by him.
And after that letter, Paul made a beeline to them, and what he described as his painful visit took place.
Perhaps there was a follow up visit after that as well.
And then he shot them off another letter, that one's lost to us too, before finally writing this one.
There has been a lot that has been going on between them.
The joy of new life and a new church plant.
The emergence of opposition and division and false teaching and immorality in the church.
Uncomfortable discipline.
Visitors arriving and saying they needn't have bothered anyway.
They shouldn't have been listening to Paul.
What would he know about everyday struggles of people like us?
And yet Paul reaches out to this precious group of people, still precious to him as well as precious to God, again and again and
again through all that, when things began to take a turn for the worse in Corinth and when things there were in a dire state.
urging them to put the gospel into practice, to let the gospel shape the way they dealt with each other and those who visited them from outside.
And in this last letter, perhaps he was preparing them for one last visit, which he hopes will not be painful, but will rather
see a genuine reconciliation between them, an aligning of their hearts and wills, and a renewed partnership in ministry.
Many of you here this afternoon are preparing to go and serve in congregations of God's
people, not too fundamentally different from the one Paul helped to establish in Corinth.
There are great joys in that service, watching lost people grasp the gospel, what it means for the very first time, watching lives turn around.
Sometimes rapidly, sometimes more gradually.
I'm reminded of a Bible study group of older men that I took once, where one man hardly ever spoke and never prayed.
But his friends kept bringing him along, and I was just blown away when after about a year and
a half, one night, he led us in prayer and began to show all the signs of suddenly coming alive.
But there will inevitably be times of struggle as well, disappointment and grief, and I don't mean just yours.
I'm thinking of those occasions when the people you serve are suffering, and what's
happening, and the magnitude of what is happening, just doesn't make sense to them or to you.
Over the past few years, I've heard and watched congregations of God's people battered and bruised by failure, overcome
with confusion and deep sadness, division tearing them apart, and Christians just refusing to talk to one another.
Moral failure by someone they trusted, sometimes by one who's been instrumental in bringing many of them to Christ.
The scars and wounds it leaves remains for many years.
I know a congregation that suffered,
suffered the serial adultery of their senior minister.
And it seemed as if each week new victims kept emerging, and the grief of that whole congregation
was real, the faith of many was shaken, and the ramifications are still being felt years later.
Allegations of misconduct, past or present, even after the person concerned has died.
can bring the same disillusionment and distress, grief and guilt, frustration and fear.
And some of us are in the midst of that right now.
Or false teaching, the peddling of some new idea that draws attention away from the cross and resurrection of Jesus, away from
the authority, truthfulness, sufficiency, and power of His Word given to us by the apostles, and promising something better.
If you read through 1 Corinthians and then on into 2 Corinthians, you'll see that they had it all.
The trifecta of division, immorality, and false teaching,
but Paul has refused to give up on them.
For the fourth time, he writes to them, and in this letter, as much as any other, you hear and see Paul the pastor.
Yes, he writes to them with all the authority of an apostle.
It's important that he reminds them of that right at the beginning of the letter.
But he writes also as one who is walking through all this with them, who understands
their pain right up close, and who won't Back away, because he loves them.
He grieves with them.
He wrestles the issues with them.
He prays with them.
So listen again to how he starts this letter, his fourth and perhaps his final letter to the Christians in Corinth.
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercy and God of all comfort.
who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are
in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves have been comforted by God.
For as we share abundantly in Christ's sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too.
If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation.
If we are comforted, it's for your comfort, which you experience when you patiently endure the same sufferings that we suffer.
Our hope for you is unshaken, for we know that as you share in our sufferings, you will also share in our comfort.
So it's not a letter of rebuke.
At least that's not how he begins.
He wants them to know real comfort.
He wants them to remember what God is like.
What he wants to bring to them is anchored in the person and character of God.
In other words, he begins in a richly theological way.
He reminds them that the one true and living God is a God of mercy, indeed the Father of mercy.
And he is the God of all comfort.
He comforts those who need it.
And he gives that comfort so that they might comfort others.
You see, the very first point Paul makes in this letter is, remember what God is like, the God of all comfort.
Paul doesn't narrow in on their affliction in the first paragraph.
He doesn't tell them, uh, that their affliction is not real or not insignificant or something they can and should easily overcome.
He certainly doesn't tell them that they brought it all upon themselves.
He knows very well that their disappointments, discouragements, and even grief are not unimportant.
But that's not where he starts.
He starts with God, praising God for who He is and what He's like.
What the Corinthians need to know and rejoice in is that God is the Father of mercy and the God of all comfort.
And here's one of the first surprises of the letter.
Why do they need to be confident?
Yes, if we'd been following the Corinthian soap opera, uh, we'd know that they were deeply
grieved by the letters that Paul had sent them before this one, and by the painful visit.
We'd have heard how very serious moral failure had polluted them, and how
confusion and division on a whole range of matters had been tearing them apart.
How to deal with that moral failure.
What to think about marriage.
Whether it's alright to eat the bargain priced meat sold at the local idol temple.
What to do when they get together.
How they should view spiritual gifts.
Even what's meant by the resurrection.
They'd been through a lot over the past couple of years.
But just as real as that.
Is what they've heard had been happening to Paul, Paul, the apostle, Paul, the
chosen messenger, the one who'd brought the gospel to them in the first place.
What had been happening to him while he was away from them in some measure,
they needed to be comfort because comforted because of their distress about him.
We don't have to try and reconstruct, reconstruct the circumstances that caused them such great concern about Paul.
He goes straight on to tell them about it.
Take a look at verse 8.
Well, we don't want you to be ignorant brothers of the affliction we experienced in Asia.
For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despised of, uh, despaired of life itself.
Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death, but that was to make us rely not on ourselves, but on God who raises the dead.
He delivered us from such a deadly peril and He will deliver us.
On Him we have set our hope that He will deliver us again.
You also must help us by prayer so that many will give thanks on our behalf for the blessing granted us through the prayers of many.
Uh, more, if you want more details about what happened to Paul in Ephesus, they can be found in Acts 19.
In just over the two years Paul had spent in Ephesus, he'd seen a great harvest for the gospel.
But he'd also faced the fiercest opposition.
The followers of the goddess Artemis had rioted against him and virtually hunted him out of town.
So the man who had been walking with the Corinthians through all their troubles, who had persevered with them, kept on loving them with hard
words and with gentle words, who'd written to them repeatedly and visited them as well, had himself been going through the most horrendous time.
They might not have known all the details before this point, they might not have understood
Paul's perspective on everything that happened, but they knew that he was suffering.
And the point is that God is able to comfort the messenger, as well as those who have come to faith through the message.
God is the God of comfort for the Corinthians, but he's also the God of comfort for Paul.
And he is the God who comforts the Corinthians through Paul.
And about Paul.
Paul was, uh, taken to the limits, but he says that was to make us rely not on ourselves, but on God who raises the dead.
Paul knew, you see, that his only hope and comfort lay in God himself, the God whose character is forever displayed in the cross of Christ.
Friends, there will be times when those you serve Need to be reminded that God is the
Father of mercy and the God of all comfort, and that they can cast their cares on Him.
And there will be times when it is you who needs to remember that.
Where affliction will come, but God comforts us in our affliction, and He comforts us so that we might share that comfort with others.
The clouds might be very dark indeed.
They were for the Corinthians at points, and for Paul too.
And at one point or another, they will be very dark for you.
But that is never evidence that God has abandoned you, that He's given up on you, at every point.
Whether to the congregation or to the minister of the Word, God remains the God of all comfort.
You've tasted the greatest deliverance after all.
Deliverance from sin, from death, the devil, and judgment, and you can trust
Him to deliver you in and through the most distressing circumstances you face.
See, Paul's comforting of the Corinthians was not something abstract, was not something just purely theological that he
could tick the box and say he'd said something orthodox to them, something Paul thought was just the right things to say.
He knew it deeply.
And personally and powerfully in the first section of this letter, Paul ties his behavior towards
the Corinthians in the closest way he can to the behavior, the nature and character of God.
God is the God of all comfort, and he, Paul, wants to comfort the Corinthians with the comfort God has given him.
And then he goes on to say something else about the way he's acted towards them, and tie that, too, in the closest possible way to God.
Listen again to the last part.
For our boast is this, the testimony of our conscience, that we behaved in the world with simplicity
and godly sincerity, not by earthly wisdom, but by the grace of God, and supremely so toward you.
For we are not writing to you anything other than what you read and acknowledge, and I hope you will fully acknowledge,
just as you partially acknowledged us, that on the day of our Lord Jesus, you will boast of us as we boast of you.
Because I was sure of this, I wanted to come to you at first, so that you might have a second experience of grace.
I wanted to visit you on my way to Macedonia and to come back to you from Macedonia and have you send me on my way to Judea.
Was I vacillating when I wanted to do this?
Do I make my plans according to the flesh, ready to say, Yes, yes, and no, no, at
the same time, as surely as God is faithful, our word to you has not been yes and no.
For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, When we proclaimed among you, Sylvanus, Timothy, and I, was not yes and no, but in Him it is always yes.
For all the promises of God find their yes in Him.
That is why it is through Him that we utter our Amen to God for His glory.
And it is God who establishes us with you in Christ, and has anointed us.
And has put his seal on us and given his spirit in our hearts as a guarantee.
Do you see the point?
Paul insists that he has behaved in the world with simplicity and godly sincerity, and supremely so towards them.
But he wants to say more than that.
Paul has wanted to act towards them in the same way that God has acted towards them and towards Paul.
On the surface, this might have looked as if Paul was the one who moved backwards and forwards, changing his mind one day yes and the next day no.
After all, hadn't he not come to them as they'd expected?
Is he coming?
Is he not coming?
Perhaps some of the mischief makers in Corinth were making much of this.
saying he can't be trusted, that his word doesn't mean anything.
We'll see as we go through this letter that there were some who were trying to undermine him.
But Paul values simplicity and godly sincerity because that's the way God has acted toward us.
The simple truth at the heart of it all is that all that has been done in the Old
Testament, and even among them as young believers in Christ in Corinth, is this.
All of it is in fulfillment of the promises that he has made.
All the promises of God find their yes in him.
God, you see, has not promised and drawn back.
He hasn't been tricksy or underhanded or too clever by half like earthly wisdom.
It's all been about Jesus, quite simply, quite sincerely, placarding Jesus across the universe,
presenting Jesus to his human creatures, calling to Jesus he's chosen before the foundation of the world.
It's all about Jesus.
And Paul wants the Corinthians to know that he, Paul, has acted in the same way towards
them, with simplicity and godly sincerity, all about Jesus rather than about himself.
The Corinthians and Paul share this.
That they have been brought together in Christ.
Did you see that phrase in verse 21?
Us with you in Christ.
Not Paul at some distance from them, unapproachable by them, immune from the rough and tumble of life they had to endure.
They shared in his sufferings, Paul wrote in verse 7, And they with him have been anointed,
have received God's seal and have been given his spirit in their hearts as a guarantee.
All through this letter of Paul to the Corinthians, we will be shown Paul the pastor's heart.
We've shown how much Paul identifies with those he serves rather than standing over against them.
And we've shown that the glory of the new covenant ministry to which Paul has been called
consists in this humble sense of partnership with the people whom God has entrusted to him.
Walking through life with them, pointing them back to who God is, what God is like, what God has done.
The God of all comfort.
He brings real, genuine, lasting comfort, because He's the Father of mercies.
The God who does not vacillate, but brings all His promises to their great fulfillment, their yes, in Jesus Christ.
The Corinthians needed to be reminded of those things, after all they'd been through.
And all they'd heard that Paul had been through and friends, we need to be reminded of that too, as you prepare here at more
college for the extraordinary privilege of living and loving and serving the people for whom Christ died, these two moves that
Paul makes right here at the first chapter of this letter are incredibly precious and valuable point to God away from yourself.
Away from the fractured context of our relationship, first and foremost to God, who He is, what He is like, what He has done.
And the other move?
Model how you behave towards those put in your care
on how God has behaved towards you and them.
Now that's a challenge.
That we will see lies at the centre.
And that is the blood that pumps through the pastor's heart.
So let's pray that God might help us to be like that in the light of God being like that.
Heavenly Father, we thank you that you are the God of all mercies and comfort.
And at various points, perhaps even now, some in this room desperately need the comfort that comes only from you.
And so we pray, would you turn our eyes towards you and towards the cross of the Lord Jesus in which
we see you perfectly displayed as we share in this supper and remember what has been done for us.
Help us to remember that you are the Father of mercy and the God of all comfort.
And you do not stand at a distance from us, but you draw us close.
And would you so work in us, that as we seek to serve your people, we might be like
you, sharing that comfort that we have received from you, and modeling our behavior.
On the way you have behaved towards us, and this we ask of you, in the name of Jesus.
Amen.
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