Comfort

Title: Jars of Caring

Text: II Corinthians 1:3-7

Thesis: We are “Jars of Clay” through whom God works.

Introduction

A little boy stopped by the super market and asked the cashier where he could find a box of Tide… he said it was for washing his cat. The lady was quick to tell him that he shouldn’t wash his cat with Tide but she couldn’t change his mind.

The lady said, ‘Well son, I warned you not to wash your cat with Tide detergent.” “Naw,” the boy said, “He didn’t die from the Tide, it was the spin cycle that got him.”

I think this kind of describes life

• That it is the spin cycle that gets most people.

• It is the spin cycle that leaves us twisted in knots and wrung dry.

Last week we spoke about encouraging others

• Today I want to look at how we can comfort people.

• Because We are stewards of the presence of God…

• We exist so that others can see the Glory of God in us

• And see that Glory working through us.

• So this being said We are also stewards of the God’s comfort.

• We exist to share with others our own experiences

• And through these experiences we can give comfort to others who need to be comforted.

Our text today is about how God comforts us

• When we have been spun dry in the spin cycle

• And Because of this how we are able to comfort others who have gone for a bad spin as well.

God Offers Comfort to All 1:Cor 1:3-7

3 All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is our merciful Father and the source of all comfort. 4 He comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort others. When they are troubled, we will be able to give them the same comfort God has given us. 5 For the more we suffer for Christ, the more God will shower us with his comfort through Christ. 6 Even when we are weighed down with troubles, it is for your comfort and salvation! For when we ourselves are comforted, we will certainly comfort you. Then you can patiently endure the same things we suffer. 7 We are confident that as you share in our sufferings, you will also share in the comfort God gives us.

The first thing our text tells us is that

1. God the Father is the ultimate source of our comfort.

• Text says All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is our merciful Father and the source of all comfort.

• The word comfort brings two images together.

• The first is the image of coming alongside someone.

• When we come alongside another person,

• We encourage and strengthen that person.

The Nile River is 4,175 miles long.

• It has two primary tributaries:

• A stream that flows into a larger stream or other body of water

• The White Nile which originates deep in southern Rwanda

• The Blue Nile which originates in Ethiopia.

• These waters come together and flow north until they reach a large delta in Egypt and empty into the Mediterranean Sea.

Everything in life has to have an origin.

• Aristotle once said, “All causes of things are beginnings…”

• We say a cause is something that makes something happen

• And the effect is what happens because of the cause.

• In other words, it doesn’t matter if we are talking about Rivers / Philosophies or Automobiles –

• Everything has an original cause or a beginning.

The bible tells us that God is the God of all comfort

• And that God is the source of every mercy.

• All comfort that comes into our lives originates with God.

Comfort does not originate with Dr. Phil,

• Comfort doesn’t originate with Dear Abby

• Comfort doesn’t originate with people like Winston Churchill

• Even though he encouraged a nation at war

• Comfort doesn’t originate from the Physician with a great bedside manner.

• Comfort does not originate when President Clinton said “I feel your pain.”

• Comfort begins with God as it bubbles up from springs and melts from mountain tops and flows north and south and east and west, down through rivulets, creeks, streams, rivers, and deltas of people to us.

• Now even though it may flow to us,

• Our text reminds us that the comfort of God also flows through us.

2. Caring and comfort is about us… and others.

• 4 He comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort others.

• Here we are introduced to another word that translates as afflictions