A Sentence of Death

Barry Metz 05/29/16

A Sentence of Death

2 Corinthians 1:8–11

If you have your Bibles, let’s get our text in front of us this morning—2 Corinthians 1:8-11, 2 Corinthians 1:8-11.

8For we do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of the affliction we experienced in Asia. For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. 9Indeed, 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. 10He 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. 11You 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.

Let’s pray together? Father we would ask that you might open our eyes to the truth in these verses this morning. We are grateful to call you Father. We are grateful to acknowledge that you are indeed the sovereign King. And we are grateful to acknowledge that you use all things for our good, even the afflictions and hardships and difficulties we face. We submit to you as clay to a potter. Mold us and make us after your will. In the name of our Savior, Jesus, we pray.

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John Bunyan, pastor, author of Pilgrim’s Progress and a prolific sufferer wrote this about the normal Christian life, “A Christian man or woman is seldom long at ease. When one trouble is gone, another does seize.”

Bunyan was expressing what others have learned about the Christian life down through the centuries—that If I am a follower of Jesus, of this I can be sure, that troubles will be coming, ease will be short lived, and one struggle, one trouble, or one trial will tend to follow the next.”[1]

Now while we can all agree that John Bunyan’s words are true for every Christian, we might say they were especially true with a sort of intensification in the life of the Apostle Paul[2]. When Paul was called by God in Acts 9—and we said this last week—when Paul was called by God in Acts 9, he was especially singled out to be a sufferer for Christ, “I will show him, God said to Ananias who was Paul’s first tour guide in the faith, I will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name.”

Now we made the point last week that Paul begins the book of 2 Corinthians in a really unusual way when you consider what was going on between him and the Corinthian church. False teachers had infiltrated the Corinthian church and were claiming that Paul was not a true apostle. Among other things they argued that he didn’t have a true apostle’s credentials, that his ministry lacked power, that he was unimpressive in his preaching, that he wouldn’t take a pay check, that he lacked integrity, and that he suffered way too much. Paul’s suffering, they argued, disqualified him from being a true apostle. Would God let his main apostle suffer so much? Surely not the false teachers said. {We sometimes stumble over the same point only worded slightly differently: Would God allow so much suffering in my life if He really loved me?}

In one sense we could say the Corinthian church was faced with rival apostolates….

Will the true apostle please stand up?

The false apostles, summarized on the right of the slide, were impressive when they were present. Their lives were care free. They spoke well, they were golden-tongued, but most of all their ministries seemed to be really powerful.

We can imagine them critiquing Paul and his ministry… “Paul is unimpressive when he’s with us…his speaking is unpolished…he’s weak… and he’s an affliction magnet. Surely, given the amount that he suffers, he can’t be a true apostle! Surely, given the amount he suffers, there must be some sin in his life…..Surely God must be displeased with a man like Paul”

So it’s really interesting the way Paul starts 2 Corinthians. He takes on this wrong theology, this wrong thinking about God and suffering and addresses it right off the bat. Verse 3, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ… who comforts us in all our affliction. The true God doesn’t always take our affliction away. The true God doesn’t intend that we live above our troubles soaring through light at 10,000 feet, flying high above our difficulties. No, God is to be blessed because he comforts us in all our affliction. Why? So that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For as we share abundantly in Christ’s sufferings—yes true apostles share in Christ’s sufferings, it’s part of God’s plan—for as we share abundantly in Christ’s sufferings so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too. Right up front in the book, Paul sounds the gong… True apostles suffer affliction and God has a grand purpose in it!

It’s nonsense, Paul says, to say that true apostles shouldn’t suffer! The truth is that true apostles suffer and God comforts them and the comfort that they receive flows over to others who suffer.

Well in verse 7, Paul includes the Corinthians in the sharing of affliction and sharing of comfort that God intends for his people… Our hope for you is unshaken, Paul writes, for we know that as you share (fellowship) in our sufferings, you shall also share (fellowship) in our comfort.

Now beginning in verse 8 Paul opens the door on the worst affliction he had ever faced. He wants the Corinthians to know about the most devastating and overwhelming affliction he had ever encountered, an affliction that left him despairing of life.[3] It happened in Asia and it was off the charts. {And again the word affliction here means ‘pressure’. It can refer to troubling circumstances (on the outside) or distress and anguish (on the inside}.

Look at the first part of verse 8, For we do not want you to be unaware brothers of the affliction we experienced in Asia….

Why was Paul so keen on letting the Corinthians in on his suffering? Well he wanted to drive home that true apostles do suffer affliction. But more than that, he also wanted to build a bridge with them—his relationship with this church was strained. How better to build a bridge with these people who didn’t trust him than to be vulnerable with his struggles and troubles and trials? “When it comes to relationships with people, our trials, limitations, failures, and weaknesses often play a significant role in building bridges.”[4] We don’t want you to be unaware… of the affliction that we experienced in Asia.

When he mentions Asia, what does he mean? We used this map last week…

You can see Corinth to the left of the map and the large Roman province of Asia, on the right of the map, across the Aegean Sea. It would be present day Turkey. The seven churches mentioned in the book of Revelation were in Asia. Ephesus was in Asia. In fact Ephesus was the capital of the Asian province.

Now looking at verse 8, we have to admit, that it leaves us begging for details. What happened to Paul? What kind of affliction did he experience that left him despairing for life? And where did it occur? Where in Asia did Paul experience overwhelming, life altering affliction?

Well you can imagine that wherever the biblical text is silent, commentaries often become prolific. We don’t want to spend too much time on this but it’s a bit helpful to try to sketch out some of the possibilities.

Some have suggested that Paul went through a terrible internal struggle, a psychological trial of sorts because of the stress of ministry.[5] Others have suggested that Paul had an illness of some kind[6]. Still others have suggested that Paul faced severe persecution, violence or imprisonment. In 1 Corinthians Paul states that he fought with beasts at Ephesus.[7] Literal beasts or figurative beasts? We can only surmise.

Many have traced Paul’s travel in the book of Acts on his various missionary journeys. We know that Paul spent brief amounts of time in Asia at the beginning[8] and end[9] of his second missionary journey. We know he spent an extended time in Ephesus, the capital of Asia, on his third missionary journey as recorded in Acts 19. We know there was a terrible riot in Ephesus caused by Demetrius the silversmith. And we know Paul spent other time in Asian cities in Acts 20. Where did Paul experience the most severe affliction in his life? And what did he experience?

It would seem that Paul doesn’t want us to be distracted by those details. Instead he wants us to see how God used his affliction for good.

So in the last part of verse 8, Paul “strains the language to the limit in an effort to express”[10] just how bad it was.

For we were so utterly burdened

The NAS says we were burdened excessively

The NIV says we were under great pressure

We were burdened. The word used here means to be weighed down. It was used of an overloaded ship riding really low in the water and listing precariously from side to side. It was used of a pack animal weighed down by the load it was carrying.[11]

Well, being burdened down just didn’t cut it for Paul and he went looking for an adverb. Can we just imagine Paul writing and he says “I need an adverb.” How weighed down was I? We were utterly burdened, we were burdened excessively. The word utterly is from the Greek word ‘hyperbole’, the word in English which has come to mean ‘exaggerated statements’. Well there was no exaggeration here. Paul says we were burdened to the extreme.

Paul goes on. We were utterly burdened…beyond our strength so that we despaired of life itself. Indeed ,verse 9, we felt that we had received the sentence of death.

Included in the word despaired is the picture of trying to escape danger down a path which abruptly dead ends—all of a sudden there is no way of escape. [12] “Paul is saying that (his circumstances) overwhelmed him so much that he felt the despair of hopelessness. He had slammed into a brick wall. All seemed lost. Things couldn’t get any worse. He even doubted he’d live through it”[13]

In our Sunday school class this morning in 1 Samuel, we ran across a time in David’s life when the bottom fell out. It was a time when he was in great despair. It’s a scene in 1 Samuel 30. In the previous chapter, David and his 600 men had been released from the Philistine army—an army marching to make war with Israel…you’ll have to read it to understand how strange it was –well they had been released from the Philistine army and they headed back to Ziklag, the city where they lived with their wives and children. And from a distance they saw smoke. And when they came to the city it had been burned with fire and every wife and child was missing. “Tragedy rivaling that of Job was multiplied 600 hundred times as each man discovered that his possessions and wives and children were gone.”[14]

All the men, the bible says, raised their voices to weep until they had no more strength to weep. That is despair. The bible says David was greatly distressed. He had lost his wives and children and then, believe it or not it got worse, his men spoke of stoning him.[15] Put yourself there for a moment.

One author writes…

“How could David be Yahweh’s chosen king and be suffering like this?.... Here is a sobering and disturbing picture for God’s people. Are there not times when you think it cannot get any worse? (Well) 1 Samuel 30 says, Yes, it can. There are times when you conclude that your present trouble is the last straw; you simply cannot take any more. Then comes Ziklag, the last straw after the last straw. Sometimes you are tempted to add another line to Psalm 30 verse 5: “Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning”—and here’s the other line…. and disaster strikes next afternoon.[16]

We have a disturbing text. God’s special servant, David, is overwhelmed with trouble. By implication we understand that this could be so for any of God’s servants. The text says that your distresses and troubles could intensify. Even this, however, does not leave us comfortless. For here is the realism of the Bible. Here is no hiding of truth or preaching of half-truths. Here is no false advertising. As the Lord’s servant you may be overwhelmed with troubles.[17]

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You and I know of Charles Spurgeon as a gifted preacher who lived in the 1800s in England. We might not be so familiar with his suffering. He suffered terribly with gout, severe depression, and from poisonous slander.

Listen to his words…

“Down on my knees have I often fallen, with the hot sweat rising from my brow under some fresh slander poured upon me; in an agony of grief my heart has been well-nigh broken; … This thing I hope I can say from my heart: If to be made as the mire of the streets again, if to be the laughing stock of fools and the song of the drunkard once more will make me more serviceable to my Master, and more useful to his cause, I will prefer it to all this multitude, or to all the applause that man could give.”[18]

Then a story from Spurgeon’s ministry… When Spurgeon’s congregation outgrew their church building they began meeting in a large music hall called the Surrey Gardens Music Hall. On Sunday night October 19, 1856--the first Sunday that the congregation was meeting in the new location--twelve thousand people were in the audience and an additional ten thousand people were in the gardens. The service was underway when, during Spurgeon’s prayer, several people shouted, “Fire! The galleries are giving way”. It was a malicious prank. In the ensuing panic, seven people died and 28 were hospitalized with serious injuries. Spurgeon was totally undone. He was literally carried from the pulpit and taken to a friend’s house where he remained for several days in deep depression.[19]